From the editor's desk |
Editor's letter, May 2009
May 8, 2009 | I sometimes stop during the day here and look back at early issues of ANTIQUES. Recently I have been dipping into articles from the 1920s when a passion for rescuing our cultural past from the march of progress swept through the country. The opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing in 1924 was only one sign of a new enthusiasm for things American. The beginning of this magazine two years earlier was another. Both the museum and Antiques were for the most part free of the prevailing boosterism that led one enthusiast to declare, "Americana is not a hobby, it is a creed." Still, there was a fascinating consensus back then about what was authentically American in the past and what was not.
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From the editor's desk |
Editor's letter, April 2009
April 8, 2009 | We have a new Web site here at The Magazine ANTIQUES and I am pleased to say that it is, in its webby way, almost as handsome as the print version. I have high hopes for themagazineantiques.com as the beginning of a genuine community for everyone in the field. Do I dare to dream that this new community will be a little more communal and slightly less quarrelsome than a gathering of dealers? I do, I do, but I would not be an editor if controversy were not at least a condiment on my plat du jour. And so, in addition to posting articles from the magazine, we will also welcome comments and opinions that spark some disagreement and debate.
See, for instance, our recent Web symposium on the $28.3 million sale of the early twentieth-century Eileen Gray Dragons chair at Christie's auction of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé's Collection in Paris. The talk for days has been about nothing except that price and how deeply cuckoo it seems. Maybe so, but most (though not all) of the dealers and curators we asked thought $28.3 million was a sign that the decorative arts were finally moving toward financial parity with the fine arts. Whether or not this is a healthy sign I leave to you to say, and I hope you will.
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Pickle Dish, American China Manufactory (Bonnin and Morris), Philadelphia, 1771-72. Soft-paste porcelain with lead glaze; height 4 3/16, width 4 1/2
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