The Magazine Antiques

Discovery | By Cynthia Drayton

Query: Seeking Stretch

July 29, 2010  |  The early Philadelphia clockmaker Peter Stretch (1670–1746) and his two clockmaking sons, Thomas (1697-1765) and William (1701-1748), are the subject of a forthcoming catalogue raisonné to be published by the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Delaware.

Peter Stretch was born in Leek in Staffordshire, England, and apprenticed with his older brother Samuel, a clockmaker who specialized in lantern clocks there. A Quaker, Peter Stretch and his wife and three sons left England for Philadelphia in 1703. He set up his shop on the southwest corner of Second and Chestnut Streets known as “Peter Stretch’s Corner,” where he made and sold clocks and imported wares. He joined the Common Council of Philadelphia in 1708, and nine years later received a commission from the council to work on the town clock.

Stretch produced a wide range of clocks, including thirty-hour and eight-day ones with engraved brass movements, plain dials, and single hands — more elaborate ones with a sweep s…» More

The Market | By Carolin C. Young

Paris prepares for the 25th Biennale des Antiquaires

Fall Preview: Paris prepares for the 25th Biennale des Antiquaires

Preparations for the Biennale des Antiquaires, which will open on September 15 in
Paris’s Grand Palais, are well underway. Although it is the twenty-fifth edition of the Biennale, it is the first under the direction of Hervé Aaron of Didier Aaron, who is the new president of France’s Syndicat National des Antiquaires, which organizes the show. Although the Biennale will feature the same caliber of objects and installations that have made it the most glamorous antiques fair, this year twenty-five “young dealers” have been selected for inclusion in a special section
called the “Tremplin pour la Biennale” (springboard for the Biennale), which will
be located on the balcony.

Although similar to Maastricht’s Showcase initiative, which also added young dealers, the Tremplin is muchless formal, although no less rigorous. Rather than soliciting applications, Aaron asked members of every vetting committee to nominate ca…» More

The Market | By Staff

Talking Antiques

Leigh Wishner
Cora Ginsburg
It was a fateful trip to view antique textiles and costumes at Cora Ginsburg in New York that set me on my current path. I went there one afternoon in 2000 with Michele Majer, a professor of mine at the Bard Graduate Center in New York where I was pursuing a master’s degree in the decorative arts of the ancient world and taking courses in textiles (something I did not even realize you could study when I was an art history major at Barnard). Up until that visit I had assumed I would continue at Bard and eventually become an academic, but when I walked
into the gallery and met the owner Titi Halle, I knew this was where I wanted to be. Among other things, the experience was so different from a museum visit, so much more tactile and intimate. I have been with the firm since 2001 getting the kind of experience that is probably not obtainable in a purely academic environment. I completed my master’s degree in clothing and textile history in 2004 while cont…» More

Discovery | By Katy Kiick

Great Estates: Historic Hampton in Towson, Maryland

June 30, 2010  |  Just outside of Baltimore in Towson, Maryland is the Hampton National Historic Site, part of the National Park Service since 1948, when it was the first site to receive recognition for architectural merit.  Built in a popular Georgian domestic style, the mansion is a series of three main units connected by recessed "hyphens," stretching 175 feet across a large hill.  A thirty-four-foot tall cupola surmounts the central unit, creating a palatial effect that some called "pretentious" during its construction in the late eighteenth century. Today, the mansion is the decorative and architectural centerpiece of the site, but extant farm buildings introduce the servants, slaves, and farmers who ran the estate for its long tenure as a successful farm.  These buildings include everything from an orangerie and greenhouses to stone slave quarters and an icehouse, making Hampton a rare example of an eighteenth and nineteenth century plantation and farm left intact. 

Seven generations of t…» More