The Magazine Antiques - Most Recent News and Opinion

The price of chocolate

By Kathleen Eagen Johnson — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0100

A cup and saucer open a window into the complicated history of life at Philipsburg Manor

American vernacular rococo

By Daniel Kurt Ackermann — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

A long and winding S-curve: American vernacular rococo in the southern backcountry

Collecting American samplers in Southern California

By Harold B. Nelson — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Good fortune/Good timing: The felicitous and sometimes unexpected manner in which collections develop, as seen in four remarkable Los Angeles-based collections of American needlework.

A long time gone: Art, the Kennedy years, and the Hotel Texas

By Olivier Meslay — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

On the eve of President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy's visit to Dallas in 1963 a group of Fort Worth collectors gathered sixteen masterworks of European and American art and installed them in the presidential suite in the Hotel Texas.

The last dynasty

By James Gardner — Wed, 08 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

At some point during the 1800s, when nobody was looking, an institution passed away that for centuries had been a fixture of the visual arts: the artistic dynasty, the family of painters who, across several generations, maintained a consistent aesthetic profile.

Maine destination

By Laura Beach — Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

"I really got a sense of what was going on. What impressed me most, truthfully, was the passionate engagement of students and professors. The museum's director at the time, Hugh J. Gourley III, drew us all in. He had an eye for art and a talent for developing friendships," Paula Lunder says.

Freedom and the abstract truth

By Elizabeth Pochoda — Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The story of Marica and Jan Vilcek is the story of one couple's long pilgrimage into the cultural heart of this country. It begins during the mid-1960s in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and just when the most volatile decade of the American century was coming to a boil. In some ways it is the story of the survival of the American dream in those years, but it is significantly more than that.

Georges Hoentschel and his world

By Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide and Ulrich Leben — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Although his name may be forgotten, the French collector, decorator, and ceramist has had a lasting influence on American taste

Rediscovering an art star

By James Gardner — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Although Anders Zorn has been largely forgotten by the general public, at the turn of the last century he was one of the most famous artists in the world.

Many paths to modernity

By Lee Lawrence — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The euphoria of independence coupled with the horrors of Partition added a new layer of complexity to a society already wrestling with the effects of colonialism and modernization

Fluent French

By Laura Beach — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

House full, collection done, this Philadelphia area couple did what others have perhaps imagined. They began again- passionately, completely, and without reservation. From American folk art they turned to early modern art and design, much of it French. They changed their accent but in truth continued to speak the language of collecting, their shared voice deepened by their experience.

The Cartier fern-spray brooches

By Angus Trumble — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The beauty of the diamond contains within it the awesomeness of geological time. But for sheer scale and lavishness, diamond jewelry reached its climax during the relatively brief reign of Britain's Edward VII from 1901 to 1910.

Cradle of liberty, cradle of craft

By David L. Barquist & Elisabeth R. Agro — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Philadelphia's unparalleled list of great artist-artisans in the twentieth century is part of a legacy that goes back three hundred years.

American pewter

By Barrymore Laurence Scherer — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

In April the Pewter Collectors' Club of America is presenting a loan exhibition, Pewter: The Philadelphia Story, at the Philadelphia Antiques Show. If colonial silver often takes the spotlight for rarity and cost in American metalwork, this exhibition of nearly 150 of the finest domestic and ecclesiastical examples of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century pewter will underscore the soft warmth of pewter's silvery-gray sheen and the subtle restraint of design that have bolstered pewter's continuing allure as a collecting field.

The hidden face of the Civil War

By Jeff L. Rosenheim — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The images presented here, selected especially for The Magazine Antiques, depict Southerners who fought for the Confederacy. In the large field of American iconography, these photographs are among the most provocative and rare nineteenth-century portraits.

Philadelphia collects: The torch bearer

By Elizabeth Pochoda, Photography by Gavin Ashworth — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

This issue celebrates the long history of Philadelphia as the city of great artist-artisans. That history would be even more impressive had there been a Helen Drutt on the scene in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to make sure that absolutely nothing of value was lost to posterity.

Philadelphia collects: City folk

By Laura Beach, Photography by Gavin Ashworth — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The collectors, Philadelphians Joan M. and Victor L. Johnson, have long been known to enthusiasts of American decorative arts but it was only with their 2009 move from the country to a penthouse apartment in Society Hill that they felt comfortable going public.

Curiously Carved: Pictorial Sources of Scrimshaw

By Stuart M. Frank — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Contrary to persistent stereotypes characterizing seamen in the Age of Sail as illiterate ruffians, nineteenth-century Yankee whalemen were characteristically literate and avid readers.

Monumental confidence: restored Roosevelt murals

By James Gardner — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

A look inside at the newly reopened Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda.

Loving the Gilded Age and learning how to look

By Laura Beach — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

"Newport is a sleeping beauty. It's famous for its houses and the legendary quality of the town, the families that lived here and the events that occurred."