This Week on Curious Objects
Everything a burgeoning rug collector needs to know about the myths and symbolism of rugs... Learn more.
Through interviews with leading figures in the world of fine and decorative arts, we explore the hidden histories, the little-known facts, the intricacies, and the idiosyncrasies that breathe life and energy into antiques and works of art.
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The curious histories behind board games, at the American Folk Art Museum
A nineteenth-century wood Game of the Goose board is discussed.
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Tiffany’s frog-shaped creamer and pufferfish sugar dish, at the Met
Designer Edward C. Moore and his impact on the iconic firm.
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The “Confirmed Bachelor” Who Forever Changed American Homes
A visit to Beauport in Gloucester Harbor.
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Whale Teeth and the Pirate Princess
A pair of sperm whale teeth bearing depictions of what look like female pirates.
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Are Trends Sooo Over?
Are collectors still entranced by trends, or has the algorithm swayed our passions?
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Discovering a Forgotten Folk Artist at the Independence Seaport Museum
An amazing folk art watercolor depicting the father of the US Navy.
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A Precious 17th-Century Kleenex
Elena Kanagy-Loux of the Brooklyn Lace Guild talks Renaissance lace and all its wonders.
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Rescued by the Romanovs, a Fabergé Treasure Comes to Market
We have the details on Heritage Auction's sale of Romanov treasures.
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Advice Ep: How to Buy an Antique/Vintage Rug
Everything you need to know, including the surprising origins of the world's best carpets.
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CO Bites: A Pitch-Perfect Vermont Songbook
Benjamin Miller examines an 1830s manuscript tune book from rural Vermont with Brenton Grom.
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The Book of Dragons (and the Con Artist Who Made It), with Rebecca Romney
Introducing mischievous book publishers the Sobieski Stuarts...
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CO Bites: Yoshiko Takaezo’s “Closed Form"
Glenn Adamson returns to the podcast to examine a Takaezu pot that encloses a small bead.
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Taylor Thistlethwaite Gets Excited About "Brown Furniture"
The value and virtues of an underappreciated form: wood furniture.
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Mixed Metals and the American Origins of Art Nouveau, with Art Slice
A look at the height of Tiffany and Company's success and some of their most stunning mixed-metal wares...
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Advice Ep: How to Buy a Vintage Engagement Ring
From choosing a stone to navigating superstitions, with Matthew Imberman.
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The Woman Who Saved Wedgwood
All about the iridescent “Fairyland” pattern, which revitalized the Wedgwood brand...
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“Enriching Your Life Through Collecting” at The Winter Show
Three distinguished collectors discuss the objects they live by and through.
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The Beatles as Painters
A unique painting by John, Paul, George, and Ringo comes up for auction at Christie's.
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Ask Ben Anything
The answers to listeners' questions for host and silver expert Benjamin Miller.
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A Met Curator Tells the Strange Story of Louis XIV’s Carpets
We delve into the curious history of Louis XIV's commission for a suite of ninety-three carpets to cover the 1440-foot-long Grande Galerie at the Louvre...
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Meet the Millennials Proving That Young People Love Old Things
We are joined by the intriguingly named Salt Lizard, a two-woman antiques gallery at the center of hipsterdom: Williamsburg, Brooklyn...
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Why You Should Spend $10,000 on a Shaving Bowl
Silver specialist Oliver Newton introduces us to a 1713 shaving bowl and explains what makes this otherwise workaday object so exceptional.
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Jade, the Imperial Gem, with Clarissa von Spee
Investigating a pair of luxury jade vessels from the Qing and Yuan Dynasties with curator Clarissa von Spee
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Around the World At the Peabody Essex Museum (Part 1)
The Peabody Essex Museum welcomes host Benjamin Miller into their behind-the-scenes Collection Center, a state of the art storage facility for many of their curious objects.
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The Shakers, Pt. 1: Faith and Furniture
In part one of a two-part exploration, Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller considers the Shakers and their material culture in its historical context.
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Gilded-Age Silver with the Gilded Gentleman
Our podcast host Ben Miller shares his expertise on nineteenth-century American silver in this journey through Gilded-Age silver with the Gilded Gentleman podcast.
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The Story of Bélizaire, Pt. 3: The End; or, A New Beginning
In this final installment of the trilogy we consider Bélizaire’s legacy and that of his portrait. Does the debonair boy of 1837 have an afterlife ahead of him?
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Collecting Outside the Lines
In this bonus episode, host Benjamin Miller, Jeremy K. Simien, and Jesse Erickson discuss the challenges and opportunities for collectors taking an interest in previously overlooked or under-recognized object categories, but the discussion ranges far afield.
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Craft in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
In this bonus episode of Curious Objects, Abraham Thomas, Roxanne Jackson, and Andrew LaMar Hopkins join host Benjamin Miller onstage at the 2022 edition of the Winter Show to grapple with the legacy of Walter Benjamin’s famous 1935 essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
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O’Keeffe on the Block
Reagan Upshaw—critic, dealer, appraiser, and all-around bon vivant—expounds on the lovely filaments, sepals, and stamens of O’Keeffe’s oeuvre. For good measure, he tosses in a couple of choice anecdotes from his time in the trade (and just a wee bit of market talk).
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What two paintings from the 1930s can tell us about women’s issues
Around 1930, two British artists, Agnes Miller Parker and Jessica Dismorr, went to work on a pair of paintings that are now on view at the Fine Art Society’s galleries in London and Edinburgh. FAS principals Emily Walsh and Rowena Morgan-Cox explain how two women painters made their way when the art world was still male-dominated.
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Five Hundred Years of American Craft, with Glenn Adamson
Glenn Adamson makes his second appearance on Curious Objects to discuss his new book, Craft: An American History. As his research shows, artisans from Paul Revere and Betsy Ross to Patrocino Barela and George Barris played a crucial and under-examined role in the formation of the United States’ national character.
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A Dalva Brothers Wonder Cabinet Turns Heads at Christie’s
Dalva Brothers, Inc., specializes in the sort of lux 1700s French furniture that just screams ancien régime. Some 250 of the choicest items from the firm’s inventory are being offered at Christie’s this October, and David Dalva III, along with Jody Wilkie, talk with Ben about the crème de la crème
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“The Most Awesome Cup of All Time” . . . and 500 Other Objects
Dealer Adam Ambros and curator Ed Town join Ben to talk about a collection of mostly small objects made in Britain between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of them marked with a date, the subject of a new book from the Yale Center for British Art called Marking Time: Objects, People, and Their Lives, 1500–1800.
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A Fireback from Hell—Ironworks and Industrial Labor in the Antebellum South, with Torren Gatson
Scholar Torren Gatson, guest editor for the current edition of the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts, comes on the podcast to talk about an iron fireback produced at the Vesuvius Furnace in Lincoln County, North Carolina.
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The Marginalia That Made Christie’s Value This Book at $1 Million
A one-of-a-kind copy of the foundational text of modern anatomy.
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Lewis Littlepage and the Amazing Silk-embroidered Dreamsuit
Neal Hurst discusses a colorful suit worn by American statesman and bon vivant Lewis Littlepage
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Jewelry We Love and Hate, with Gem X
A selection of enchanting bijoux from the personal collections of the Gem X jewelry club members...
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Should Antiquities Return to Where They Came From?
On the quirks and inequities of provenance, tomb robbery, and repatriation...
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Antiques Roadshow Appraiser Nick Dawes
Appraiser and Lalique expert Nick Dawes discusses his most fascinating finds.
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Leather, with Glenn Adamson
ANTIQUES contributor Glenn Adamson discusses one of the oldest as well as the commonest human-worked materials.
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New Perspectives on Ancient Glass
Katherine Larson, the guest for this episode of Curious Objects and curator of the exhibition Dig Deeper: Discovering an Ancient Glass Workshop unearths the glass-making techniques of the Roman Empire.
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The Shakers, Pt. 2: Afterlife
In the second and final part of Curious Objects’ exploration of Shakerism, host Benjamin Miller interrogates the myths that have arisen around this movement in the 150-odd years since its heyday.
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The Story of Bélizaire, Pt. 1: Biography
This is Bélizaire, and at some point around the turn of the twentieth century—for reasons unknown—his portrait was covered up. Now, thanks to the sleuthing of scholars Jeremy K. Simien and Katy Morlas Shannon, and the efforts of conservationist Craig Crawford, Bélizaire has re-emerged.
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Once Upon a Bowl
This is the story of that once-in-a-lifetime moment when an object whose origins disappeared suddenly got its history back. And since that object’s history concerns the grandees of early New York City, we all got our history back, too.
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The Argument for Silver Tableware
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And in the antiques world the sincerest form of imitation is reproduction: the humble and studious attempt to conserve the lessons of the past because of their timeless value.
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This Chair is Made of America
Ben speaks with Ellery Foutch, assistant professor of American studies at Middlebury College, about a “relic Windsor chair” assembled by Henry Sheldon (founder of the Middlebury museum named in his honor) in 1884.
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Museums and the Lure of the Sell-Off, with the PMA’s director and CEO Timothy Rub
The Association of Art Museum Directors killed something of a sacred cow last year when it ruled that museums will be permitted to use funds from deaccessioned artworks—previously strictly controlled—to pay for a wider array of institutional costs.
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Corot’s Impressionist Lunchbox
Only nine times in his seventy-eight years did Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot paint on anything other than canvas, paper, and panel. On one occasion, offended by the crude wooden lunchbox carried by his friend Alfred Robaut, Corot had a new one constructed, which he decorated with a plein air painting, Fraîcheurs matinales (Morning Freshness).
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The WPA Origins of the American Doll, with Allison Robinson
During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration funded an interracial labor program in Wisconsin that employed over five thousand women to craft handmade goods: the Milwaukee Handicraft Project.
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Curious Objects: The Book of Hours: A Medieval Best-Seller
More popular than the Bible: that’s what the richly illustrated volumes known as books of hours—which helped worshipers keep track of each day’s seven canonical prayer periods—were during the Middle Ages.
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An Armchair’s Astonishing Provenance, with Tiffany Momon
This month, Ben speaks with Tiffany Momon, visiting assistant professor at Sewanee University in Tennessee, and founder of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive, a scholarly resource that explores the contributions that African Americans have made to the material culture of the United States.
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The Mystery of the Michelangelo Bust
This month, Ben and Michael speak with Jennifer Tonkovich, curator of prints and drawings at the Morgan Library and Museum. The focus is an odd bronze bust of a crying child—once believed to have been sculpted by Michelangelo.
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Making Your Home a Source of Inspiration, with Tara McCauley
Designer Tara McCauley discusses a small splatter-painted box by artist Thomas Engelhart of Mugler and Hermès.
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Why Thomas Cole’s “Course of Empire” Cycle is as Relevant Today as in the 19th Century
We chat with filmmaker Rachel Gould, better known on YouTube as the Art Tourist
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Debunking the Hitler Diaries and Other Adventures, with Kenneth Rendell
How Kenneth Rendell helped crack the case of the forged Hitler diaries and more...
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All About Amber, with Laura Kugel
An inside look at the production of seventeenth-century gameboards made from amber
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A Newly Unearthed George Washington Letter, with Nathan Raab
Nathan Raab of the Raab Collection reveals a never-before-seen missive by George Washington.
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A Journey Back In Time At the Peabody Essex Museum (Part 2)
Benjamin Miller continues his odyssey through the Peabody Essex Museum Collection Center, containing objects sourced from around the globe.
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The New Antiquarians
Host Benjamin Miller welcomes back his erstwhile co-host, Michael Diaz-Griffith, to discuss the latter's new book, The New Antiquarians, a survey of the up-and-coming generation of antiques collectors.
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Textiles Don't Get No Respect
The cope is a curious object. Henry VII commissioned thirty of these richly embroidered vestments for the English clergy, helping to lay the foundation for that special blend of religion, power, and material prestige that would mark the reign of his son, the notorious Henry VIII.
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The Story of Bélizaire, Pt. 2: Provenance
We examine the painting that is the reason anyone knows Bélizaire’s name in the first place, and follow the twists and turns by which it traveled from the studio of Jacques Amans in 1837 to the collection of Jeremy Simien today.
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Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax
Guest Kay Collier, who is the owner of Kathryn Hastings and Company, talks to host Ben Miller about her stationery and custom wax seal business, her collection, and her passion for using antiques as they were meant to be used.
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Thomas Commeraw: Free Black Potter in 1800s New York
For nearly two hundred years, from his death in 1823, New York potter Thomas Commeraw was out of sight. In the digital age it finally became possible to positively identify him: as a prosperous free Black craftsman with a manufactory in Corlears Hook.
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English Glass/Chinese Craft
The technique of reverse-painting was introduced to China in the late 1600s by its European trading partners, who manufactured and shipped the plate glass necessary for its production.
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How to Make a Modern Home (with Antiques), featuring Thomas Jayne
In this episode, Ben Miller gets the goods from Thomas Jayne on the history of interiors (from the Greeks to the present day); what to budget first; and the spirit of “democratic decoration,” that, historically, has animated American interiors.
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Corot’s Impressionist Lunchbox
Only nine times in his seventy-eight years did Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot paint on anything other than canvas, paper, and panel. On one occasion, offended by the crude wooden lunchbox carried by his friend Alfred Robaut, Corot had a new one constructed, which he decorated with a plein air painting, Fraîcheurs matinales (Morning Freshness).
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A Journey to the Center of the Earth, with Robert McCracken Peck
Drexel University’s Robert McCracken Peck comes on the podcast to talk about the "hollow earth" theory and a perforated wooden globe in this episode of Curious Objects
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The Life and Labor of Enslaved Potter Dave Drake, With Ethan Lasser
In this episode, Ethan Lasser, chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, tells the story of Dave Drake, an enslaved potter at work in Edgefield County—and that of an 1857 storage jar that bears the lines: "I made this Jar for Cash-/ though its called lucre trash/ Dave.”
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Winter Show and Tell: Three young dealers and the antiques they ❤️
Special guests James Boening (James Robinson, Inc.), Ria Murray (Lillian Nassau), and Taylor Thistlethwaite (Thistlethwaite Americana), joined hosts Ben and Michael at the Park Avenue Armory for a live discussion about six fascinating objects.
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Afterlife in Alabaster: A Canopic Jar from Charles Ede
Join us on a journey to ancient Egypt as we explore the quirky material history and dead-serious religious significance of a very curious object: a 2,500-year-old Imsety-headed canopic jar. Charis Tyndall of UK antiquities dealer Charles Ede guest stars.
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Since 1922, The Magazine ANTIQUES has been the leader in fine and decorative arts scholarship. We’re certain that you’ll enjoy this twenty-first century means of telling stories about the things we collect and cherish.
A new episode of Curious Objects is available each month on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, and other podcast platforms. We hope you will share your feedback as we continue development in 2022.
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Benjamin Miller, Host
Ben has been director of research at S. J. Shrubsole since 2016, and is one of the rising stars of the New York art and antiques scene. After leaving his native Tennessee, Ben earned his bachelor's degree at Yale. He is a specialist in antique silver, estate jewelry, and anything old with a good story. Together with Soane Foundation executive director Michael Diaz-Griffith he is the co-founder of the New Antiquarians, a community of interest for the next generation of art and antiques enthusiasts. Check out his Instagram, @objectiveinterest, for more context surrounding the objects on each month's episode of Curious Objects.