The Magazine Antiques

Current & Coming | By Barrymore Laurence Scherer

Japanese bamboo art: A living tradition

May 8, 2013  |  Basket weaving is one of the most ancient of all decorative crafts. It is thought that the idea to create vessels by interweaving twigs was conceived around the same time as the idea to chip shards of flint into arrowheads. Fragments of Neolithic-age pottery reveal that long before the invention of the wheel, potters molded clay around woven basket forms, while remnants of other Stone Age pottery bear surface decoration imitating basketwork. Though fired pottery is more durable than baskets, thanks to the arid climate of ancient Egypt many of the world's oldest baskets and basket fragments have been unearthed there, dating some three thousand years before Christ. Indeed, wherever there were twigs, reeds, tall grasses, or other weavable plants, basketry thrived.

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Some of history's most beautiful bas­kets were produced in Japan, where the craft of plaiting bamboo was initially practiced on a utilitarian level during the Jômon period (10,000-300 bc). Bamboo, a grass, proliferate…» More

Current & Coming | By The Magazine Antiques Editorial

A Romanov Dynasty Celebration

May 6, 2013  |  By Cynthia A. Drayton

Mikhail Romanov was crowned Czar in 1613. The Romanov family then ruled Russia for the next three hundred years until the 1917 assassination of Nicholas II. To mark the four hundredth anniversary of the Romanov's ascension to the throne and the family's patronage of both Fabergé and the decorative arts, there are exhibitions, an auction, and artworks for sale from California to Moscow.

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On the West Coast, the Bowers Museum of Art in Santa Ana, CA, hosts the traveling exhibition "The Tsars' Cabinet: Two Hundred Years of Decorative Arts under the Romanovs" from June 8 to September 1. Organized by the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary, one hundred and sixty objects, many from the

Kat hleen Durdin collection, are on display. Many of these objects were commissioned by Catherine the Great and Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra. While on the East Coast, the Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens in Washington, DC, marks the anniversary…» More

Current & Coming | By Carolin C. Young

Farther Afield, January-March

January 30, 2013  |  Before she died in 1983 in her enormous hôtel particulier on the banks of the Seine, Mona Bismarck created a foundation for art and culture in her name, and gave it, in addition to an endowment, her historic mansion on the avenue de New York. It was Bismarck's means of creating a legacy more enduring than merely that of a fashion plate or serial bride.

Quilt Art · Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture, Paris · February 13 to May 19 · monabismarck.org

Queen Kapiolani's fan quilt, Hawaii, early twentieth century. American Museum in Britain, Bath.

Née Mona Travis Strader in Louisville, Kentucky, about 1897, the daughter of a professional horse trainer, her biography and glamorous transatlantic social life resemble that of a Henry James character sprung to jazz-age life. After a couple of starter marriages, she landed Harrison Williams in 1926, reportedly the richest man in America at the time. She subsequently earned herself the title of  "Best Dresse…» More

Current & Coming | By The Magazine Antiques Editorial

Current & Coming, January-March

January 30, 2013  |  

For sheer variety of form, color, period, and place of origin it is difficult to match the offerings at the annual New York Ceramics Fair, where thirty-three tightly packed booths represent virtually everything in the world of fired clay-from purely utilitarian objects to those meant solely for aesthetic contemplation. Most of the dealers are from the United States, though there are also important exhibitors from Turkey, the Netherlands, Ireland, and England. And, while the emphasis remains on the antique or quasi-antique, there is also work by some excellent contemporary ceramists.

Visitors who need further inducements will find an enticing roster of nine l…