The Magazine 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 continuing to work at the gallery and wrote my thesis on the subject of the leopard in fashion history, a particular passion of mine. When it comes to the field of textiles I would describe myself as omnivorous. Fortunately the range of
materials we deal in—from sixteenth-century British embroidery to twentieth-century artist-designed textiles—is broad enough to keep any omnivore satisfied.

Steven S. Powers
Steven S. Powers Antiques
I grew up in Portland, Maine, where I bought, sold, and traded coins, baseball cards, and Mad magazines as a kid. After studying painting at the University of Hartford I moved to New York where I started collecting Woodland Indian, early
American, and English treen and snuffboxes. As a struggling artist, I did not have the income to support my collecting habit so I began selling in order to buy. I latched onto treen or wooden objects because, at their best, their surface details often have the texture, depth, and complex tonal transitions of a great painting. My obsessive nature turned a hobby into a full-time pursuit, and after years of
trying to codify what I was learning, I decided to write the book I wished I had had
when I was starting out (North American Burl Treen: Colonial and Native American, 2005). For me the history of these objects is important, but it is their art or high craft that I value most. After all, a so-so Iroquois bowl is still a so-so
Iroquois bowl even if it came through the French and Indian War.

Brant Mackley
Brant Mackley Gallery
My official start in the antiques business began at age seven when my parents allowed me to withdraw $362 from my small savings account so I could begin to buy things. At that time my mother was a dealer in early American and Pennsylvania German antiques and I would tag along with her to country auctions, antiques shows, and to the Adamstown, antiques markets on Sundays. I bought frakturs, folk art, painted furniture, decorated stoneware, and quilts and sold them in my mother’s shop in Delta, Pennsylvania. This kind of material was plentiful in the 1980s when many eighteenth-century homesteads were being sold by a younger generation not interested in old things. I now deal in antique Native American objects (as well as world tribal art), something that also began during childhood when my father took my siblings and me to hunt for stone arrowheads and other relics along the shores of the Susquehanna River. Like the Pennsylvania material, these things—arrowheads, stone axes, pipes—were plentiful back then. You might find as many as a dozen good objects in a day’s hunt. I am particularly drawn to the wood and stone sculpture from the Eastern Woodland groups of North America—effigy burl bowls pipes, ladles—for its subtlety and sculptural grace, qualities I also find in objects from tribal Nepal of which I have a small personal collection.

Almost every business has been affected by digital resources. How has the Web changed what you do? Are you selling different things because of it? Are you selling or buying things differently? Are you selling to different buyers?

SSP: I came into the business before the Internet boom of the late 1990s, but since I was a latent techie I recognized the potential that it held for a small business. I learned enough about html and Web design to launch burlsnuff.com in 1998. The Internet has meant that my specialized field of treen is visible across the globe. My market is not very big, so it is important for me to have an online gallery that is available to a guy out in Iowa who shares my interests.

LW: We have had a Web site since 2000, but I think it has a somewhat different relationship to our business than it does in other fields. The site has been a good supplement to what we do in the gallery, but the tactile qualities of textiles don’t always translate as well as one would like online even with the advances in digital imaging. Costumes and textiles often require more explanation than, say, furniture or ceramics because most people are less familiar with them. Samplers, framed needlework pictures, and embroideries seem to work best for us on the Web because the buyers generally have already begun collecting in these areas. We also find that devoted collectors of accessories such as shoes, purses, and other small items find it easy to buy from us online.

BM: The Internet has had a huge impact on my business. I would not say I am selling different material now, but I am selling to international buyers I did not have access to before. I also think the Web has meant that material now reaches the collector more directly. Before the Internet, pieces offered at shows and shops were often bought by specialists or secondary dealers who would then take them elsewhere and place them with collectors. The Internet has allowed those collectors to see what is on offer and to buy directly from, in my case, a gallery in the remote locale of Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Is there an advantage to dealing in a broader range of things now as a result of the Web, or is it to your advantage to specialize?

SSP: I have always specialized so I can’t speak for the generalist dealer. I would say that a great advantage of the Internet is that it allows you to really hone in on something—to make something obscure accessible. Think of New York City, where you can have an entire shop devoted to exotic light bulbs; a shop like that would die in most other locations. The Web is like New York; it assembles a population that can support the obscure and the previously unknown.

LW: Much of the material in our gallery appeals to a very specific and highly knowledgeable clientele. We have tailored our Web site to appeal to a broader audience by offering some less expensive material alongside the more exotic items sought by connoisseurs. I have noticed that over the past few years the number of interior decorators requesting information as a result of consulting our Web site has increased significantly. Our inventory is already so broad that we cannot have everything available online and that can be a source of frustration to some people.

BM: The Internet has given me the opportunity to broaden the gallery’s inventory to include material from the tribal regions of Africa, Oceania, Indonesia, and Asia. These are interests of mine and, while they may not be familiar to a great many
people, the Web makes it possible for dealers and collectors to do the kind of initial research that allows them entry into the unfamiliar.

Are there specific skills or pitfalls to be aware of in dealing with antiques online?

SSP: A photograph of an object is an artificial representation of that object so a real verdict of a “yes or no” can only be made in hand. That is why a reputable dealer will only expect to finalize a sale once the clienthas actually handled the object. That said, there is a skill to reading photographs— mentally correcting for exposure, saturation, texture, surface quality, and scale. It is a skill learned through experience, sorting through thousands of images. I find that I am good at judging authenticity and quality but, oddly enough, I have a problem understanding scale even when the dimensions are given.

BM: The skill of reading photographs on a screen is only developed with a lot of practice. You learn that there are certain traps that make some things look better and others worse and still others simply different from reality. You learn to watch for those traps and mentally correct for them.

LW: With antique textiles, there are bound to be minor flaws—tiny pinholes, small stains, or tears, for example. Posting this information, without talking it through over the phone or in person, often makes the condition sound more problematic than it is. As with everything else having to do with our site, the digital has to be joined to the personal. What is the value of an antiques show in the digital age?

SSP: The Web can serve as an introduction or a teaser but it is no substitute for the real thing. I feel that way and my collectors do too. Apart from that, shows introduce you to the element of surprise—the thing that unexpectedly hits you and points you in a new direction.

BM: The fact is that however good you get at reading digital photos, some things simply glow in person in a way you could never anticipate by seeing them on screen. But there is also the human dimension of shows that is irreplaceable—the unexpected exchange with a dealer or collector, the pleasure of breaking bread, the whole sense of community with people who understand and value what you do.

LW: The only show we do is the Winter Antiques Show. It is valuable as a way of making us visible to people who do not know about us and may not have thought about textiles before. To show such a person the fine details of a piece, to turn it over and illuminate the complexities of a particular technique and then encourage them to handle it, that is thrilling.