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Winter Antiques Show 2012
January 1, 2012 |
We asked exhibitors at the Winter Antiques Show to highlight one exceptional object in their booths and describe it as they might to an interested collector. Here are the things they chose, along with some of their comments.
Barbara Israel Garden Antiques
We are thrilled to be bringing a cache of extraordinary objects to the 2012 Winter Antiques Show, including this marble sarcophagus-form planter from the Hurstmont estate in Harding Township, New Jersey. Hurstmont, the country home of industrialist James Pyle and his wife Adelaide McAlpin Pyle, is an 1886 house rebuilt in 1902-1903 by the legendary Stanford White of McKim, Mead and White. The planter is presumed to have been purchased by White in Italy specifically for Hurstmont, along with an impressive marble bench and a replica of the Borghese Vase. According to noted sculptor and scholar Peter Rockwell (son of Norman Rockwell), the carving, which depicts the …
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Great Estates: Gunston Hall in Mason Neck, Virginia
October 18, 2011 | Down a paved road lined with double rows of Black Heart cherry trees stands Gunston Hall, the elegant yet practical residence built by the celebrated statesman and fourth-generation Virginian George Mason (1725-1792).
Completed in 1759 after four years of construction, the estate’s Georgian façade and animated interiors were designed and executed by two highly skilled English indentured servants, architect William Buckland (1734-1774) and carver and designer William Bernard Sears (d. 1818). The design was conceived as a two-story structure with north and south porches and formal and vegetable gardens on what was once 5,500 acres of tobacco and corn fields. Buckland had been trained in the architectural style of Palladio, which is clearly evident at Gunston Hall. Yet the novice architect, who had just completed his apprenticeship prior to working for Mason, took his training to a new level by merging the established neoclassical style with rococo, Gothic, and chinoiserie el…» More
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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