The Magazine Antiques

Farther Afield | By Carolin C. Young

After Grosvenor

January 27, 2010  |  On the heels of its seventy-fifth anniversary last June, the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair announced that it would close. Only time will tell how its absence will shift the balance of European fairs in 2010. In the meantime, Europe's organizers unveil their plans for the coming year.

BRUSSELS
Held at the same time as the Winter Antiques Show in New York, the Brussels Antiques and Fine Arts Fair (BRAFA) is too often overlooked by Americans. Now in its fifty-fifth year, BRAFA features 130 top-tier dealers with 60 percent of them coming from Belgium. Among the rest are exhibitors from Hungary, Portugal, and Spain who are not always seen in London or Paris, as well as Hicham Aboutaam of Phoenix Ancient Art, the sole Amer­ican dealer there in 2010. Recently, the show has also featured dealers from Canada, China, and Russia. According to Aboutaam, the growing internationalism of attendees and exhibitors are good indicators of the fair's significance.

BRAFA-Brussels Antiques and Fine Arts Fair · Through January 31 · www.brafa.be
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Farther Afield | By Carolin C. Young

Holiday Sparkle

December 24, 2009  |  Keeping winter doldrums at bay during Europe's darkest days, the Sun King lights up London and Versailles; the Magi gleam with baroque opulence in Basel; the stars illuminate the Vatican; and Dionysian ecstasies fire up Berlin.

London
A sumptuous Cucci cabinet on offer at Christie's creates a splashy finale to the auction season.

As 2009 draws to a close, the indisputable star of December's European decorative arts sales in London is the so-called Cucci cabinet that was sold by the March family at Christie's on December 10. This tour de force of 1665 to 1675, attributed to the Italian-born ébéniste Domenico Cucci and the French Gobelins workshops, first commands the eye with the bold sculptural figures representing the seasons (attributed to Cucci's cousin Philippe Caffieri the elder) that support its stand. Closer inspection reveals the exquisite craftsmanship of its execution throughout: colorful pietre dure panels by the grand-ducal workshops in Florence, marquetry in rich veneers and engraved pewter, deftly rendered internal com­partments, and refined gilt-bronze mounts surmounting it. One of only three cabinets now known by or attributed to the master, its appearance in a public sale is significant.
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Farther Afield | By Carolin C. Young

Last shades of summer: first tones of fall

September 29, 2009  |  The month offers a last chance to catch some of summer's notable exhibitions: Islamic ornament in Frankfurt; baroque splendor in Florence; and Dufy ceramics in Ghent. Europe's big event in September is the Twenty-sixth Biennale in Florence.

Ornament
The Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt gets philo­sophical about the meaning of ornament.
In a small but insightful temporary exhibition of approximately forty objects set into its new permanent display of Islamic applied arts, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt compares and contrasts Western versus Islamic concepts of the term ornament. James Trilling's statement that "Ornament is decoration in which the visual pleasure of form significantly outweighs the communicative value of content" (Ornament: A Modern Perspective [Seattle, 2003]) is used to summarize the Western attitude of ornament as surface decoration with no intrinsic meaning, or value. By contrast, the show points out that the Arab world has no equivalent translation of the word ornament, although the Muslim avoidance of depicting human forms led to an art replete in patterns.  Exquisite Persian artifacts—ceramics, bronze works, and richly decorated manuscripts from the museum's collection—offer another interpretation in which pattern, repetition, abstraction, and transmutation playfully inspire intense observation.

The show suggests that ornament should be interpreted as "an intrinsic part of the artistic language of a culture that cannot be measured by European standards."
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Farther Afield | By Carolin C. Young

Hidden treasures

September 3, 2009  |  Those wishing to escape crowds this summer need not avoid Europe. With minimum planning, you can view some of the most spectacular but still privately owned properties and collections in Great Britain and France. Exhibitions in Arles and Barcelona explore intercultural exchange with profundity and elegance.

Secrets of Great Britain
Savvy travelers to Great Britain can visit nearly six thousand objects and works of art of outstanding historical or aesthetic interest as well as numerous buildings, estates, and parklands that remain in private hands. The owners of these rarified places and items have been granted a "conditional exemption" from paying inheritance taxes by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs office (HMRC) in return for offering interested members of the public access to them upon request.

Despite this legal requirement, the list of items with a "conditional exemption" was, until recently, notoriously difficult to obtain-relegated, one imagined, to a dusty drawer in a back office of the Victoria and Albert Museum, of which the public at large had no knowledge.

Times have changed. The HMRC Web site now offers the entire roster on a database with multiple search options, allowing enthusiasts of antiques, architecture, and fine art to research particular artists and craftsmen, periods, or mediums, as well as entire estates and collections by region. Owners who refuse to respond to visitation requests in a timely manner can lose the exemption on some or all of their property. Under the newly strict enforcement of this policy, fourteen have done so since January 2005.

The list of objects and properties that may be visited by this means dazzles. Although some, such as the magnificent Palladian palace Holkham Hall, have opened their doors regularly, many stunning, if lesser known, stately houses and collections did so rarely, if ever. For example, the Waldegrave Estate's collection, kept at Priory Farm in Chewton Mendip, Somerset, which covers three centuries of portraits of the Waldegrave family, including works by Angelica Kauffmann, Thomas Gainsborough, and Allan Ramsay, as well as English and continental furniture with links to Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill, normally goes on view only for English Heritage Days (which in 2009 fall on September 12 and 13). Similarly, in 2009 Lord and Lady Dalhousie opened Brechin Castle in Angus County in northeastern Scotland with their collection of English and Scottish furniture, silver, medals, and portraits only from May 30 to June 28, and will not open it again until next summer. Despite this, a brief letter or phone call suffices to gain entry at other times agreed to by mutual arrangement. Even such a venue as accessible as Holkam Hall holds exquisite works that are not on display, such as its extensive drawings collection and fine examples of English furniture; but with an advance arrangement, those interested may see them.
www.hmrc.gov.uk/heritage/terms.htm

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