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The New Antiquarians
32 Plays2 years ago
Host Benjamin Miller welcomes back his erstwhile co-host, Michael Diaz-Griffith, to discuss the latter's new book, "The New Antiquarians." A survey of the up-and-coming generation of antiques collectors, who are taking up the mantle of the wealthy, socially competitive collectors who preceded them, the book takes readers into the homes of “people who are independent of mind, who want to create an interior that’s expressive of who they are"—from fashion designer Emily Bode to artist Andrew LaMar Hopkins, and many in between.
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Transcript
Introduction: Meet Michael Diaz Griffith
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:11
Speaker
If you're a longtime listener and you reach back into the hazy memory of Curious Objects of yore, before, yes, even COVID-19, you may recall an erudite young gentleman who was not only a stellar guest on this podcast, but who actually co-hosted a number of episodes with me.
00:00:30
Speaker
And now that same young man, although we're both a little older, has written a book that I think if you enjoy this podcast, you will find delightful.
00:00:39
Speaker
It's called The New Antiquarians.
Podcast Memories and Visits
00:00:42
Speaker
And the author is, of course, Michael Diaz Griffith.
00:00:45
Speaker
Michael, it's nice to have you back.
00:00:47
Speaker
Oh, it's nice to be back, Ben.
00:00:48
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:00:50
Speaker
And thank you for that very kind introduction.
00:00:53
Speaker
Although I was once young and now I'm old.
00:00:56
Speaker
So let's see if I'm still erudite.
00:00:58
Speaker
Maybe not.
00:01:00
Speaker
Maybe I'm declining.
00:01:03
Speaker
Some people get more erudite with age.
00:01:04
Speaker
I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case for you.
00:01:06
Speaker
That's true.
00:01:07
Speaker
That's true.
00:01:07
Speaker
My cognition is hopefully up to snuff.
00:01:09
Speaker
Let's test it out.
00:01:11
Speaker
Well,
Pandemic's Influence on Antiques
00:01:12
Speaker
okay.
00:01:12
Speaker
So today's curious object, of course, is your book, The New Antiquarians.
00:01:16
Speaker
We're going to talk all about it.
00:01:18
Speaker
But first, I hope listeners will allow us a moment of nostalgia because I was just thinking about some of the interviews that you and I had a chance to do back in the day with, you know, Jennifer Tankovic at the Morgan Library where you and I took turns sitting in J.P.
00:01:35
Speaker
Morgan's desk.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:37
Speaker
And of course, at Becky McGuire and Kara Zimmerman at Christie's, educating us about porcelain and about outsider art and Bill Traylor.
00:01:50
Speaker
Those were the good old days.
00:01:52
Speaker
They really were.
00:01:53
Speaker
And, you know, we were still co-hosting episodes together when the pandemic began.
00:01:57
Speaker
So even though it's not the warmest, happiest memory, I remember, you know, trying to track what was happening to the antiques world and to the trade in particular in those early days.
00:02:10
Speaker
And it's kind of a bright spot in my memory of lockdown, to be honest.
00:02:16
Speaker
So all really fond associations.
00:02:19
Speaker
That was very interesting.
00:02:21
Speaker
You and I had a number of conversations around that time about what was happening in the marketplace.
00:02:26
Speaker
And it was fascinating because, of course, well, you know, COVID was terrible in so many ways, but there were some silver linings.
00:02:36
Speaker
And one of those was that people were devoting so much more attention to their own lived environment.
00:02:42
Speaker
Precisely.
00:02:43
Speaker
No, and I think in the antiques trade, in the world of interior design and architecture, there was a real sort of upward tick in different categories of furniture, art, people were building, people were remodeling, you know, after lockdown abated.
00:03:01
Speaker
And I think it was ultimately a positive thing for anyone who deals in
00:03:07
Speaker
the home, right?
00:03:08
Speaker
Whether it's a collection that's displayed in the home or, you know, the makeup of the home, kitchens, bathrooms, it was a really positive thing for many businesses.
00:03:18
Speaker
And I also think so many of our friends who hadn't quite made it online finally made the leap once they were forced to.
00:03:26
Speaker
And it's a bit sad that it was an almost involuntary leap,
00:03:30
Speaker
but a leap it was nonetheless.
00:03:32
Speaker
And, you know, I remember we were looking at all those online fairs, which were a first in many cases for the antiques trade.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot, a lot has changed, but I think there's more positive that's come from it than one might expect until you really reflect.
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree.
Reviving the New Antiquarians
00:03:50
Speaker
And it's interesting that, you know, this was also around the same time that you and I started a group that was called in no coincidence, the New Antiquarians.
00:04:00
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:04:01
Speaker
And boy, that group was fun and we should bring it back, Ben.
00:04:05
Speaker
I think, you know, we've been a bit busy and I think during the pandemic, we decided since we were already, you know, hosting so many sort of digital events for both your business and the magazine and the Soane Foundation, which I ran, then we decided let's not, you know, sort of add more Zoom webinars to anybody's plate.
00:04:28
Speaker
But at its core, the New Antiquarians was about enjoying connoisseurship in person, right?
00:04:35
Speaker
Going to galleries like yours, like Shrub Soul and handling objects.
00:04:41
Speaker
I remember when we had the meetup in Central Park
00:04:44
Speaker
Sat on antique quilts and, you know, handled our own objects, shared about objects that we loved, passed them around, taught each other about disciplines that we had a specialized interest in.
00:04:58
Speaker
And it was really fun and it absolutely should come back.
00:05:02
Speaker
You know, since then, I've been a little busy with the book, but I think that I've got a little extra time on my hands now.
00:05:08
Speaker
Well, that's nice to hear.
00:05:10
Speaker
And I think that, you know, we ought to be able to ride the coattails of a book called The New Antiquarius.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:17
Speaker
It's all a part of the same big enterprise, right?
00:05:20
Speaker
Advocating for the interest and the enduring appeal of antiques.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, and I appreciate what you said about the digital events, which of course were numerous in those months of 2020 and into 2021.
00:05:35
Speaker
And digital education is a wonderful thing, but in the antiques world in particular, it's just impossible to replace that physical tactile experience as we had at Central Park or in our behind-the-scenes tour of the Hispanic Society or the...
00:05:55
Speaker
wonderful event that we had at Doyle Auctions, where we got to look at their offerings before one of their sales and speak with their connoisseurs about it.
00:06:05
Speaker
You know, that in-person interaction is what drives so much of what makes the antiques industry interesting to us.
00:06:15
Speaker
So,
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:06:16
Speaker
I think it's time for us to bring that back.
Designing 'The New Antiquarians'
00:06:19
Speaker
But let's let's talk about the book, because, you know, this is first of all, I just have to say right off the bat that it's beautifully designed.
00:06:29
Speaker
It's it's a great object in itself, which is fitting for the subject matter.
00:06:33
Speaker
You have the cover, the decorative elements, the photography.
00:06:38
Speaker
I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit about the design process for the book as a physical object.
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
So from the minute that I decided to do a book, I really knew that I wanted it to be experienced as an object.
00:06:54
Speaker
So it makes me really happy that you say that, Ben.
00:06:58
Speaker
It was absolutely the goal.
00:07:00
Speaker
And I think that, you know, there was a sense that
00:07:03
Speaker
we don't just want to talk about objects.
00:07:06
Speaker
We want to embody in the form of the book, you know, a sense of historicity, a sense of quality in the context of materials, a sense of craftsmanship and the way that it's bound.
00:07:20
Speaker
And so that was the remit from the beginning.
00:07:23
Speaker
And I was really, really grateful that Fiden and the Monticelli Press, my publishers,
00:07:29
Speaker
allowed me to work with my creative collaborator in graphic design, Elizabeth Goodspeed, who's just brilliant.
00:07:36
Speaker
She's RISD trained and is obsessed with historic archives.
00:07:43
Speaker
She's actually become a bit of a specialist in sourcing visual references from online archives and even has a newsletter about this called The Casual Archivist, which I highly, highly recommend.
00:07:55
Speaker
So from the beginning of the book's production, we were
00:07:59
Speaker
you know, intent on incorporating historic ornament into the sort of visual landscape of the book.
00:08:06
Speaker
And she went off on a mission to source the most amazing open source imagery and, you know, illustrations that you see both, you know, on the cover and on the book itself.
00:08:21
Speaker
You see them inside in the context of borders that we created to frame the portraits of the subjects of the book and in spot illustrations that are scattered throughout.
00:08:34
Speaker
And it was quite an undertaking.
00:08:36
Speaker
I mean, we have a spreadsheet where I have listed the sort of
00:08:41
Speaker
decorative sort of idioms that fit each of the subjects.
00:08:46
Speaker
And she has responded with some test images that she sourced from archives.
00:08:51
Speaker
And I've said, no, you know, she's not quite a Greek meander.
00:08:54
Speaker
She's more of an art nouveau, you know, back and forth.
00:08:58
Speaker
And, and she was just brilliant at, at sourcing those elements and stitching them together.
00:09:03
Speaker
And, uh,
00:09:05
Speaker
We were lucky to collaborate with a really brilliant photographer on the bulk of the book.
00:09:11
Speaker
All but two of the chapters were shot by the same photographer, Brian Ferry.
00:09:16
Speaker
So from the beginning to the end, you know, it was a really small team that had creative control that was guiding the development of the book, which was lucky for me.
00:09:27
Speaker
I've literally just gone and signed up for the casual archivist newsletter while you were answering that question.
00:09:33
Speaker
It's a wise decision.
00:09:34
Speaker
Elizabeth is brilliant.
00:09:36
Speaker
So you mentioned the Soane Foundation.
00:09:38
Speaker
And of course, when you and I met, you were at the Winter Show.
00:09:43
Speaker
And now you're the director of the Design Leadership Network.
00:09:48
Speaker
It seems to an outside observer that your professional trajectory has drifted in the design direction.
00:09:59
Speaker
And so I'm interested to ask you about your perceptions, because now you're intimately familiar and acquainted with both the design community and the antiques community.
Connecting Design and Antiques
00:10:12
Speaker
which of course overlap to a great degree.
00:10:14
Speaker
But I wonder what you think the interior design community misunderstands about the antiques world.
00:10:23
Speaker
So, yeah, I run now a professional association of interior designers, architects, and landscape architects called the Design Leadership Network.
00:10:33
Speaker
And we have about 700 members and partners.
00:10:38
Speaker
So I am...
00:10:40
Speaker
deep inside the design world, it's true.
00:10:42
Speaker
And, you know, I don't think that it's so much a matter of the design world misunderstanding, you know, antiques or the antiques world as the overlap being partial, right?
00:10:57
Speaker
So there are parts of the design world that are deeply, deeply acquainted with the world encompassed by the magazine antiques.
00:11:05
Speaker
There are designers, David Scott, for example, comes to mind, who actually have a practice in dealing antiques.
00:11:13
Speaker
They are connoisseurs themselves.
00:11:16
Speaker
I work with many designers who sit on museum boards, who are great collectors, who work with great collectors.
00:11:23
Speaker
So on one side of the Venn diagram are people who are intimately connected to the antiques world.
00:11:31
Speaker
And then there are designers that aren't so exposed.
00:11:35
Speaker
or who think that antiques may be inaccessible for their clients.
00:11:40
Speaker
And I've had a really great time working to help expose those designers to the antiques world, you know, not necessarily in a way that feels, that the designers feel, but at the DLN we even, you know, set up gallery visits,
00:11:59
Speaker
museum visits as a part of the activities that we pursue.
00:12:04
Speaker
And I love it, you know, exposing designers who may or may not have exposure to this context to it.
00:12:11
Speaker
We recently brought a group through Galerie Cougel in Paris, and one of the designers said, is this a museum?
00:12:18
Speaker
And we said, it's all for sale.
00:12:20
Speaker
And it was kind of a great revelation.
00:12:23
Speaker
And, you know, some great relationships were forged that day
00:12:26
Speaker
And I think some eyes were opened.
00:12:28
Speaker
So, you know, there's there's a lot more dialogue that can be mounted towards that side of the design world and the antiques world.
00:12:36
Speaker
And that's absolutely one of my projects right now.
00:12:39
Speaker
And, you know, the concept of the book.
00:12:44
Speaker
is that we're looking at the collections of young collectors of antiques, historic art, vintage design, but we're looking at those collections very much in the context of their homes.
00:12:56
Speaker
So for people who love a good design book or who love interior inspiration as we might call it on social media, there's a bit of candy there that hopefully will act as a lure bin.
00:13:11
Speaker
And for those who are not exposed to connoisseurship at the highest level, hopefully they bite on the candy and they get drawn into our, you know, weird and wacky and absolutely magnificent world of antiques.
00:13:26
Speaker
That's the hope.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting.
00:13:28
Speaker
I mean, I ask because I think that this project of sort of connecting communities, particularly communities who are interested in visual vocabulary, but who don't have the kind of, you know, connoisseurial exposure that you and I do to the antiques world, you know, that's been a mission of yours for a long time and was certainly an important pillar of what the organization, the New Antiquarians, was originally oriented around.
00:13:57
Speaker
And so this book seems like a kind of apotheosis of that principle where, well, so you've started to describe it, but for listeners who haven't taken a look at it yet, essentially, this is an odyssey of interiors.
00:14:14
Speaker
It's a peek inside dozens of homes of people who, roughly speaking, belong to our generation, your and my generation, and
00:14:24
Speaker
And people who, like us and like you, dear listeners, believe that it is worth investing time and care into the objects that we spend our lives with.
Modern Collectors and New Habits
00:14:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:14:37
Speaker
And, you know, I think that the most obvious differentiator for these collectors is that they're younger.
00:14:45
Speaker
But I also think, you know, it's notable that they're not all inheritors of generational wealth.
00:14:55
Speaker
Some of the interiors contain high style and even museum quality material.
00:15:00
Speaker
Others don't.
00:15:01
Speaker
And, you know, I've run, you know, a vetted art fair.
00:15:06
Speaker
We've certainly worked at the highest reaches of the antiques market, Ben, you and I. But it's important, I think, to embrace, you know, authenticity, condition, quality in whatever context we find ourselves in.
00:15:20
Speaker
Right.
00:15:20
Speaker
And sometimes that's
00:15:22
Speaker
An interior where the person may not be able to collect, you know, silver at the highest level.
00:15:28
Speaker
But as you know, Ben, there's some great silver out there to be found, even for a couple hundred dollars.
00:15:33
Speaker
If you know how to look, if you know where to look.
00:15:35
Speaker
So I like that, you know, we've been able to embrace a wide constituency in terms of.
00:15:42
Speaker
their material ability to collect.
00:15:44
Speaker
And there are certainly some collectors in the book who've been very creative about pursuing their practice with limited resources in some cases.
00:15:55
Speaker
And that's very relatable.
00:15:56
Speaker
It's relatable to me.
00:15:58
Speaker
And I think it speaks to one of the changing currents in the antiques world, which is that
00:16:03
Speaker
the sort of socially competitive collecting that characterized the boom time of the 80s 90s and early 2000s has abated you know and i talk about this in the introduction to the book it's not that financiers are competing over who has the rarest english furniture in their dining rooms that has not come back and i'm very open about that so
00:16:30
Speaker
with a sort of class-based, socially competitive collecting habit still on the wane, the question is, where is this uptick that I'm saying is happening happening?
00:16:43
Speaker
And, you know, I do think it's happening among people who are independent of mind, who want to develop an interior that's particularly rich and expressive of who they are.
00:16:57
Speaker
It's
00:16:58
Speaker
it's a different probably slice of society than the one that powered the boom times at the end of the 20th century.
00:17:09
Speaker
And I think the book kind of illustrates that.
00:17:11
Speaker
It's a fresh cast of characters.
00:17:15
Speaker
And I think that's an interesting thing for dealers, especially to look at it, to consider, who is your client in this emerging generation?
00:17:24
Speaker
They may look a little bit different from the clients that you had 20 years ago.
00:17:28
Speaker
But not only is that, you know, okay, it's actually really, really exciting.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:34
Speaker
Not to mention inevitable.
00:17:36
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I think you and I are all too familiar with the pining, nostalgia-laden conversations with dealers about the golden age of antique fairs where people would line up outside the gates and
00:17:52
Speaker
You spend hours in line just to be sure that they were the first to get to X, Y or Z booth and snap up the best material before their friends could.
00:18:00
Speaker
And I understand the excitement about that, particularly when you have a financial interest in it.
00:18:06
Speaker
And there's something very appealing about being able to make a living just by finding good things and selling them to the most ravenous collectors.
00:18:16
Speaker
But I have to say, and you framed it very well, you know, good riddance to that style of collecting, because that's not, yes, it's collecting, but it's not really about the qualities of the objects that certainly that I find most appealing and compelling and motivating.
00:18:36
Speaker
And I'm excited to see a new form of collecting, even if it's quieter in some ways, which gives more attention to the kind of personal experience, the intimate personal relationship that is perhaps more inspiring for cohorts of you and me.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, I do think that there are certainly trends in the antiques market, certainly in the world of vintage design, and we'll continue to see sort of, you know, trending objects, disciplines, stylistic idioms in the future.
00:19:16
Speaker
But one overarching idea here is that at the level of collecting and connoisseurship, the sort of
00:19:24
Speaker
mania over one specific type of object at a given moment, you know, weather vanes or whatever, is less likely to be
00:19:34
Speaker
to recur, I think, in this generation than this slightly more diffuse, much more plural sense of, you know, everything is interesting, right?
00:19:45
Speaker
And as a collector, you're on this journey to figure out what you are passionate about, what best expresses
00:19:54
Speaker
your vision of the world and what you're interested in learning about.
00:19:59
Speaker
And everyone will, I think, find their own path through that if they dive into collecting now.
00:20:07
Speaker
The internet has already sort of caused the doors to
00:20:13
Speaker
blow open in fashion, in interior design, and every style you could ever imagine wearing is available to wear, to surround yourself with at home.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's less about sort of one idiom characterizing our times now as the sheer availability of sort of almost anything you could dream of.
00:20:41
Speaker
And I think that that does apply to the antiques world as well as to the design world at large.
00:20:48
Speaker
And it's exciting, but it might mean that, you know, you don't have
00:20:52
Speaker
two people fighting over the same chair at an antiques show, literally trying to rip it out of each other's hands.
00:21:03
Speaker
In a funny way, it might spell success for dealers who are able to take advantage of that movement and maybe hard times for auctioneers who really rely on that kind of, well, competition is, of course, the definition of their business model.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's true.
00:21:22
Speaker
And I mean, of course, certain items will appeal to the eye, to the spirit of a given generation or a certain coterie.
00:21:29
Speaker
But, you know, I think that if we're looking at this from a financial perspective,
00:21:36
Speaker
just as there are disciplines that have declined since the early 2000s roughly, there are disciplines that were not assigned great value during those boom times that are now being recognized in this sort of hurly-burly of the digital plurality that we live in.
00:21:56
Speaker
You know, I talk about this in the book.
00:21:58
Speaker
There are
00:21:59
Speaker
areas like plywood furniture from the 30s in England that are becoming more and more interesting for a young cohort of collectors, certain kinds of Victoriana that were not highly in demand when the boom time was at its apex that are very interesting to millennials and Gen Z collectors.
00:22:23
Speaker
And so, you know, I think that there's a lot to look at and think about both in this book and in the market right now that, yeah, it's simply different from what we were seeing during the last resurgence for antiques.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:40
Speaker
We'll be right back with Michael.
Engagement and Feedback
00:22:42
Speaker
But first, I always like to take a moment just to say thank you for listening.
00:22:47
Speaker
I really appreciate you being here with me to explore curious objects together.
00:22:52
Speaker
If you're enjoying the show, I would really appreciate it if you take a moment to leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or whatever app you're listening to right now.
00:23:04
Speaker
These reviews are great fun to read.
00:23:06
Speaker
I particularly appreciated someone who said that Curious Objects is entertaining and educational and completely lacking in stress.
00:23:16
Speaker
That's terrific.
00:23:17
Speaker
I'm so glad to hear it.
00:23:19
Speaker
And I hope I can help you feel just a little less stressed out for an hour at least.
00:23:24
Speaker
If you'd like to get in touch with me, and I'd love to hear from you, you can email me at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com, or you can find my Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:23:37
Speaker
Let's get back to Michael Diaz-Griffitt.
Young Professionals in Antiques
00:23:43
Speaker
I was excited to see multiple Curious Objects guests make appearances in the New Antiquarians, including, well, of course, the very first chapter, which is about the home of Emily Bodie, who joined you and me for the inaugural New Antiquarians event at the Winter Show in the Board of Officers room back in, was that 2018 or 2019?
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:08
Speaker
2018, I think.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:10
Speaker
And this is sort of the cast of characters that, you know, I've been in dialogue with about these things for the last five years.
00:24:18
Speaker
And obviously we've had dialogue together with some of them.
00:24:22
Speaker
And one of the things that I think is notable about the group is that, you know, they're not coming from the heart of the antiques world in many cases.
00:24:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:30
Speaker
When I was at the winter show on the staff side, you and I talked a lot, Ben, about how I would sort of make forays out into the fashion world or the design world before I worked in it like I do now to sort of find the younger people who were in dialogue with the material culture of the past.
00:24:52
Speaker
And I believe very firmly then that they existed and that
00:24:57
Speaker
they would gain a lot from being at the winter show.
00:25:01
Speaker
I knew that they would gain from that.
00:25:04
Speaker
And, you know, Emily is one of those people who long before the runaway success of her fashion brand,
00:25:12
Speaker
even when she was just starting out, was articulating a very scrupulous and careful sort of position in relation to antiques and historic material, textiles in particular, obviously, that really...
00:25:29
Speaker
marked the sensibility of someone who should be in dialogue with the antiques world, you know, at the highest level and in the spaces that you and I have been privileged to move in.
00:25:41
Speaker
So she helped us launch the podcast, you know, relationship with the New Antiquarians group.
00:25:50
Speaker
And, you know, my conversations with her and her husband, Aaron, have continued.
00:25:56
Speaker
even as I've seen them gain more and more influence over a wide audience of younger people who love what they do and through them have been exposed to this passion for historic sort of aesthetics.
00:26:11
Speaker
You know, there are also some young interior designers, a creative director for a furniture brand in the book.
00:26:18
Speaker
And
00:26:20
Speaker
While I also know many people who are sort of private citizens and not in the design world who collect antiques, and we certainly want to give them attention, one of the things that's notable about these young people in the design field is that they certainly display their material in a way that's very interesting and often fresh and different from what we've seen in the past.
00:26:42
Speaker
So it was important to show their interiors because they're a register of how
00:26:47
Speaker
antiques are being displayed a little bit differently now you know as compared to 10 or 20 years ago and and emily and aaron kind of lead off the book in that spirit
00:26:56
Speaker
Yes, well, and of course, that group of sort of antiques adjacent young professionals, people in fashion, people in other design areas, you know, that is often the medium through which the vocabulary of antiques decorative arts makes its way into the general public perception.
00:27:19
Speaker
And I think you've been a very important voice in, as we've talked about, building bridges there and helping to grease the wheels of that communication.
00:27:29
Speaker
I'm mixing my metaphors, but it's very interesting to go through your book and see how the subjects range from, on the one extreme, actual antique dealers,
00:27:43
Speaker
To collectors, to young professionals with an interior design focus or whether it's a professional interest or a hobby or whether they're just people who, again, think, like to think about the way that they live and the objects that they surround themselves with.
00:28:02
Speaker
It's such a broad spectrum.
00:28:04
Speaker
And I certainly hope that people on the sort of staid connoisseurial side of the teeter-totter will take a look at that book and start to think a little more broadly about the world that they inhabit or that they could inhabit.
00:28:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:25
Speaker
And and to see, you know, in a young person on the street who's wearing an outfit that has bows on it or whatever, a potential antiques enthusiast.
00:28:37
Speaker
You know, we talked a lot about this when when we were in dialogue with Emily, but there.
00:28:45
Speaker
sometimes I think we get things a little backwards and we focus on who's coming to us in the antiques world with interest in the material culture of the past.
00:28:57
Speaker
But, you know, instead I'm very insistent on going to people who would seem to be likely converts and sort of saying, look, did you know that you can actually learn far more about this stuff?
00:29:15
Speaker
everything that you're interested in and posting on Instagram about has a name.
00:29:20
Speaker
There are all of these cool, geeky people who are also concerned with what those things are.
00:29:25
Speaker
You can live with them and you can really inhabit a world that is completely enriched by exposure to those objects.
Generational Differences in Collecting
00:29:36
Speaker
And, you know, boy, does a young person who is sort of predisposed
00:29:42
Speaker
recognize when they're being approached with that opportunity.
00:29:45
Speaker
I see it time and again.
00:29:48
Speaker
We sort of overestimate, I think, what their previous exposure might have been.
00:29:54
Speaker
And we think young people have rejected the antiques world, but actually most have not ever been exposed.
00:30:02
Speaker
And, you know, as someone who comes from a very humble background in rural Alabama, I count myself among those people.
00:30:11
Speaker
I didn't know that there was a world, a professional world, an academic world in which my private interests could be pursued at such a high level for a really long time.
00:30:25
Speaker
So when people say to me, you know, my kids don't want my things, I try to remind them that even if their kids are rejecting their familial patrimony, someone else's kids won't.
00:30:39
Speaker
And
00:30:40
Speaker
Sometimes it is the case that people reject what they grew up with.
00:30:44
Speaker
I think that was largely the case with Gen X, not to stereotype because we know lots of antiques geeks who are Gen X, but there was a shift.
00:30:57
Speaker
I would say from the second half of the 90s into the 2000s, as Gen X came of age and developed buying power towards minimalism, towards mid-century modern material, which at the time was viewed through the lens of disruption rather than continuity by the antiques world, because it hadn't sort of developed enough age yet to be seen as just the latest flourishing of the antiques world.
00:31:25
Speaker
A lot of that was rejection, for sure.
00:31:27
Speaker
I mean, if you were a moneyed person who grew up with parents who were collectors of antiques, it was much sexier in 1997 to buy a loft in Tribeca and sparsely furnish it with Danish, you know, material.
00:31:43
Speaker
And so the sort of cyclical nature of taste and, frankly, of the family dynamic were often...
00:31:52
Speaker
people end up being closer to their grandchildren than their children.
00:31:57
Speaker
It certainly is reflected in the antiques world.
00:32:02
Speaker
And right now, if I were to characterize what's happened in a generational sense, we would say that those great collectors from the 80s and 90s, whose children rejected their patrimony, are now seeing that their grandchildren don't.
00:32:18
Speaker
So whether it's a grandchild instead of a child or whether it's someone like me who didn't grow up with antiques, but who learned that there was a world to embrace in the form of the antiques world.
00:32:31
Speaker
For me, it's all about being open to, to those who have the interest to express interest or who seem likely to be converted into enthusiasts instead of wringing our hands because some people won't, um,
00:32:49
Speaker
won't take to it.
00:32:50
Speaker
You know, there are just some who are never going to get it.
00:32:53
Speaker
And that's okay because there are so, so many others who will get it.
00:32:59
Speaker
Was there a, out of all of the chapters in your book, was there one interior that struck you as the most perfect extension of its owner's personality?
Pablo Bronstein's Antique Haven
00:33:11
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:33:11
Speaker
That's really, that's a great question.
00:33:16
Speaker
You know, I think that one of the most
00:33:21
Speaker
perfectly expressive interiors in that sense belongs to Pablo Bronstein, the British Argentine artist.
00:33:30
Speaker
It's one of the few interiors that we were able to shoot in Britain because the book was produced during the pandemic.
00:33:41
Speaker
And so travel restrictions conditioned, you know,
00:33:46
Speaker
whom and where we were able to shoot.
00:33:49
Speaker
And in further books, I look forward to getting more to Europe because there's a lot that's happening there that's exciting in the realm of antiques, as ever.
00:33:59
Speaker
But what's fun about Pablo's house in Deal is that
00:34:05
Speaker
It is his second home.
00:34:07
Speaker
And so it is a little zanier and a little more reflective of his eccentricities than his London flat.
00:34:17
Speaker
And he's a little older than many of the other subjects, although he's in his 40s.
00:34:23
Speaker
He wouldn't mind my saying.
00:34:25
Speaker
I hope I might be getting a phone call.
00:34:29
Speaker
And so he's had a little more time to...
00:34:32
Speaker
develop that, the expression of his sensibility that, you know, that we think about in this book.
00:34:39
Speaker
And he's able to do that in a very free-handed way because, you know, we're dealing with a second home.
00:34:44
Speaker
And actually after the book was completed, he decided to liquidate most of his collection
00:34:53
Speaker
with the exception of the silver sugar casters that form its heart.
00:34:58
Speaker
I'm so happy to hear that.
00:34:59
Speaker
I, of course, paid special attention to that chapter because of the inclusion of numerous antique silver objects.
00:35:06
Speaker
They're really worth talking about.
00:35:08
Speaker
I have a sort of point to make about those.
00:35:11
Speaker
But he did that because, you know, he has a second home, he's financially comfortable, but he's not...
00:35:19
Speaker
a financier, he has limited means, and he wanted to start over and do something new.
00:35:25
Speaker
With his collecting practice, he said something really interesting to me, which is that, you know, over time you can become a bit of a prisoner to the taste that you develop.
00:35:33
Speaker
And I feel that all the time.
00:35:35
Speaker
I'm constantly finding myself sort of ready to start over with an interior that I live in or a collection that I'm forming.
00:35:44
Speaker
And so I love that he's doing that, but it really tells me that
00:35:48
Speaker
when we shot that interior, it was kind of at the, in that collection, it was at the end of its sort of life cycle with Pablo, right?
00:35:58
Speaker
And in that sense, I think it's most complete, whereas many of the other interiors are closer to the beginning of their life cycle.
00:36:06
Speaker
And the collections, I think, will continue to grow and evolve for many, many years to come.
00:36:12
Speaker
But about the Silver Sugar casters, I think one thing that's notable here is that
00:36:17
Speaker
a lot of the collecting that you see in the book would be characterized as cross-collecting across disciplines, across periods.
00:36:27
Speaker
And that's just undeniably true.
00:36:32
Speaker
I will point out that the expression of
00:36:37
Speaker
of this cross collecting among millennials and Gen Z collectors is different from what we see, for example, at cross collecting fairs.
00:36:46
Speaker
I think sometimes cross collecting is understood as, you know, you have a
00:36:52
Speaker
an 18th century sideboard and you hang an abex painting above it.
00:36:58
Speaker
And I think that's a very inert vision of cross-collecting that gets a bit overstated at fairs and sort of in contexts where we're trying to promote cross-collecting.
00:37:10
Speaker
For me, cross-collecting feels a little desperate.
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, no, it does feel desperate.
00:37:15
Speaker
And I will go on record publicly as saying it does not appeal to younger people.
00:37:20
Speaker
It's a very kind of,
00:37:23
Speaker
It's a bit of an outdated vision of what cross-collecting is.
00:37:27
Speaker
The combinations you see in the book are much, much more eccentric.
00:37:32
Speaker
They're headier.
00:37:33
Speaker
They're more creative.
00:37:35
Speaker
I mean, it's worth looking at that and really thinking about how a dealer, for example, displays antiques with contemporary material if they want to do that.
00:37:47
Speaker
I mean, you should do it.
00:37:49
Speaker
Everyone should do it and feel...
00:37:52
Speaker
liberty when approaching the display of antique material, but
00:37:58
Speaker
it's, there's a sort of higher bar, I think, to reach now because people are collecting across genres and periods in such a creative way.
00:38:11
Speaker
So I think it's up to dealers, it's up to curators and anyone else who wants to be a part of that conversation to also put a great deal of thought and care and intention in the way that they conceive of cross collecting
00:38:26
Speaker
or displaying material in a way that creates dialogues that may be sort of new or unusual.
00:38:35
Speaker
But then Pablo also is a serial collector of silver in the most traditional manner of connoisseurship at its greatest.
00:38:46
Speaker
And I think that's notable too, because we know that
00:38:52
Speaker
in the sort of tragic bust of the antiques market, the top of the market remained relatively stable.
00:38:58
Speaker
It was really the realm of furnishings and cereal collecting that suffered.
00:39:04
Speaker
And one might be tempted to think, okay, the young people are bringing back collecting, but it's cross collecting now, and they may not care about connoisseurship, but that's really not true.
00:39:15
Speaker
Just as Abel Sloan and Ruby Woodhouse, who are also featured in the book are
00:39:22
Speaker
becoming leading experts in the world on plywood furniture from the 30s of all things, Pablo has become, I mean, I would say expert in this particular form of sugar casters from the 18th century that as you've seen, Ben, he's collecting in his house in Deal, Kent, which is featured in the book.
00:39:48
Speaker
And it's just connoisseurship at its best.
00:39:51
Speaker
He follows the market.
00:39:52
Speaker
He follows the auctions.
00:39:54
Speaker
He does probably fight with people at antiques fairs and pulls the sugar casters out of their hands.
00:40:03
Speaker
But at the same time, he's also very creative and liberated in how he talks about them.
00:40:09
Speaker
He made a suggestive comment that he appreciates the sort of phallic shape of the sugar casters.
00:40:15
Speaker
It jokes that they have a good feeling in the hand.
00:40:17
Speaker
I mean, you know, it's connoisseurship, you know, 2.0, but it is connoisseurship.
00:40:21
Speaker
And I think that I've never tried that sales pitch with with casters myself.
00:40:27
Speaker
I mean, but think of your future now, Ben.
00:40:29
Speaker
I see a trend for sugar casters on the horizon.
00:40:34
Speaker
I love it.
00:40:34
Speaker
I love it.
00:40:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'll stick your commission in the mail.
00:40:40
Speaker
To ask you the converse question, was there an interior that from the book that really surprised you when you saw it that you thought was incongruous with what you thought you knew about its denizens?
00:40:55
Speaker
You know, I don't think that there was a sort of mismatch between the personality of the subject and their interior.
00:41:01
Speaker
Most of the people in the book are friends, you know, it was produced in a very familial way, partly because it was produced during the pandemic.
00:41:12
Speaker
So it was harder to call people up and say, hey, can I invade your house during the pandemic to shoot it?
00:41:23
Speaker
There is a narrative though that I think relates to this question of surprise and my friend Camille Okio, who's in the book, is kind of the star of this story to me and it really relates to changing tastes as we move from millennial to Gen Z collectors or collectors who are in their 40s and 30s versus collectors in their 20s.
00:41:50
Speaker
So, you know, when we first started talking about all this stuff, Ben, I was really convinced that, you know, millennials love or could love or should love antiques because millennials actually love color and pattern and texture.
00:42:04
Speaker
And, you know, at the time, Lady Gaga and Gucci under Alessandro Michele with all of its color and historical referencing.
00:42:12
Speaker
And, you know, I just did not buy this narrative that, you know,
00:42:16
Speaker
David Price-Millennials were obsessed with IKEA I really felt like that narrative described what had happened with the gen X right the people who really did bring minimalism to the fore.
00:42:26
Speaker
David Price-Millennials were.
00:42:32
Speaker
something else was going on with them.
00:42:34
Speaker
And I, you know, constantly say, we just haven't come into our buying power.
00:42:39
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:42:39
Speaker
Millennials may have been stuck with IKEA, but that's different from loving it.
00:42:43
Speaker
But it's yeah, exactly.
00:42:45
Speaker
And what year did you graduate college, Ben? 2010.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:52
Speaker
So I graduated in 2009 right into the recession.
00:42:56
Speaker
So, you know, I always said, cut us some slack.
00:43:00
Speaker
I mean, you know, we might be living with Billy bookcases, but it's just because we can't afford what we really want yet.
00:43:09
Speaker
And those of us who don't have parents who are collectors,
00:43:12
Speaker
can't just go to mom and dad's house and steal a couple of antiques, you know, it takes a little time to build up.
00:43:17
Speaker
And I was noticing that as popular as Ikea was, you know, perhaps in cosmopolitan centers, perhaps out of necessity,
00:43:28
Speaker
Millennials actually seem to be more attracted to the tat at anthropology, you know, the high street store that does a lot of riffing on historical references, etc.
00:43:38
Speaker
And so my feeling was there's really something here with millennials and historic ornament pattern, etc.
00:43:47
Speaker
And I think that, you know, the years that we were, um,
00:43:51
Speaker
developing the New Antiquarians group and the years in which Instagram was rising to prominence and importance really bore that out.
00:44:00
Speaker
I mean, we saw the sort of advent of what has been called grand millennial taste
00:44:07
Speaker
which can be quite dubious under certain circumstances.
00:44:11
Speaker
I say that as someone whose photo was printed in the New York Post at about like 12 by 18 inches with the word grand millennial, like plastered on top of it.
00:44:20
Speaker
It's a little embarrassing because some of it is kind of icky, you know, like,
00:44:25
Speaker
not good lettuce wear, but fake lettuce wear that people are buying at inflated prices online.
00:44:32
Speaker
But that really did bear out that, you know, whether it's vintage material that people are buying on Cherish or, you know, millennial women wearing nap dresses that are that have puffy sleeves, there was something there.
00:44:46
Speaker
And I'd say that a lot of the interiors in the book kind of relate not to grand millennial taste, but to this millennial sensibility that's very eclectic, right?
00:44:57
Speaker
Very colorful and full, you know, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, um, schemes for rooms that are packed with antiques, vintage material, art, and, um,
00:45:14
Speaker
personal finds that are combined in novel ways, but often, you know, in very concentrated ways that bring all of the objects into very close dialogue.
00:45:29
Speaker
And I think Gen Z, you know, people from sort of their early 30s down,
00:45:36
Speaker
more broadly speaking, have a slightly different take.
00:45:40
Speaker
And I think that it's a little bit calmer and cooler that there's actually a little bit of minimalism in the background, almost of the sort that you see in the work of Axel Vervoot, where...
00:45:54
Speaker
There are antiques and antiquities and natural specimens, but they're distributed in a way that lets the objects breathe, you know?
00:46:04
Speaker
And instead of the wall behind being lacquered as they are in my house, because I'm admittedly like, you know,
00:46:12
Speaker
at the heart of the maximalist millennial taste, there's a taste for a white wall or a beige wall or skimmed plaster walls and a couple of beautiful things displayed really quietly and almost more in the manner of a museum than a residential interior.
00:46:35
Speaker
And we all have references for that way of displaying things.
00:46:39
Speaker
you know, even Jerry Lauren's propensity to put weather vanes in front of a white wall kind of speaks to a similar taste.
00:46:48
Speaker
But I do think that if anything, we're seeing an increasing interest in antiques or a continued increase in interest among 20-somethings, but an evolving way of displaying them.
00:47:02
Speaker
And I think that there's even a narrative here of
00:47:06
Speaker
of kind of minimalism and antiques finally learning how to get along.
00:47:11
Speaker
I mean, and it's no coincidence that the Bauhaus is now over 100 years ago.
00:47:16
Speaker
So I think modernism is kind of entering the pantheon of the antique
00:47:21
Speaker
And I think that the pluralism of taste that we see on the internet is just allowing young people to be extremely free in the way that they think about their relationship to design and antiques and collecting.
00:47:34
Speaker
And as a result, we're seeing with someone like Camille, the dawn of a slightly more
00:47:42
Speaker
a slightly different taste than the one that's maybe at the heart of the book.
00:47:48
Speaker
And I suspect that volume two of the New Antiquarians will contain
00:47:54
Speaker
other expressions of that beyond Camille's apartment in Brooklyn.
00:47:58
Speaker
And indeed, I've just returned from Europe where I was doing a bit of scouting and I can confirm that there are some really killer collections that even 20-somethings are assembling there that contain antiquities and old master drawings and really, really special material that
00:48:21
Speaker
in many cases is displayed in a way that allows the objects just a great deal of room to breathe and to be seen as objects.
00:48:35
Speaker
So that's exciting to me.
00:48:36
Speaker
And I think Camille's interior, while it's a modestly scaled apartment, gives you a sense of that look.
00:48:44
Speaker
So for listeners or for readers of your book who find these homes inspiring, do you have any advice for how to kickstart their own new antiquarian lives?
Advice for New Collectors
00:48:58
Speaker
Well, knowing the audience of this podcast, Ben, in particular, I would say report to your nearest antiques dealer.
00:49:09
Speaker
And you and I both constantly tell younger people or those who are new to the antiques world, dealers love to talk.
00:49:18
Speaker
Dealers love to tell stories.
00:49:19
Speaker
And occasionally listen.
00:49:22
Speaker
Occasionally, yes.
00:49:23
Speaker
Occasionally listen.
00:49:24
Speaker
And by the way, I have sent younger people to dealers to talk and they have occasionally been rebuffed.
00:49:31
Speaker
And they've come back to me and said, actually, that dealer wasn't very open.
00:49:37
Speaker
And I say, you know, maybe they thought you weren't going to become a client or whatever, but the next one will get it.
00:49:47
Speaker
And so, you know, because the next one will be a shrub soul.
00:49:49
Speaker
The next one will be, exactly.
00:49:51
Speaker
I send those cases directly to you guys, Ben, because I know they'll have a warm reception.
00:49:56
Speaker
No, but in, you know, nine out of 10 cases, when I make those introductions, friendships form, clients are developed, and...
00:50:10
Speaker
I always think that's the best entree into collecting is get to know a dealer and learn about what's possible in terms of developing not only a relationship with objects as a consumer and then as a connoisseur, but understanding that relationships drive an enormous part of what we do, right?
00:50:38
Speaker
that's enormously attractive, I think, to anyone who is looking for
00:50:46
Speaker
something between a hobby and an obsession that you could enter this amazing sort of family where everybody is interested in things and interested in history and telling stories.
00:50:59
Speaker
It's just an amazing privilege to be a part of that world.
00:51:03
Speaker
And I do find that people who are new to this really benefit from having an early exposure to real conversation with a dealer, as opposed to sort of skimming the surface for
00:51:14
Speaker
you know, an extended period of time in online auctions, et cetera.
00:51:18
Speaker
I think it's important to make contact with the human side of the antiques world early.
00:51:25
Speaker
And then you make that contact often, as you and I know.
00:51:29
Speaker
And, you know, then I would say dive in.
00:51:33
Speaker
There is, I have a lot of time for
00:51:39
Speaker
threading about authenticity, date, condition.
00:51:43
Speaker
A lot of our time, Ben, is taken up with concern for those things, conservation issues, and the like.
00:51:53
Speaker
But for a beginner, for a novice collector, those factors don't need to play in the same way in their range of considerations when thinking about antiques.
00:52:09
Speaker
it's fine to buy something that's a little wonky or that has condition issues.
00:52:15
Speaker
And especially if you're buying at a more modest price point,
00:52:22
Speaker
It's just, it's not even a factor.
00:52:25
Speaker
It's about, do you wanna live with the thing?
00:52:27
Speaker
Is it still usable?
00:52:29
Speaker
Is it something you will enjoy living with and looking at and holding in your hand?
00:52:35
Speaker
We care about quality and condition and the like, but for the beginner, I think it's more important to develop a sense of freedom and comfort with objects
00:52:46
Speaker
and to not approach them in a neurotic way or in a cagey way because you're afraid that you're going to make the wrong decision.
00:52:54
Speaker
Set the amount of money that you're comfortable spending, not as an investment, but just for the pleasure of it, for the pleasure of the thing, and take the leap.
00:53:06
Speaker
And as you develop connoisseurship skills and deepen your exposure to the field, you can then join our ranks, Ben, and stay awake at night wondering if you've just made a bad decision at auction.
00:53:22
Speaker
The condition is maybe not what it's been reported to be exactly.
00:53:26
Speaker
And you can start thinking about all of the implications of that.
00:53:30
Speaker
But at first, don't even think about it.
00:53:33
Speaker
Just dive in and start enjoying this sort of new relationship to objects where you realize you can have them in your life.
00:53:42
Speaker
You can surround yourself with them.
00:53:44
Speaker
They can become foils for your own storytelling.
00:53:48
Speaker
They can become sort of
00:53:51
Speaker
you know, instigators of research that you conduct, if that's your interest.
00:53:56
Speaker
And, you know, someone like Camille in the book is a great example of a person who she knows enough about what she's collecting to make an informed decision.
00:54:07
Speaker
when she acquires an object, but I think a huge amount of the pleasure for her is in the ongoing research that she then conducts into the object, right?
00:54:15
Speaker
And when you go over to her house, she not only tells you a story about the objects, but she often tells you, gives you an update on her own research and her own understanding of the material.
00:54:31
Speaker
And I think that's a very...
00:54:33
Speaker
active and interactive way of conceiving of our relationship to things.
00:54:39
Speaker
And that I think can come before the more, you know, neurotic side of connoisseurship.
00:54:47
Speaker
which hopefully is everybody's destination because everybody needs to be as neurotic as you and I are, Ben, about objects, right?
00:54:54
Speaker
Well, if I'm losing sleep, I don't see why somebody else shouldn't be too.
00:54:59
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
00:55:02
Speaker
Well, Michael, thanks so much for joining me.
00:55:04
Speaker
It's been a treat and it's great to have an excuse to bring you back on Curious Objects.
00:55:09
Speaker
I hope you'll move episode two or volume two along quickly so we'll have another chance to get you back here.
00:55:17
Speaker
I'll do it and let's find other reasons to hang out again.
00:55:20
Speaker
It's been too long.
00:55:23
Speaker
And to anyone who's listening who says, I'm not interested in the book, buy it for a young person.
00:55:30
Speaker
Buy it as a gift.
00:55:31
Speaker
It really is to me about having a visual representation of what's possible that we want to share with young people.
00:55:41
Speaker
So yeah.
00:55:43
Speaker
You know, I hope it's inspiring and I really above all hope that it inspires younger people to begin collecting if they haven't already.
00:55:51
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The author is Michael Diaz Griffith.
00:55:53
Speaker
The book is The New Antiquarians at Home with Young Collectors.
00:55:57
Speaker
Thanks for spending your time with us.
00:55:59
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
00:56:06
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:56:10
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit and I'm Ben Miller.