Transcript
Speaker: Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: There's a podcast that I love, and if you're not listening to it already, you should be.
Speaker: It's called Art Slice, and it's this amazing duo talking about art and art history.
Speaker: But it's not like a lecture.
Speaker: It's so fun and spontaneous and irreverent.
Speaker: And at the same time, it's super smart and well-researched.
Speaker: They've done amazing episodes about Duchamp and Klimt and Goya, but they also go off the beaten path.
Speaker: And they've been doing this series lately that I love about colors.
Speaker: So a few weeks ago, Art Slice published an episode all about purple.
Speaker: And I mean, it really is all about purple, from milking mollusks for purple dyes to Byzantine porphyry to the Muppets.
Speaker: And then in case that wasn't enough, and how could it be, they invited yours truly to join in for a bonus episode about purple in my field.
Speaker: And you might be thinking, wait, isn't Ben a silver specialist?
Speaker: What could purple possibly have to do with silver?
Speaker: Well, you're right, but you're also wrong.
Speaker: And to tell you what I mean by that, today we are bringing you this bonus bonus episode of Art Slice crossing over with curious objects.
Speaker: And so without further ado, here are Stephanie and Russell and Art Slice.
Speaker: Listeners, today we will be discussing patinating alloys.
Speaker: with Ben from Curious Objects Podcast.
Speaker: Ben, welcome.
Speaker: Welcome.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Long overdue.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We've been going back and forth.
Speaker: We've had some snowstorms.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Thank you, Ben, for being so patient and rescheduling with us like four times, five times, it seems like.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: Too many.
Speaker: Too many times.
Speaker: Listen, we coexist in this tiny community of art-related podcasts, and I love it, and I will do anything for anyone in this little shared world of ours.
Speaker: It's very small.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: But I'm still discovering new shows like yours, so that was great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay, Ben, can you tell us and the listeners a little bit about what you do every day?
Speaker: Yeah, so I do a lot of things every day.
Speaker: I, as you mentioned, host a podcast called Curious Objects about the stories behind antique objects.
Speaker: It's mostly decorative arts oriented, but we've gone into the flat art world from time to time.
Speaker: Actually, we have an episode coming out about a painting by the Beatles, which I'm super excited about.
Speaker: which has a lot of purple in it.
Speaker: So maybe apropos.
Speaker: Did all the Beatles paint on it or a specific?
Speaker: All four of them.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Okay, we got to see this.
Speaker: Even though I think only two of them went to art school.
Speaker: So the other two were completely unqualified to paint, but they had the audacity to do it anyway.
Speaker: Love that.
Speaker: And then in my non-podcast life, I am a specialist in antique silver.
Speaker: And I work with a gallery called Shrub Soul, which is based here in New York City.
Speaker: It's this 100-plus-year-old family business specializing really in silver and sort of the highest-end old silver.
Speaker: And that's anything from your forks and your spoons and your knives to your candlesticks to your giant candelabra and trophies and stuff.
Speaker: Anything you can imagine that you could possibly make out of silver, we do it.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Silver is my first antiques love, and it's the area that I'm really sort of a connoisseur in.
Speaker: But I love anything old that has a story behind it.
Speaker: I love the way that old things connect us to people and places and ideas that are distant from ourselves.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So what got you into this field of like, I guess it's kind of research, it's also kind of gallery work, it's almost like museum adjacent.
Speaker: What made you choose this pathway?
Speaker: It was a complete and utter accident.
Speaker: I had no idea I wanted to do it until I tripped and stumbled and fell into it.
Speaker: This is not something I studied in school.
Speaker: I wanted to write about antiques and I thought I'd try to get a job in the business just to learn a few things before going off and
Speaker: I wanted to write a series of essays or a book or something about Southern antiques in particular as a lens to look at like, you know, culture and history and transformation of the American South.
Speaker: And what I didn't realize was how hard it was going to be to get a job in a field where I had literally no qualifications or background or experience or connections or anything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, so I spent a lot of time knocking on doors and getting these really strange looks.
Speaker: And then one night I was at a bar and I got to chatting to the guy sitting next to me at the bar and he asked me about my work.
Speaker: And I said, well, I'm trying to get into the antiques business.
Speaker: And he said, well, that's funny.
Speaker: I'm an antiques dealer.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And I said, what?
Speaker: Are you serious?
Speaker: He gave me his card, it was the real deal?
Speaker: We hit it off.
Speaker: He hired me and he turned out to be a specialist in antiques.
Speaker: So he took me under his wing.
Speaker: And, you know, in this in in the antiques world, like if you want to learn about stuff, if you want to be a connoisseur, like you can read every book that's ever been published and get like 5% of the way there.
Speaker: And the other 95% of the way is looking at things like thousands and thousands and thousands of objects.
Speaker: And then even more important than that is talking to other people who have looked at thousands and thousands of objects for decades and who learned from people before them.
Speaker: And before them, it's very much an apprenticeship model.
Speaker: And so, yeah, working for this guy, Tim Martin, was really an incredible way to get my feet wet.
Speaker: And then I found out that it was really a pretty cool line of work with
Speaker: You know, the beauty of the objects and the history, but also the detective work, the sleuthing.
Speaker: Oh, that's cool.
Speaker: The intrigue, the fakes and forgeries and the, you know, swindlers and everybody trying to fool everybody else all the time.
Speaker: But, you know, knowledge is power and it keeps you on your toes.
Speaker: I researched provenance for a, I think it was a 15th century credenza, Italian credenza.
Speaker: And I mean, I'm sure you know, you can just get lost in hours and hours of research just following that one rabbit hole that actually leads to nothing.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: It was super fun.
Speaker: So it was like worth it.
Speaker: So I totally I totally get that research aspect of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What did you what did you find out about the credenza?
Speaker: That it was owned by this family that then sold it to that one.
Speaker: And at a certain point, it just there's nothing there.
Speaker: So then you just have to really write about like what's in front of you, which is, you know, the credenza itself.
Speaker: But yeah, at some point there's just no documentation.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: The trail ran cold.
Speaker: It did, but it was fun.
Speaker: It was worth it.
Speaker: Is another big part of it actually like interacting with the objects I'm under, I think, too, like being able to like physically like touch them, like, you know, is that a part of it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, at least in my field, that's such a huge fraction of it.
Speaker: And it's tough, like, you know, more and more online auctions are just happening online.
Speaker: And so you look at the pictures on the website and you're like, that's pretty or that's not.
Speaker: And then you bid on it.
Speaker: But then you get it in the mail and you're like, oh, shit, there's 12 things wrong with this that I couldn't tell from the pictures.
Speaker: And sometimes it's minor, you know, condition issues that don't make such a difference.
Speaker: But other times it's, you know, you discover that the whole damn thing is a fake or that there's some like major like illicit restoration or repair.
Speaker: that totally craters the value of the object.
Speaker: Either you need to see it in person or you need to be willing to just take a huge risk and live with the consequences.
Speaker: Yeah, there's not some sort of... You got to get their home address and track them down.
Speaker: They sell you a border.
Speaker: Yeah, I shouldn't say too much about that.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Let's just say we've got Marco and Guido on speed dials.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: You've got connections.
Speaker: I think, I don't know about your experience in the museum, but I guess since our experience is so much in the museum, most of all of the objects that we would interact with, we actually don't get to interact with, right?
Speaker: They're behind glass.
Speaker: You have to walk around them.
Speaker: You get to observe them from certain vantage points.
Speaker: but I mean, I don't know.
Speaker: Like they're not, they are like in some ways like very accessible in the way that like you can tell that this was used for something, but since it's so old or antiquated or just like an old way of like,
Speaker: I don't know, eating or help me out here.
Speaker: No, you're good.
Speaker: So like what we would call, well, what is referred to as decorative objects.
Speaker: So not paintings, not necessarily like your fine sculptures, right?
Speaker: Like, I don't know, a tea set, a sterling silver tea set.
Speaker: But it's behind glass and like, and there's only so much you can see.
Speaker: Like, is it well lit and where is it positioned?
Speaker: Can you walk around it?
Speaker: Like 360, like it, we are very, it's not very accessible.
Speaker: I think you already said that.
Speaker: Yeah, like it is and it isn't.
Speaker: Like in the sense that it's in a public collection so you can see it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's accessible.
Speaker: But in the sense of like, can it ever again be used for the purpose for which it was made?
Speaker: The answer is probably not.
Speaker: And I have to be a little, I have to tread a little carefully here because I love museums, obviously.
Speaker: And like museums are some of our best clients.
Speaker: And, you know, the curators at these institutions do incredible work all the time.
Speaker: And I love, I mean, I work a block from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Speaker: I go there over my lunch break, you know, most days.
Speaker: I've been there hundreds of times.
Speaker: It's like my favorite place in the world.
Speaker: That being said, of their collection, which is about, I think it's 2.4 million objects.
Speaker: like a tiny fraction of 1% of those pieces are on display.
Speaker: And of that, you know, there's another tiny fraction that might someday be on display or that might be part of a, you know, a traveling exhibition.
Speaker: And then there's another small portion that might be used by scholars for some purpose or that might have like connoisseurial value.
Speaker: And then there's the rest of it, which is kind of sitting around and collecting dust.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: You can end up in some pretty fiery arguments about like, what are these objects doing there and should they be there or not?
Speaker: But the one thing that just kills me, and this is not just museum collections, this is a lot of private collectors too, is like, imagine Notre Dame, right?
Speaker: Great, great cathedral.
Speaker: Everybody who goes to Paris walks into Notre Dame and they have this amazing experience.
Speaker: But Notre Dame is like an incredibly important historical monument.
Speaker: And of course, having people trudging in and out of it all day long, like subjects it to risks and, you know, it caught fire, right?
Speaker: I mean, that's not related to tourists necessarily, but it's like, it is risky to have a building like that
Speaker: in use.
Speaker: And yet, if you were to close Notre Dame to worshippers, you know, because it's too important to subject it to that kind of risk, like you would be taking the soul out of it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I feel the same way about a lot of these decorative arts objects.
Speaker: There are some that are like too precious and delicate and valuable and you shouldn't, you know, you should be very ginger and careful in how you handle them.
Speaker: For the most part, you know, like these things were made to be used.
Speaker: And if you're not using them, they're losing something really important about what they are.
Speaker: Don't be afraid of antiques.
Speaker: Like don't, don't put gloves on.
Speaker: Don't literally or figuratively like put it in your kitchen cabinet, take it out, you know, make your tea in your antique silver teapot and, you know, pour it into your antique China tea cups and drink it and enjoy it.
Speaker: get all the pleasure and satisfaction out of those objects that their makers instilled into them.
Speaker: So in some ways, like they're almost more accessible in some ways than actual like quote unquote art objects.
Speaker: Yeah, like I don't think there's really like a huge difference in that, like because they are meant to be used, which I think we've talked many times about like art versus craft and how, you know, really there's quite a bit of overlap there.
Speaker: So, yeah, I really like what you're saying.
Speaker: Do you feel like there is a difference between looking at some sort of antique and some sort of work of art?
Speaker: Is there any difference for you at all?
Speaker: That's such a... It's a very loaded question.
Speaker: Difficult question.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, excellent question.
Speaker: That's a brilliant question.
Speaker: No, it isn't like...
Speaker: It's interesting to think about because it immediately forces you to ask, what is this stuff for?
Speaker: What is a painting for?
Speaker: What is a coffee pot for?
Speaker: What is a pair of shoes for?
Speaker: And these things, these objects and works of art, they fulfill many different purposes all at the same time.
Speaker: And it's easy to say, well, this is an aesthetic object and this is a functional object, but that's almost never fully true.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, even when you talk about something that seems as clear as a painting, this is a work of art.
Speaker: It's an aesthetic object.
Speaker: It's meant to be put on the wall and like looked at.
Speaker: Well, yeah, but also like tons of paintings are there just to like
Speaker: add color to a room.
Speaker: They're there to provide a pleasant distraction for your peripheral vision.
Speaker: It's not necessarily always fulfilling the function of being some platonic ideal of a work of art.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I think the spectrum is very, very fuzzy.
Speaker: Every object that we use in our lives on a daily basis has an aesthetic component.
Speaker: I think
Speaker: paying a little more attention to that is
Speaker: it can be really gratifying and can like increase our quality of life tremendously.
Speaker: And I realize I'm completely preaching to the choir here, but it's something that's often lost in culture and that the sort of distinction between art and craft is designed to like smother.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: That's a good word.
Speaker: I really like how you describe that too.
Speaker: Like art does have a function.
Speaker: It's something that we are very aware of, but I think it's almost like you can't say that.
Speaker: devalues it or something like that.
Speaker: Every holiday shopper's got a list, but Ross shoppers, you've got a mission.
Speaker: Like a gift run that turns into a disco snow globe, throw pillows, and PJs for the whole family.
Speaker: Dog included.
Speaker: At Ross, holiday magic isn't about spending more, it's about giving more for less.
Speaker: Ross, work your magic.
Speaker: I, so you, you know, we've been talking about purple, and I was thinking, gosh, like, you know, I know some
Speaker: objects some antique objects that have purple in them you know they pop up here and there we talked about porphyry which i know you you got into briefly episode which is awesome but then i was thinking like i'm a silver dealer and silver although it's not purple generally speaking unless something has gone terribly wrong um there is actually a
Speaker: pretty strong purple connection.
Speaker: And it takes the form of what we refer to as mixed metals work.
Speaker: So these are like works of decorative arts that are made not just with silver, but with other metals, you know, in different types of alloys.
Speaker: It's an idea that goes back a long, long time, but it really starts to flourish in the 19th century, particularly the Japanese have a really strong tradition.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: of working in mixed metals.
Speaker: So taking silver, but also iron and copper and, you know, all different combinations of these elements, you know, bronzes and brasses and whatever else and gold and putting them all together.
Speaker: into an object that can then be this wild, like multicolored, multilayered thing.
Speaker: And in the 1870s, this idea, this like mixed metals style comes over to America, thanks to Tiffany and company, which, you know, we know as the like return to Tiffany blue box, etc.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But like back in the 19th century, Tiffany was for a period of time, in my opinion, the greatest silver manufacturer in the world.
Speaker: They made unbelievable objects in an incredibly creative and imaginative way.
Speaker: And a big reason that they were able to do that and like take their place on the world stage as like a leading producer of decorative arts is because they were drawing inspiration from these international sources, particularly from Japan.
Speaker: It was their design director, Edward C. Moore.
Speaker: And he started to put together a collection of just, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of objects that were
Speaker: from Japan, also from Korea, from China, from elsewhere across the East, and then eventually from the Middle East as well, you know, and Persia and the Mughal Empire and India, etc.
Speaker: So, he was totally fixated on this.
Speaker: But it wasn't just, you know, idle collecting.
Speaker: It was really purpose-driven collecting.
Speaker: Because he used this collection, he actually put these objects in the design workshop at Tiffany.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: in downtown New York City.
Speaker: And all of the Tiffany designers were like interacting with these objects, looking at them, studying them, learning about their aesthetics and their form and design, but also about the techniques, the metalworking techniques that the Japanese had used to make these really wonderful works of metal.
Speaker: And then copying them, really just like blatantly copying them, staking them.
Speaker: It's crazy because, you know, Japan was totally closed until 1853.
Speaker: They were intentionally isolated and they had a wonderful decorative arts tradition that barely seeped across their borders at all.
Speaker: And then suddenly, there's this incredible explosion and like Christopher Dresser goes over there and his first stop on his way back, he goes to New York and gives a bunch of stuff to Edward Seymour that he bought in Japan.
Speaker: And it leads then to the silver workshop at Tiffany becoming this incredible confluence of ideas and styles.
Speaker: So yeah, that's sort of the context.
Speaker: You might wonder like, so what does this have to do with purple?
Speaker: Because even copper is not really purple, right?
Speaker: It's like red or orange.
Speaker: But they got really creative and they started using all of these chemical processes to patinate, artificially patinate
Speaker: metals that they were working with to create a huge range of colors.
Speaker: And so, there are actually pieces from this period from the 1870s and 80s by Tiffany that they have large quantities of copper alloy, but then they've been, I guess, patinated is the word that we generally use, but it's like artificially colored in ways that
Speaker: create this wonderful range of technicolor hues that they look like they have depth when you look at the object.
Speaker: It's like your eyes are kind of seeping into the surface and seeing all these layers of material and color.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: A small number of them are this brilliant...
Speaker: deep, rich purple color that is just really magical.
Speaker: That sounds amazing.
Speaker: I'd love to see one of these in person.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Well, you can.
Speaker: You can at our shop or at the Met or at, I think the St.
Speaker: Louis Museum has one or two.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So maybe Kansas City.
Speaker: That's not too far from us.
Speaker: We'll have to seek it out.
Speaker: We were obsessed with this chocolate pot, this chocolate pot from Tiffany & Co, right?
Speaker: We want to describe it a little bit for our listeners and-
Speaker: We're going to take a stab at it.
Speaker: And if you feel like you need to step in, please feel free to.
Speaker: Yeah, feel free to correct us.
Speaker: The chocolate pot is made of silver, patinated copper.
Speaker: It's got gold and ivory as well.
Speaker: This sort of mixed media of metals was very surprising to us.
Speaker: And we had to zoom in really close because obviously we don't have it.
Speaker: In front of us, but when I looked at it, I was like, is this the is this the right caption like chocolate pot?
Speaker: I don't I don't think hot when I first look at this I think more of like a kettle definitely You're gonna have to explain to us what a chocolate pot is here in a second.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes
Speaker: It's got a metal body.
Speaker: It's got a silver handle, a silver spout, and it's also got some like silver patterning around the top half.
Speaker: And then the non-silver metal part is very purpley, which is what you described, Ben.
Speaker: That must be the copper.
Speaker: Yeah, the copper, the purple copper.
Speaker: Gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker: It's like it's a nebulous color, but it's also this really beautiful, like almost a dusty grape color from from the photograph.
Speaker: Like I said, we haven't seen it in person.
Speaker: It's kind of like an honest grape.
Speaker: Like what?
Speaker: Not like a modern factory farmed grape, like a real grape.
Speaker: A rustic grape.
Speaker: A grape that has seeds in it, still has the seeds in it.
Speaker: And then like the.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: The silver spout, like, it almost has, like, the texture of... The closest thing I could describe it as is, like, cabbage leaves, I guess.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And there's like an emblem with like three more of those leaves and then like almost like a fronded, three more fronded leaves on top of that.
Speaker: And then behind that emblem is like this geometric, it reminds me of like boutique patterning, like something that... Boutique?
Speaker: Boutique?
Speaker: Boutique?
Speaker: Like Japanese boutique?
Speaker: What am I saying?
Speaker: Boutique?
Speaker: Boutique.
Speaker: Boutique.
Speaker: And it looks like a pattern that like a mid-century modern like couch might have on it or something like that wallpaper.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Definitely love that.
Speaker: But also for me, last but not least, we have to talk about the silver lobster and the ivory handle on top.
Speaker: Those are just kind of like the cherries on top, so to speak.
Speaker: Lobster on top, yeah.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: This sounds wild, but it all works.
Speaker: It doesn't seem like it should go together, but it definitely does.
Speaker: And I have questions about the lobster.
Speaker: Can I just say, does it sound, based on the description you've just given, I wonder if listeners think that it sounds like a coherent object, or if it sounds like...
Speaker: Or also if it sounds like something that was made in the 19th century, like doesn't it sound like wildly postmodern?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Yes, it does.
Speaker: And I would, if you're not looking at the image, listeners, would love to see just like a drawing of what you think it looks like.
Speaker: I'm not sure we did a good job of describing it.
Speaker: No, we did our best.
Speaker: So don't look, don't cheat.
Speaker: We just want to see it.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I mean, it's an amazing object.
Speaker: It's so this is from this period of like Tiffany's greatest work.
Speaker: It takes 1879.
Speaker: At this point, like the connection to Japan is very tenuous.
Speaker: It's kind of like.
Speaker: You know, we started with something and now we've gone through a few different iterations and now we've got something totally different.
Speaker: But there's still some Japanese elements like the lobster you mentioned.
Speaker: Oh, OK.
Speaker: You know, the idea of like applying a decorative animal to the surface of your vessel is really Japanese.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, I guess it is.
Speaker: You can find...
Speaker: bugs, not on this piece, but on a lot of other pieces of this period.
Speaker: You find insects, dragonflies and butterflies.
Speaker: You can find lizards and geckos.
Speaker: And it leads directly into what we think of as art nouveau and the idea of incorporating decaying nature into art.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: which is thought of as being like a very French innovation.
Speaker: And it kind of is, but it really filters into France through these works by Tiffany.
Speaker: So just like giving silver, the history of silver, its proper place in the canon of art history.
Speaker: So it's a chocolate pot, which means it's meant for serving hot chocolate, which is awesome.
Speaker: And I don't have a chocolate pot and I really...
Speaker: could use one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Especially in the middle of winter.
Speaker: But what that means is a couple of things.
Speaker: So first of all, it has to have insulators on the handle.
Speaker: Because if you just made a chocolate pot out of silver or copper or whatever metal and made the handle out of the same metal and it was all connected together like normal, that handle is going to heat up super hot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As soon as you pour the hot wood into it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so they had to put in insulators.
Speaker: So a little piece of material that would stop the heat from transferring from the body into the handle.
Speaker: And in this case, it's ivory.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: That explains a little ivory.
Speaker: There's two little ivory facets kind of connecting the handle.
Speaker: On the silver handle.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: And then the same thing you mentioned, the ivory handle on top of the cover.
Speaker: And so the cover is attached to the body with a hinge.
Speaker: But then if you wanted to lift the cover again, you'd want something that wasn't burning hot to do that with.
Speaker: So you've got an unnecessarily big ivory handle on top.
Speaker: Kind of stuck there.
Speaker: But it looks pretty cool.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like a joystick almost.
Speaker: Old school joystick.
Speaker: Yeah, that's one way to avoid calling it phallic.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's...
Speaker: The whole thing, again, it's kind of funky.
Speaker: I want to say something really quickly about the history of serving chocolate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because there are chocolate pots made out of silver going back to the 17th century.
Speaker: I think the earliest English silver chocolate pot is 1670, give or take.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Back then, it was this wildly exotic commodity that nobody really knew what to do with.
Speaker: Or like, what should the cultural norms around it be?
Speaker: The hot chocolate or the pots?
Speaker: Well, both.
Speaker: So like the chocolate comes to Europe and then they're like, how are we going to drink this?
Speaker: Like, what do we do with it?
Speaker: What kind of pot do we use?
Speaker: Like they had coffee pots, but again, coffee was still pretty new.
Speaker: And so it was this like wild west of like serving ware.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you have to picture it's all the aristocracy because these are the people who can afford to import the chocolate and the cocoa and so on.
Speaker: And so the richest people in Europe are all trying to figure out like, what shape of vessel should this amazingly expensive thing come out of?
Speaker: First world problems.
Speaker: Like they experiment around a bit and in the end, it ends up looking a lot like a coffee pot.
Speaker: But there's another wrinkle to this, which...
Speaker: has led to some pretty comical experiences for me.
Speaker: Because there's... The thing about serving hot chocolate is like today we have emulsifiers and you can just heat it up and serve it.
Speaker: But back then, they had to whip the chocolate up right before pouring it.
Speaker: Otherwise, it would have congealed and you'd get all the oils on the top and it would be this gross, slimy mess.
Speaker: And so what that meant was...
Speaker: You could prepare the chocolate in the kitchen, but you'd still have like out of sight of your fancy guests, but it would still have to be whipped up right there at the table where it's being served.
Speaker: And so they had these implements, these like, they are kind of like whisks that were called in England, they call them molinettes.
Speaker: And they are meant to be set into the chocolate pot and then kind of like whipped between your hands and
Speaker: spun between your hands to like whip up the chocolate into this frothy, delicious thing and then served.
Speaker: And because this was all being done in public, the best molinettes were made out of silver.
Speaker: They weren't made out of, you know, back in the kitchen, you'd have implements made out of wood or copper or whatever.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: We have a wooden one.
Speaker: We have the Mexican.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah, they do.
Speaker: They still use them a lot in Mexico and also in India.
Speaker: And they're usually wooden.
Speaker: But, you know, if you were having a fancy aristocratic party at your aristocratic house in the English countryside in 1740, you needed a silver mall.
Speaker: You got to be silver, yeah.
Speaker: And so you got a silver mall in it.
Speaker: So these quickly become obsolete as like the customs change and emulsifiers are added.
Speaker: And so almost all of these Molinets were melted down.
Speaker: There are still a few that survive for whatever reason.
Speaker: And it's really cool to come across one because it's like, why wasn't this melted?
Speaker: It's like valuable silver that could have been made into coins or something like you could actually use for something.
Speaker: But instead...
Speaker: they kept it around and they were like, oh, this is whatever.
Speaker: This is cool.
Speaker: Like, we'll keep it.
Speaker: But because they're so rare, people don't know what they are.
Speaker: And so I've even seen an auction house in England, a major auction house, like a prestigious auction house that had one of these and one of their sales.
Speaker: But they cataloged it as a mace.
Speaker: Oh, like the weapon.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: And the way this one was made, it looked a little bit like a mace, like kind of ceremonial.
Speaker: But they were like, here's a weird-ass silver mace from 1730.
Speaker: You're going to war with chocolate.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And that's what they sold it as.
Speaker: And we bought it.
Speaker: Our gallery bought it.
Speaker: And we were like, we actually know what this is.
Speaker: And it's pretty cool.
Speaker: And there's this whole history behind it.
Speaker: In my opinion, I would rather make chocolate than war.
Speaker: So I think that's a good trade-off for everybody.
Speaker: Now, with the lobster, do they, this is a stupid question, do they eat, was lobster typically served with hot chocolate?
Speaker: Why lobster?
Speaker: I'll be honest with you.
Speaker: I am totally mystified by that.
Speaker: You know, like, no, I don't think chocolate and lobster were a regular combination.
Speaker: If they were, I would rather not know about that.
Speaker: I mean, we do like chocolate pretzels.
Speaker: Bananas.
Speaker: Frozen bananas.
Speaker: Yeah, chocolate frozen bananas.
Speaker: We do savory chocolate, right?
Speaker: I feel like there's a lot of savory.
Speaker: I've had chocolate covered some sort of worm.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It wasn't bad.
Speaker: Was it crunchy?
Speaker: Slightly.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Also kind of gooey.
Speaker: Did the chocolate... Oh.
Speaker: No, it's fine.
Speaker: Like so many countries eat it and it was totally fine.
Speaker: It's just like as a Westerner, you know.
Speaker: I think I would rather just eat a plain worm and then a piece of chocolate.
Speaker: Well, I've had that too.
Speaker: I will say the chocolate covered kind is a little better.
Speaker: In my humble opinion, yeah.
Speaker: Well, maybe Tiffany should have been putting worms on this chocolate pot instead of lobsters.
Speaker: No, I think somebody got excited about making some lobsters and they thought it looked cool.
Speaker: So they stuck it on.
Speaker: It does look awesome.
Speaker: But you're right.
Speaker: None of this seems like it should go together.
Speaker: But it's a beautiful, beautiful piece.
Speaker: And you were talking about that process of turning the copper purple.
Speaker: How did that happen exactly?
Speaker: Do you know, like, what did they use?
Speaker: Because you did send some videos over for us to just go back.
Speaker: Which were awesome to watch the whole process.
Speaker: We know some information about the process and other things we don't know.
Speaker: And, you know, it was, of course, it was a huge trade secret for Tiffany and company.
Speaker: But there are some really dogged researchers, particularly a curator at the Met named Medill Harvey.
Speaker: And she's done some amazing work looking back through the Tiffany archives and trying to deduce both like from the notes that they took, but also from the objects themselves.
Speaker: Like what were the processes?
Speaker: What were they trying to achieve?
Speaker: And what did they achieve?
Speaker: And one thing that makes it really tricky is like,
Speaker: the color changes over time.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Like these are really delicate processes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And over a hundred, 150 years,
Speaker: you know, the patination can change pretty dramatically.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: So like as a dealer, it's a huge thing to look out for when you're buying an object from this period that it's got good color.
Speaker: Like that makes a big difference to the commercial value of the object.
Speaker: This chocolate pot has really amazing, it's like one of the best preserved examples of this particular kind of patina that Tiffany was trying to manufacture.
Speaker: But if you look at a lot of pieces, like
Speaker: you'll see it's totally washed out or it's like pockmarked or it's turned like yellow, orangish or it's just splotchy across the surface.
Speaker: And, you know, I can't blame the object for that.
Speaker: Like it's, you know, it's lived a good life.
Speaker: And who doesn't show the signs of age?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But in the very best examples like that chocolate pot, you can really see what they were trying to do.
Speaker: And that makes it a lot easier than to figure out like what was actually going on in the workshop.
Speaker: And so Medill and some of the Tiffany archivists like Moira Gallagher and some silversmiths like Ubaldo Vitale have really worked hard to try to figure out like
Speaker: what was actually done, what was actually made, what did this process actually look like.
Speaker: And yeah, I mean, it's super intricate, super complex.
Speaker: And, you know, it involves all kinds of chemicals, the names of which would frighten your listeners.
Speaker: You know, copper sulfates and ammonium chloride, you know,
Speaker: It's the kind of stuff that you probably don't have in your kitchen, I hope.
Speaker: Hope not, right?
Speaker: The video you sent us, it looked like alchemy.
Speaker: Oh my gosh, it did.
Speaker: Like a wizard working in there.
Speaker: That giant copper pot and then just watching the colors change.
Speaker: It was amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I mean, it literally is alchemy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there are other things like, you know, we bought not too long ago this coffee pot that was made in 1893 by Tiffany.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's a beautiful coffee pot in what they call the Saracen style.
Speaker: So it's very Middle Eastern inspired.
Speaker: And it's got this incredible enamel work that's very pale and delicate and light.
Speaker: And it gives the whole thing this very Islamic kind of look.
Speaker: But it's, I don't know, it's really intricately chased and embossed.
Speaker: And it's just a kind of a breathtaking piece.
Speaker: But when we bought it, it was polished up.
Speaker: The body of it was all polished up.
Speaker: to a mirror shine, like the way you think about silver.
Speaker: And so, we just assumed that's what it's supposed to look like, but it always looked a little bit pale, a little bit washed out.
Speaker: And then we came across this article from 1893 when this piece was shown in Chicago at the Columbian Exposition.
Speaker: And the person who wrote this article was writing about all the Tiffany silver at the Columbian Exposition.
Speaker: And they said, you know, they admired the
Speaker: patinated dark gunmetal color of the silver.
Speaker: And we realized that this silver, this coffee pot was not meant to be a mirror polished silver.
Speaker: It was meant to be a sort of tarnished dark gray color, which is what happens when you don't take care of your silver, right?
Speaker: Like it tarnishes.
Speaker: But in this case, it was intentional and that was supposed to create this great color contrast and
Speaker: with the pale hues of the enamels.
Speaker: And so we actually artificially tarnished it.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Which you can do using like sulfuric compounds, which smell like absolute garbage.
Speaker: We have a river that smells like that.
Speaker: Yeah, no, but it just had this magical effect.
Speaker: Like snap your fingers and suddenly this piece looks the way it was meant to look.
Speaker: And it just sang.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: You'll have to send us a photograph of that.
Speaker: We'd love to see it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're texture heads here, I guess, like artist texture heads.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: We're very pro texture.
Speaker: Pro patina.
Speaker: So so you were able to restore that coffee pot.
Speaker: But can you restore patina?
Speaker: Like if this if someone were to find this coffee, coffee pot, chocolate pot like 100 years from now and it does not look like it does now, would they be able to to restore the patina?
Speaker: And how close could you get it to looking that purple?
Speaker: Not at all.
Speaker: I know we're talking about copper, but with all kinds of metals, patina is super subtle and super important.
Speaker: The worst thing that you can do to a beautiful piece of antique silver is to over polish it.
Speaker: And I've seen it happen so many times that you've got this object and somebody just goes at it.
Speaker: with elbow grease.
Speaker: And they like, they want it to look like a mirror and they get what they want.
Speaker: It looks like a mirror and it looks like it was made yesterday.
Speaker: And it's like all, it feels like the whole history of it has kind of been erased.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: naturally over time.
Speaker: And in the course of daily use, these objects will pick up little imperfections, quote unquote, that are like, you know, tiny little pockmarks in the surface.
Speaker: They're not sometimes not even visible to the naked eye, but they affect the way that light reflects and reflects off of it.
Speaker: And so over time, these accumulate and they can transform the color of the object into something that is just magical, that is like
Speaker: dark and rich and deep and complex.
Speaker: And all of that can be ruined in an incredibly short amount of time by somebody who's like overzealous with a Brillo pad.
Speaker: So with the copper, it's the same, but even worse because it's so much more delicate and sensitive.
Speaker: You know, it's just incredibly rare to find a piece with a color like this one, like this chocolate pot.
Speaker: That's, again, like the day it came out of the workshop.
Speaker: That's like a one in a thousand kind of effect.
Speaker: I said dusty grape, but I'm sick into it.
Speaker: But it's also like, it's like the most beautiful dusty grape.
Speaker: Yeah, I appreciate it like a thousand times more now knowing what I know, what I've just learned about silver.
Speaker: So thank you for that.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's fantastic.
Speaker: We need to have you come along with us on a journey to a museum so you can explain a lot of the objects we look at and just are mesmerized by.
Speaker: Yeah, sometimes the plaques don't tell you enough.
Speaker: I have so many questions.
Speaker: Yeah, it's impossible.
Speaker: It's like, you know, you could write a book about an object like this.
Speaker: The good news is that it's not just museums.
Speaker: There are dealers and galleries that have pieces like this.
Speaker: I mean, it's pretty rare to have a piece like this, but it does happen.
Speaker: And in our shop, you can just ring the doorbell and
Speaker: come on in.
Speaker: And we've got like an incredible array of hundreds of objects from all different periods and styles.
Speaker: And we're there to just hang out and to answer questions about it and show you things that you haven't seen before.
Speaker: And you can pick it up and hold it.
Speaker: And hell, you know, if you're thirsty, I'll pour you a glass of water in a 16th century beaker.
Speaker: You're going to take a mace and make us some chocolate, hot chocolate.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Personalized experience.
Speaker: I really appreciate that.
Speaker: Well, Ben, thank you.
Speaker: This was a journey.
Speaker: We really enjoyed it.
Speaker: Tell us more about your podcast.
Speaker: Where would you have our listeners start if there was one episode you would like them to check out first?
Speaker: So again, the podcast is all about storytelling.
Speaker: So each episode focuses on a particular object and all of the
Speaker: wild and unpredictable and often beautiful and surprising stories that revolve around these things and what they can tell us about where they came from and what they've experienced and who's interacted with them.
Speaker: I think the work that I'm proudest of is actually a three-part series that we did called The Story of Belizear.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And it was about a painting.
Speaker: which is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but which connects us to this incredibly challenging and intricate and troubling history set in New Orleans.
Speaker: And it reveals so much about society, not just when it was painted in the 1830s, but in
Speaker: decade by decade ever since you know the the experiences that this painting has had the trials that it's been through and how it ended up where it did it sends chills up my spine so look that one up and yeah like it you know keep listening i haven't gotten to that one yet i started at the most recent and kept going but we will definitely jump to that one that's exciting yeah it's worth skipping too all right all right
Speaker: But the other thing is, I would just say for listeners, we've covered so many different types of objects, so many different periods from ancient Egypt and ancient Rome to even contemporary works and everything in between.
Speaker: So if there's some period of history that you're interested in or some type of object that you're curious about, look it up.
Speaker: There's a pretty decent chance we've done an episode about something kind of like that.
Speaker: Yeah, my hope is for it to be like fun and educational and eventually inspire people to look at objects that they might not have encountered otherwise and like think about them in a new way.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Looking, thinking.
Speaker: We love that.
Speaker: Looking, thinking, making.
Speaker: Sounds like a new Daft Punk song.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It's got to put the vocal effects on there.
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