Transcript
Speaker: If you're used to the typical New York chair, this isn't it.
Speaker: These are upholstered with tapestries, and that is very, very different from the upholstery that most people are used to seeing.
Speaker: Hello, and welcome back to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: If you've ever walked around in Lower Manhattan, the name Beekman is probably familiar to you.
Speaker: There's Beekman Street.
Speaker: There's the Beekman Tower, designed by Frank Gehry.
Speaker: There's the Gilded Age Beekman Hotel.
Speaker: The list goes on.
Speaker: And if you're like me, you probably walked down Beekman Street in that grand old historic neighborhood and asked yourself, how do I get to the subway?
Speaker: Okay, well, I can't help you with that.
Speaker: But in today's episode, we are going to take a look at another remnant of the Beekman legacy here in New York, a set of chairs made for James Beekman in the early 19th century.
Speaker: Now, this was a time when New York's famous street grid had just been planned out.
Speaker: The Erie Canal was being dug out and was about to explode the city with commerce from the Midwest.
Speaker: The population was blooming with immigrants, and the city was rapidly overtaking Philadelphia as the largest in America.
Speaker: And in the midst of all this, the city's elite families, the Beekmans among them, were expressing their wealth with increasingly lavish homes, competing with their European counterparts to create refined and impressive living spaces full of the best art, furniture, and silver and porcelain that they could get their hands on.
Speaker: The chairs we're talking about today are a fantastic example of the genre.
Speaker: They're New York-made, but grounded in English style and incorporating upholstery from France.
Speaker: This was James Beekman strutting his stuff.
Speaker: Joining me as always is Michael D.S.
Speaker: Griffith, and we spoke with Frank Levy, co-owner of the 100-year-old firm Bernard and S. Dean Levy here in New York.
Speaker: If you've been listening to Curious Objects for long enough, you'll remember Frank talking with us at the Winter Show back in 2018 about a pair of tables that coincidentally also have Beekman provenance.
Speaker: But this time we got to do a deep dive into the history of the aesthetics and the culture and commerce and industry that these chairs can tell us about.
Speaker: It's a great story, and Frank's a great storyteller.
Speaker: So stick around, and we'll get started right after this.
Speaker: Curious Objects is sponsored by Freeman's.
Speaker: I'd like to bring your attention to America's oldest auction house, Freeman's.
Speaker: Located in Center City, Philadelphia, Freeman's has been telling the story of valued objects and collections since 1805.
Speaker: With international experience and a comprehensive knowledge of market conditions, the specialists at Freeman's work closely with consignors and collectors to offer unparalleled assistance in the sale and purchase of fine art
Speaker: design, decorative arts, jewelry, books, and more.
Speaker: Are you curious about the value of your collection?
Speaker: Freeman's is now welcoming consignments for their November American Furniture Folk and Decorative Arts Auction.
Speaker: For more information about auction valuation, please visit Freeman's online at freemansauction.com.
Speaker: Curious Objects is also sponsored by Reynolda House Museum of American Art, one of the nation's most highly regarded collections of American art on view in the 1917 North Carolina estate of R.J.
Speaker: Reynolds.
Speaker: Don't miss iconic works that shaped a nation when Leyendecker and the Golden Age of American Illustration opens on August 31st.
Speaker: Learn more at ReynoldaHouse.org.
Speaker: Let's go ahead and dive in.
Speaker: Frank, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker: And I just wanted to waste no time and get straight into the chairs, because the object that you've just introduced us to here in your shop is, well, you showed us two chairs out of a much larger set that come from this very city of New York about 200 years ago.
Speaker: and I want you to tell us about them.
Speaker: Can you start for listeners just by telling us what they look like?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: If you're used to the typical New York chair, this isn't it.
Speaker: This is not it.
Speaker: This is not it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's not the classic New York chair.
Speaker: These are upholstered with, I think the first thing that people notice is the upholstery, and they're upholstered with tapestries, French tapestries that would have been imported.
Speaker: In fact, we know that they were imported and then bought at auctions.
Speaker: by the Beekman family, the owners of the chairs, in 1817.
Speaker: And that is very, very different from the upholstery that most people are used to seeing.
Speaker: It's not the big medallion or silk or whatever.
Speaker: So what does it look like, the upholstery?
Speaker: What's depicted on these tapestries?
Speaker: For the most part, they're Aesop's fables.
Speaker: You need to remember your Aesop's fables very closely.
Speaker: There's that, and you almost have to be a little bit imaginative.
Speaker: what those animals actually are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, but there are a sub stables throughout.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, and then the two sofas have, I guess, more pastoral scenes.
Speaker: There's no single scene on the sofas.
Speaker: They don't fit in as well.
Speaker: And these are armchairs.
Speaker: So were they meant for use at a, at a dining table?
Speaker: Probably not.
Speaker: Um, at first the thought was that they were made when the Beekmans, um, bought them, they had just finished building a, an extra room on their house.
Speaker: which was an octagonal room, which seemed to have been the rage in New York in this period of around 1815 to 25.
Speaker: Madame Jumel builds an octagonal room up at the Morris Jumel House.
Speaker: The Beakmans have theirs.
Speaker: The octagon house down in Washington is built around this time.
Speaker: So you have something in the American brain is about the octagon.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Which then makes sense because there's two sofas and 16 chairs.
Speaker: Uh-huh.
Speaker: that works out with, with eight.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You have two chairs in each corner that gets you to the 16.
Speaker: I think because they were armchairs, they were never thought of as dining chairs.
Speaker: Um, I think it would have been too complicated to too much going on with all the armchairs.
Speaker: Um, there's nothing in the notes.
Speaker: There's nothing in the books that the Beekmans tell us what they were for, but,
Speaker: Having the octagonal room built on in this period really implies that the 16 chairs and two sofas make sense for that.
Speaker: So the way you imagine it, these were sitting chairs for leisure, for a group before dinner or after dinner, maybe to congregate?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: And I think also for just visual impact.
Speaker: For visual impact, right.
Speaker: They said something.
Speaker: They're making a statement that we're up to date with the most current taste, the most current
Speaker: forms, but also, you know, the tie-in to France with the French tapestry.
Speaker: Now, here's one problem, which whenever we show these tapestries to French experts, they all say that this is, you know, like the third worst that they've ever seen.
Speaker: Very typical for what would be coming out as an export.
Speaker: Export-quality tapestries.
Speaker: Export-quality tapestries, exactly.
Speaker: Do you think that New Yorkers would have known the difference?
Speaker: Not a chance.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: They probably thought this was as good as what the king and queen had.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, back
Speaker: were the revolution and were most likely sold that this was what the king and queen had.
Speaker: We see so many sets of furniture from France that are here that have this great history of being in Versailles when there is no chance that they were ever near Versailles.
Speaker: It's funny because I think of this period, I mean, we're talking about the 18-teens and 20s in New York.
Speaker: I think of that period as the period when New York was really coming into its own as a cosmopolitan center and
Speaker: when great houses were being constructed in New York, when New Yorkers were becoming rich on the same scale as people in England and France for the first time ever.
Speaker: And they were starting to fund craftsmen who are working at a much higher standard than ever before.
Speaker: You know, we're not talking about colonial American furniture.
Speaker: That's basically something like folk art, you know, where we treasure it for its rarity and for its significance, maybe more than for its elegance.
Speaker: But this period in American decorative arts is becoming much richer, much more sophisticated, much more elevated.
Speaker: And yet third-rate French tapestries are being used here.
Speaker: So, I mean, how do you explain that?
Speaker: Were the Beekmans simply bamboozled or did they not care?
Speaker: I don't think they were bamboozled.
Speaker: I think that this was what you were expected to get and this was what was available.
Speaker: If you don't know that there's something better.
Speaker: And also, I'm not sure that the looms were actually working in this period.
Speaker: These are probably mid, well, not mid, but late 18th century fabrics that came over here.
Speaker: So they were already several decades old.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And they were cut up and placed on chairs as upholstery.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Again, anything that's made for export is almost always a lower quality.
Speaker: So I think they just, they most likely thought these were as good as you could get
Speaker: And in a sense, they were right, because they're as good as you can get here.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It's interesting, though, that you mention the craftsmen, because we know who made these.
Speaker: Which is really unusual for this period.
Speaker: Very unusual, for any period of early American furniture.
Speaker: But we have the bill of sale from, the sets were made in two slightly different times.
Speaker: One is billed in
Speaker: I think June of 1819, the other in January of 1820.
Speaker: And it's eight chairs and one sofa in each of the two sets.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're built from a man named John Banks.
Speaker: So in 1819, Longweir dies, so it's unlikely that they would have used him.
Speaker: But Fife is alive.
Speaker: And Allison is alive.
Speaker: And there are many other capital makers that they could have gone to.
Speaker: And it's very puzzling in a way that the people of the Beekmans
Speaker: of James Beekman stature, the original owner of the chairs would have gone to this guy, John banks.
Speaker: Now we knew of a work table at winter that's stamped by him.
Speaker: Um, there was a clock that came up at Sotheby's a few years ago that was stamped by him.
Speaker: Uh, there are a pair of tables in an upstate, uh, historic house.
Speaker: There are a couple of things that we know that are labeled or stamped by banks, but they're not great things.
Speaker: They're nowhere near the quality of these chairs.
Speaker: why the beacons chose to go to John banks for this.
Speaker: We have no idea.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a really, there's no known family connection or he wasn't somebody's brother-in-law or somebody's there's, yeah, there's no, there's no family connection there.
Speaker: The only mild,
Speaker: connection that there is is that Banks works on Beekman Street.
Speaker: But they all do.
Speaker: There are a lot of cabinet groups on Beekman Street.
Speaker: So you can't just use that as the reason.
Speaker: Can you tell us a little about the Beekmans?
Speaker: You mentioned James Beekman's stature.
Speaker: What was his stature and how did he get it?
Speaker: The Beekmans were among the founding families of New York and among the most important families of New York.
Speaker: And it's not a coincidence that there's still places that
Speaker: Howard, you know, there are a lot of Beekman ties still to New York City and the surrounding areas and up into Albany.
Speaker: I honestly don't know how they all made their money.
Speaker: I think James Beekman did a lot in sort of real estate speculation, owned quite a bit of property and made money through rentals and things.
Speaker: The Beekmans were one of the premier families in New York, and particularly in that period.
Speaker: So the fact that they're
Speaker: is renovating their home would have been a big deal in the period in the home, which unfortunately doesn't stand anymore was around first Avenue and 51st street, 52nd street in that area.
Speaker: Um, parts of it do remain though.
Speaker: So that the Met has Mount Pleasant, which was the name of the house.
Speaker: They have their, uh, their mantelpiece on exhibit.
Speaker: And then that's actually surrounded by some of an earlier Beekman collection of furniture.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: They had, um,
Speaker: So the Beekmans are major players in New York politics, New York social society, and New York mercantile interests.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, it's...
Speaker: Pretty cool, I have to say, to be talking about these chairs that you just showed us in your gallery while we're sitting 30 blocks north of a house which they originally inhabited, and about two blocks or one block from the Metropolitan Museum where other remnants of that house still survive.
Speaker: It's been a couple hundred years, but these pieces haven't moved very far, have they?
Speaker: They haven't, and it's funny that you bring that up because...
Speaker: When we bought the set, the suite, we picked them up and we took them to our warehouse, which was in Queens at the time.
Speaker: And I realized as we were driving them over the 59th Street Bridge, that's the first time these chairs have left Manhattan Island.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Since they were made.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: There's no... Talk about shopping local.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We know the history of where they've been passed down all the way through until they were on loan to the New York Historical Society.
Speaker: And then they...
Speaker: the family decided to sell them in 2000.
Speaker: They had never left Manhattan Island.
Speaker: And then they went out to Queens for a little bit.
Speaker: And it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker: Do you know anything about how they met?
Speaker: I mean, so many of the treasures of early American families have been dispersed many generations ago.
Speaker: And there are precious few artifacts that really managed to come down through all those generations to today.
Speaker: Do you know anything about what made that possible?
Speaker: I mean, how did the Beekmans...
Speaker: Keep track of these.
Speaker: The Beekmans were incredible in their record keeping.
Speaker: So the reason we know who the maker of these chairs is, is because of the Beekman papers at New York Historical.
Speaker: A scholar, a woman named Elizabeth Banks, Elizabeth Bates, John Banks, Elizabeth Bates, did research on these right after we bought them.
Speaker: because of the Beekman name, she figured maybe there's something in the papers.
Speaker: She found all the information about the maker, about the upholsterer, about repairs.
Speaker: They kept records of repairs on these chairs from 1850, from 1890.
Speaker: There's a portrait of a Beekman that features one of these chairs.
Speaker: It's an 1890 portrait.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: And it features one of the chairs that we actually still have.
Speaker: Where is that portrait?
Speaker: It's in a private collection.
Speaker: It actually still belongs to the family.
Speaker: Oh, really?
Speaker: Last time I knew, it was like 61st and 3rd, I think, or Lex.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But it's down at one of the family offices.
Speaker: It's only 10 blocks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It didn't go very far.
Speaker: But they kept these immaculate records.
Speaker: And I think because they were keeping records of their purchases, I think they also kept a lot of the objects that they had bought.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Some of them had found their way out
Speaker: into the marketplace over the years.
Speaker: The sale in 2000 of things coming out of New York Historical included some great, great things, a pair of New York Chippendale card tables, like the one that we talked about a few years ago.
Speaker: And we actually found a record of those as to who made one of them, one of the two tables, which is the maker of both in that case.
Speaker: There were some peer tables.
Speaker: There were a number of really wonderful things that came out.
Speaker: that the family had just kept together.
Speaker: And the Beekman Family Historical Association, the Beekman Family Association, I'll never remember which one it is, has been wonderful in keeping that historic interest alive.
Speaker: That's brilliant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's return to the chairs themselves for a moment because I feel like we have a sense of how they're upholstered, but they're also beautifully and richly carved and they're put together in an interesting way.
Speaker: And the methods of their construction vary a bit from chair to chair.
Speaker: So could you tell us a bit about those details?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So you have two sets.
Speaker: One set is built a little bit sturdier in a sense.
Speaker: It has what's known as a medial rail underneath the seat, which is just a board that goes underneath the seat that you don't see from above.
Speaker: That crest rail is tenanted into place, as you'd expect from a chair of this period.
Speaker: Sorry, just by that, you're referring to the kind of joint that holds the piece together.
Speaker: Yes, the mortise and tenanted joint.
Speaker: It's basically a tongue that fits into it like the hole and then gets either pinned or just glued together and will stay together.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's also the use of dowels in these.
Speaker: I'm actually not sure if you want this for the podcast.
Speaker: Bring it on.
Speaker: We love dowels, Vincurious Objects.
Speaker: We do.
Speaker: And we love dirty secrets and we love all of the details.
Speaker: Okay, so the detail is when the chairs came in, one was a little bit loose and I opened it up at the crest and there's the sign of a dowel.
Speaker: Dowels, prior to 1800,
Speaker: are a bad word.
Speaker: You don't expect to see dowels.
Speaker: You expect that it's either a repair or a later chair.
Speaker: As we found out subsequently, there are mentions of dowels in price books, which are cabinet makers' books of how they price different things.
Speaker: They price dowels at a certain price, round dowels, square dowels, which they actually do say are different from pins and different from mortise and tenon joints.
Speaker: So I spot the dowel,
Speaker: and realize we have to get these things x-rayed.
Speaker: Because there's something going on that's not visible from the surface.
Speaker: Not visible and not normal.
Speaker: Not what I expected to see.
Speaker: So I called a friend, and he called a friend, and we ended up going down somewhere in Maryland to a vet's office.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: They had horses in there and everything else.
Speaker: So we bring him in.
Speaker: We take a bunch of x-rays.
Speaker: Is this the second time that the chairs left Manhattan?
Speaker: This would be the second time the chairs left Manhattan.
Speaker: It was just two chairs went down.
Speaker: So as we're doing it, the vet finally comes in and says, guys, you got to go.
Speaker: And there's a dog waiting to get neutered.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: This is way more interesting than we'd anticipated.
Speaker: Well, I think the dog would have preferred that we continue with a chair.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, everything had to happen as it did.
Speaker: But so the Dow was an issue.
Speaker: And like I said, as it turns out, we found in first in the Washington, D.C.
Speaker: price book of 1818 that they mentioned Dow's.
Speaker: And I figured if it's in Washington, D.C., no offense to people in Washington, New York's going to be more on the forefront of cabinet making in that period.
Speaker: It must be earlier here, too.
Speaker: We found it in Philadelphia in 1814 and I think in New York in 1812.
Speaker: they might have had.
Speaker: So this is really sort of a discovery.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: On the basis of these chairs.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And when we announced this, all of a sudden a lot of museums started to x-ray their furniture and the Met x-rayed a chair with very large scroll arms.
Speaker: The scroll arms are held on with dowels.
Speaker: Wineter has a chair from a similar to it, also doweled.
Speaker: So that people have been looking at this now and we're finding these dowels.
Speaker: Now they're not completely doweled up.
Speaker: It's just in certain sections where they need them, where it's sort of too thin for the wood to hold as a mortise and tenon joint.
Speaker: At the scroll where it's very thin on one set of chairs, that's where they use the DAO.
Speaker: So do you think that style changing forms necessitated the use of a new technical solution?
Speaker: Or did the DAO begin to emerge and people found reasons to use it for efficiency or economy?
Speaker: I think it's probably more economy because it's a cheaper, easier way to put it together.
Speaker: In the case of these chairs, it allowed them to give a little bit more grace to
Speaker: to one set because they could use the thinner wood and more, I guess more scroll is not the right term, but there's more, oh gosh, movement to the back.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a bit more grace in one set.
Speaker: The other set feels a bit more solid.
Speaker: And that's the doweled set.
Speaker: And I think a large part of that is that they don't need the big hunk of wood to keep the thing together.
Speaker: They use the dowels.
Speaker: So I think later on it becomes just much more economical, but in this case, they're using technology to improve the design.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There are stylistic implications that I think we wouldn't expect for there to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is a great example of how looking at an object can open up new windows into history, isn't it?
Speaker: No question with this group.
Speaker: There is so much that we learn from these chairs.
Speaker: You know, like I said, we know the maker, we know the upholsterer.
Speaker: We know that they bought the fabric,
Speaker: the tapestry two years before the chairs were made.
Speaker: They didn't really buy the chairs.
Speaker: The chairs are frames for the tapestry.
Speaker: The fact that they held them for a year and a half before they hired somebody to make the chairs is pretty interesting.
Speaker: They bought the tapestry at auction from a guy named McMenamin, which is hard to say, but we know he was an auctioneer.
Speaker: in New York and auctioning both furniture and other decorative objects coming in from Europe, from Asia, from everywhere.
Speaker: So that's one big part.
Speaker: Obviously the family history is important with this, the use of dowels, how that, that changes things.
Speaker: And we're talking about pretty substantial differences between the two groups.
Speaker: One sofa and eight chairs look a little bit different.
Speaker: I showed you some of the moldings that are different on the arms.
Speaker: The carving is different.
Speaker: The, the,
Speaker: way they've shaped the front rail is different.
Speaker: And then the construction is different.
Speaker: So they are two different sets.
Speaker: When you look through sets that were done and perfectly legitimate, that is the way that they, we know.
Speaker: I mean, for me, looking at them from across the room, I wouldn't have guessed that they were different sets.
Speaker: It was only when you pointed it out and, you know, under closer examination that you start to see those little differences in the details.
Speaker: But for the sake of putting them in an octagon around a room, anyone walking into that room is going to see 16 chairs.
Speaker: And after a few glasses of punch, a cigar, three, you know, one's perceptual abilities.
Speaker: The tables may start to move on you.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: The octagon's spinning.
Speaker: But the question of what is a set, what is a pair comes into play.
Speaker: And we see that in the 18th century when you look through...
Speaker: the Ken Walder set.
Speaker: We know that those were shipped out to different cabinet makers and different carvers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Putting together that set.
Speaker: So the two card tables, which are a pair and made en suite are very different.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If somebody were to just look at them without knowing the outside information, they'd say, these are not a pair.
Speaker: They're just two different tables.
Speaker: They are a pair.
Speaker: They were made for the same person at the same time.
Speaker: By the way, for listeners who are enthusiasts about this, you can refer to the earlier episode in which Frank told us about these card tables.
Speaker: The big card tables, right.
Speaker: At the Winter Show, actually, in 2018.
Speaker: Lots more information there.
Speaker: And this whole question of acquiring or commissioning pairs relates to the way that houses were designed and that rooms were planned, right?
Speaker: And I think we don't always have an appreciation for that now because we're always looking for a kind of one-off special object, right?
Speaker: a sideboard for the dining room.
Speaker: But in the large classically planned rooms of the early 19th century, you might be buying two pier mirrors or two sideboards or two card tables for a drawing room.
Speaker: And I think that's a little difficult to wrap one's head around that kind of planning.
Speaker: It's a different idea of how a room is constructed.
Speaker: When you buy an antique today, you don't expect to be able to match it
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And we kind of like that.
Speaker: The developing taste favors that eclectic view.
Speaker: But that's not the way that our forefathers saw it.
Speaker: They were buying on suite.
Speaker: They were putting together a group.
Speaker: And that was a big deal for them.
Speaker: If you were buying something new today, you wouldn't buy three separate things necessarily.
Speaker: you would try to have something where it's all similar or at least close together.
Speaker: That's what they were doing back then.
Speaker: I mean, this was home decoration.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And symmetry mattered a great deal.
Speaker: Indeed.
Speaker: Could you tell us a bit about the relationship between banks and the upholsterer or upholsterers?
Speaker: I know that William Denny was involved.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So William Denny is the upholsterer of one set.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We know that he built for the upholstery of one set.
Speaker: We don't know who did the second set and we don't know which is the first and the second set.
Speaker: We just know that one of them was done by Denny.
Speaker: As far as I know, there is no relationship except
Speaker: they were fairly close to each other geographically okay they were both on beekman street um and within as best i can tell a quarter of a mile of each other's shops um so it's possible that that uh banks would have suggested denny as an upholsterer it's also possible he was available to do it we just don't
Speaker: We don't know enough about, we really don't know enough about how some of the day-to-day work took place.
Speaker: And we don't know who demanded what.
Speaker: Was this the client saying, I want this guy to carve it, I want this guy to do it, to upholster it?
Speaker: Or if it was just banks and this is my guy to do it?
Speaker: We just don't know.
Speaker: So I wish I had more information on that, but we don't.
Speaker: And there might have been different practices, right, between cabinetmakers in different cities as there is today.
Speaker: I don't know that we know of any cabinetmakers at this time who were also upholsters or who had their own upholsters.
Speaker: I think they were two very different trades at that time.
Speaker: But, yeah, I guess we just don't.
Speaker: Somebody may know.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: I don't know what the...
Speaker: What about with the carving?
Speaker: Because these are very richly ornamented chairs.
Speaker: Without a doubt, banks who ran what we assume is a fairly small shop would have brought in a professional carver to do the carving.
Speaker: So probably not a full-time staff member.
Speaker: Not exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, I mean, Fife at this point would have had carvers on hand in his shop who would have done the work.
Speaker: And he would have had set carvings that you could have applied to the chairs.
Speaker: Um, no, I think he brought in a freelancer to come in and do the work.
Speaker: He didn't have to pay for health insurance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or dental.
Speaker: Um, and is the carving consistent between the two suites?
Speaker: It's not, there are differences.
Speaker: Um, again, you have to look closely, but there are differences in both the carving on the crest rail, the carving on the legs are different.
Speaker: And even the molding on the arm supports and the arms themselves,
Speaker: are there two different molding profiles between the two sets.
Speaker: So, again, it's pretty clear there are two different hands going after the two different sets.
Speaker: Interesting to see because if you put the two chairs together and put the legs together, you really do see the big difference between the two carvers.
Speaker: Sometimes carving can be a little bit confusing to people because they don't get to compare and contrast right next to each other.
Speaker: These are a good example where you see a different hand working the same motif.
Speaker: Let's take a quick break.
Speaker: When we come back, we'll chat with Frank about the long and rich history of his firm and what he's doing to bring his business into the future.
Speaker: First, I want to say thanks for listening and to remind you that, as always, you can see images of our curious objects online at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
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Speaker: I'm at Objective Interest and Michael is at Michael Diaz Griffith.
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Speaker: Those ratings are great for helping new listeners find the show.
Speaker: Thanks again.
Speaker: We'll be right back.
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Speaker: We've been talking about chairs that are about 200 years old.
Speaker: I want to talk to you about something that's about 100 years old, which is to say you're firm.
Speaker: How's that for a segue?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, where we're sitting, you know, we're part of this, you are certainly part of this history of a dealer in furniture with a great pedigree.
Speaker: And I think listeners would be interested to know something about the history of
Speaker: of the firm and what brought it to where it is today and where it's going.
Speaker: Happy to talk about that.
Speaker: So in 2001, we thought that was our 100th anniversary.
Speaker: And we hired a couple of people to do some research into doing a book or some sort of historical something to put out.
Speaker: It turns out all the stories that we had been told,
Speaker: basically from my grandfather about the start of the business were incorrect.
Speaker: The old story was that my great grandfather, this wonderful job as a foreman in a factory and his brother-in-law, John Ginsburg, was this antique dealer who wasn't doing very well, was buying a bunch of stuff and always was borrowing money.
Speaker: And eventually my great grandfather said, that's, that's it.
Speaker: We're partners.
Speaker: He left his great job at the factory, which in retrospect never made a lot of sense.
Speaker: It's a good story.
Speaker: It's a good story.
Speaker: But as it turns out, it may be the opposite, where my great-grandfather was buying a lot of things and then couldn't sell them.
Speaker: And he brought in, he and John Ginsburg got together somehow.
Speaker: I think John had some money.
Speaker: And in possibly as early as 1896 formed Ginsburg in the
Speaker: They started down on the Lower East Side.
Speaker: We have a picture, which I actually should show you guys, of my great-grandfather in front of the shop on Grand Street, which was their first shop.
Speaker: And they actually say on the sign, Skinsburg and Levy Antiques, Brick-a-Brack.
Speaker: I don't think they say jump, but it's clearly a very different… But they used the word Brick-a-Brack.
Speaker: Brick-a-Brack is on the sign.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: It's on the sign.
Speaker: And if you look in the window.
Speaker: That's not on your sign today, is it?
Speaker: We don't have a big sign.
Speaker: If we had room, we'd put rick and rick on it.
Speaker: But in the window, they have this big show window.
Speaker: There's nothing in there that we would sell today.
Speaker: It was just stuff.
Speaker: They moved up to Fourth Avenue at some point and actually bought their first major piece of American furniture, which is a John and Thomas Seymour sideboard.
Speaker: which is currently at the Met.
Speaker: So if you go into the Met, that was the first piece that they bought.
Speaker: They apparently spent nights drawing it so they could have this, you know, at least some record of what they had sold and record of what they had.
Speaker: They sold that to a major collector who ended up donating, the family ended up donating to the museum, but that got them started on to better things.
Speaker: And they started to handle better things and then moved uptown again to 49th Street where they sold to a lot of like Broadway musicians
Speaker: stars and things like that.
Speaker: They were in that neighborhood.
Speaker: They were 57th Street.
Speaker: This is all in the 20s until they finally bought a building at 815 Madison Avenue, where they were from 19, it's either 27 or 28, all the way through until the breakup in 73.
Speaker: And that's where, actually, my grandfather joins the firm and his, I guess, uncle's
Speaker: son, whatever it's, it gets a little convoluted who's who, but, um, where they both joined and we're working together.
Speaker: Ben Ginsburg is also fairly well known.
Speaker: Um, and, and they worked out of the eight 15 Madison for many, many years and that's where, and they were really handling great American things and English things, but, but at a lower level, I mean, sort of English things that looked American.
Speaker: So for people who couldn't afford the great American, they could afford something quite beautiful that was English.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And they were selling to a lot of the great collectors.
Speaker: I mean, they sold to DuPont.
Speaker: They sold to I'm a hog.
Speaker: She was a very special client for my grandfather.
Speaker: They sold to Henry Ford in the 30s, and he's the one who kept them through, got them through the depression.
Speaker: He would spend, we think, anywhere from $200,000 to $250,000 in 1931, $32 with them.
Speaker: That's real money.
Speaker: It was a huge amount of money because things were cheap.
Speaker: at that point, they built up an incredible stack.
Speaker: I mean, we're still the beneficiaries of what they did in the 30s and early 40s.
Speaker: After my grandfather got back from the war, he was obviously much more involved in the business and, like I said, sold to a lot of the top collectors.
Speaker: Another one is George Alfred Kluet, who was a big name in the collecting world but not as famous as, let's say, DuPont or Haag.
Speaker: He had some great things, some really, really great things.
Speaker: And then what happened in 1973?
Speaker: So in 73, my father's in the business and my grandfather together, there was a family quarrel and they split.
Speaker: They left and moved up to the second floor of the Carlisle, which was at that point right across the street from Park Burnett, Sotheby's.
Speaker: And they were there from 73 to 86, well, 87.
Speaker: And then 87, we moved to this building.
Speaker: is 24 East 84th Street and that's right around when I started I was a winter for two years and then during the farm and in 89 I know we were 91 and we've been here ever since but as of May 15th we have sold this building and have bought a property down 17th Street in Chelsea between 7th and 8th Avenue which will hopefully
Speaker: be ready to be moved into in the next six months or so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's very exciting.
Speaker: It was funny, as you were telling us earlier, that the firm has had a longstanding tradition of moving farther and farther uptown.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And now you're going right back down to where you started.
Speaker: We're making a 180 right back down there and heading a little bit west.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's something that I have thought about because it has been this progression uptown.
Speaker: And it's...
Speaker: It's a new neighborhood for us.
Speaker: I think we're new to that neighborhood, although there's quite a bit of, obviously, art galleries down there, a lot of modern furniture galleries, and just in the neighborhood, there's a lot of home furnishing, which, you know, in essence is what we are.
Speaker: I mean, they're artworks and they're historically important, but they're also home furnishings.
Speaker: And if that's one way for somebody to at least catch the bug, get interested in it, because they think it's pretty, that's a perfectly legitimate way to get into it.
Speaker: into early American Dictative Art.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Ben and I are, of course, always talking about our goal of drawing in new audiences.
Speaker: I think this is a really laudable, you know, project of going to a neighborhood where we know there's a new audience for this material and kind of confronting them with it.
Speaker: I mean, this is some of the most
Speaker: amazing material culture that this country has produced.
Speaker: You know, here it is, one block from the Twitter and Google headquarters, I think you said.
Speaker: So it's kind of a grand experiment in seeing how these audiences can be attracted.
Speaker: And if this stuff doesn't attract them, then we really are in trouble.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, at the risk of getting a little bit of insider baseball in here,
Speaker: So, well, I'll just sort of share my experience and ask you whether that is familiar to you and whether it relates to your business also.
Speaker: Because at ShrubSoul, the firm where I work, where we deal in antique silver, what we've found in recent years is that there aren't quite so many people buying sets of four candlesticks to give as wedding gifts anymore.
Speaker: And there aren't so many people trying to complete their flatware services.
Speaker: And so instead of selling a lot of what I say in a completely non-derogatory way, what I call quotidian silver, instead of selling a lot of this sort of everyday silver for home use,
Speaker: we are selling more and more of the sort of the most rare, the most interesting, the most valuable and collectible pieces.
Speaker: And we're selling them to museums and we're selling them to really specialized and educated and often academically inclined buyers.
Speaker: which is fun because it means that we have an excuse to deal with really high quality material, but it also, it doesn't feel like a great trend for the long-term health of the business.
Speaker: And I wonder if, if American furniture is experiencing anything along those lines.
Speaker: I think, yes, but there's one of the nice things about American furniture, I think all,
Speaker: almost all American Decker of Arts, is it's very inclusive in that you can find something from $200 or less all the way on up to millions.
Speaker: There's a lot of different things out there from all periods that people can buy.
Speaker: I think some of the very sort of good but not great things, the nice isn't doing as well right now.
Speaker: Although with prices falling as much as they have, it's opened up a lot more opportunities for people.
Speaker: So you're seeing, I mean, I'm seeing people coming back into the market who were scared off in the 90s, early 2000s, because the prices have gotten so crazy.
Speaker: They've gotten so high.
Speaker: And now they're back to something that's affordable.
Speaker: And, you know, you can actually buy museum quality things, things that are either the made to or like the one at the Met or Connecticut historical, depending on
Speaker: whichever museum you want to talk about, in the $1,000 to $5,000 range.
Speaker: And obviously the higher up you go, the more that opens up.
Speaker: But there are a lot of opportunities for it.
Speaker: And I know people are sort of pounding on that, that this is the time to buy, but it really is.
Speaker: There are opportunities out there.
Speaker: And for most of my career, I remember people just saying, oh, I wish this were the 50s again.
Speaker: I would have bought this, this, and this.
Speaker: And that's what I'm saying.
Speaker: We're in the 50s now.
Speaker: You're back to the point where some things are bringing what they brought back then, the same dollar amount.
Speaker: Some, if you include the inflation changes in dollar value, are significantly less than they were back then.
Speaker: So this is that opportunity that people have to buy low.
Speaker: We're seeing people coming in because of that, I think.
Speaker: I think it's also a reason to come into shops, to go into shops where they survive as they do here.
Speaker: Because I know, based on my experience with antiques fairs, including the Winter Show, which you both exhibit in and which I used to be a director of,
Speaker: that economic pressures have forced dealers to bring that masterpiece level of material to shows, right?
Speaker: Because that is often, you know, you're investing a lot of money in your booth, you're taking a risk on that outing, and so it makes sense to bring
Speaker: you know, the rarest, most exceptional piece that you have on hand or a couple of them.
Speaker: And I know that, you know, you've both been successful in doing that and really showing that face of your business in that elevated venue.
Speaker: But if you want those 1950s deals,
Speaker: I think it's really wise to come into the shop, to get to know a dealer in that territory, you know, and to go down to the basement, so to speak, and sort of find out what's there at the more accessible price range.
Speaker: And I love that you're going to kind of continue that tradition of keeping a shop, but just in a new neighborhood.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that that opportunity continues.
Speaker: It will be an open shop.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what days make the most sense.
Speaker: We used to be open Tuesday through Saturday.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: and found that nobody was coming in on Saturdays, but I'd come in on Tuesday and have a bunch of phone calls for Monday.
Speaker: Where are you?
Speaker: Why can't you come in?
Speaker: I'm actually reconsidering maybe opening up on Saturdays for down there just to give more access for people to come in.
Speaker: But absolutely, I mean, at a show you are limited in space.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there's only, I mean, I guess if I bring 10 pieces of furniture that's, well, maybe 15, that's a lot.
Speaker: You see in this room alone where we're sitting, which you can't see, but you can see.
Speaker: More than I'd have in a booth at any one time.
Speaker: And this is one room of many.
Speaker: So you're absolutely right.
Speaker: Coming into the shops and seeing what's available is worth it.
Speaker: And I think sometimes people feel a little bit intimidated by the shops, which is such a shame because there's very little intimidating here.
Speaker: I mean, it's not like you break it, you buy it.
Speaker: We've never had anything broken, but...
Speaker: It's all fixable if something were to get broken.
Speaker: And it's a good opportunity to come look through, talk to either me or to Melanie or to anyone else who's here.
Speaker: I've done it too.
Speaker: I mean, I collect rocks and minerals, and I know when I go to shows or into other people's shops, I'm always a little concerned.
Speaker: Well, I don't know as much as they do, and I'm going to say something stupid.
Speaker: There's really nothing that you can say that's stupid.
Speaker: If you're showing interest in something that I love and care about,
Speaker: or we all love and care about, that just having the interest means that there's nothing that you can say that's going to be done, that's going to be a problem.
Speaker: So it's an open invitation to come into our shop.
Speaker: I'm sure it's an open invitation for your shop.
Speaker: And you don't have to feel like you have to buy anything because quite frankly, most people don't.
Speaker: So you're in a club that's a big club.
Speaker: And now that admission to the Met isn't free anymore,
Speaker: Admission to our shop still is.
Speaker: It still is.
Speaker: And the material there may end up in the Met someday, right?
Speaker: Come and look at it in a comfortable environment.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: With no entrance fee.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, this has been a pretty good advertisement for ourselves.
Speaker: But it's also fabulous advice.
Speaker: And I think it can be extended to every part of the antiques market.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not just to silver and American furniture.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, thanks so much.
Speaker: That's very well put.
Speaker: And I appreciate you bringing us into your world and sharing these wonderful chairs with us.
Speaker: Anything else that you'd like to add for listeners before we let you go?
Speaker: I'm just glad people are listening.
Speaker: I'm glad people are interested in this world because it is a fascinating world and there's so many aspects to it.
Speaker: There's the aesthetics, there's the history,
Speaker: There's the engineering of the objects, there's the construction.
Speaker: There's so many ways to get excited about these pieces.
Speaker: I know I started, my interest was really in American history and to be surrounded by things that have historical importance or maybe just around when certain things happen.
Speaker: Revolutionary War, War of 1812, whatever it is.
Speaker: That is, it still gets the hairs on the back of my neck when I think about some of the history.
Speaker: I have to say, when you mentioned that, you know, the first time that the chairs had left Manhattan Island, something about that just felt magical to me, you know, because they're so rooted in this place where we're standing, we're sitting right now.
Speaker: I really felt bad.
Speaker: I mean, I couldn't turn around on the 59th Street Bridge, but I felt bad that these were leaving, that these were leaving Manhattan.
Speaker: I guess to me it just sort of emphasizes, it's not that it's bad that they've left, it's just that it really emphasizes the specialness of the object and the connection that they have.
Speaker: You know, sometimes you go into a museum or a shop even, or a private collection, and you see an object and you know academically that it's connected to these old people and old places and times.
Speaker: But something about just the way that you put it, that those chairs had never left before made it feel so immediate to me.
Speaker: And these chairs that we were just looking at a minute ago and touching, you know, there's a continuum through history from our touch back through, back through the whole Beekman family, all the generations of it and its makers and the French tapestry, the weavers and,
Speaker: John Banks hammering away.
Speaker: John Banks hammering away.
Speaker: And we may not have inherited the Beekman fortune, but we can look on those objects today and still benefit from them.
Speaker: I think it's a magical inheritance that we get to benefit from.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Even if we don't, you and I don't get to own them.
Speaker: Not yet.
Speaker: Not yet, but we may come back here and, uh, lay down a check.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: That's the beauty about the antiques market right now is that, uh,
Speaker: All good offers considered.
Speaker: Okay, well, we'll hold you to that.
Speaker: Thank you for sharing all of this history with us and pointing the way to the future.
Speaker: That's a wrap.
Speaker: Thanks so much to Frank Levy for joining us, and thank you for listening.
Speaker: Don't forget to check out pictures at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: Our editor and producer is Sammy Delati.
Speaker: My co-host is Michael D.S.
Speaker: Griffith, and I'm your host, Ben Miller.
