MESDA and the Study of Early Southern Decorative Arts

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

It has become almost a folk legend among decorative arts scholars: the story of Joseph Downs (1895 – 1954), then curator of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, announcing at the 1949 Williamsburg Antiques Forum that “little of artistic merit was made south of Baltimore.”1 The comment prompted an offended woman from Kentucky …

Living with antiques, Beauregard House, a New Orleans “raised cottage”

Editorial Staff Living with Antiques

By FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, August 1980. I had not the slightest idea when I started, rather desperately, to look for a small apartment in New Orleans where I could spend a few days every month for a year or two, that I would end up with a main house containing twelve rooms; slave quarters containing six …

New Orleans landscape painting of the nineteenth century

Editorial Staff Art

By W. JOSEPH FULTON; from The Magazine ANTIQUE, August 1980.               As in the rest of the United States, landscape painting as such seems to have received much slower acceptance in New Orleans than portrait painting; it was not really established here until the late 1860’s. We must speak with caution, however, since European artist-chroniclers accompanied expeditions to Louisiana …

The National Academy of Design

Editorial Staff Art

The National Academy of Design, Feb. 1980By Barbara Ball Buff When Philadelphia ceased to be the capital of the United States in 1800 artists who had been attracted to the city by the prospect of portrait commissions from public figures turned to the booming port of New York. There newly wealthy merchants eagerly sought to have their portraits painted and …

The chateau of Bouges in France

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

By MADELEINE JARRY; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, January 1980.  The charming village of Bouges is situated in the center of France, between Chateauroux and Valencay. Grouped around the chateau in the village are several low houses with slate roofs, where those who once served the chatelains lived. The last private owners of the chateau, M. and Mme. Henry Viguier, gave …

This Week’s Top Lots: July 11 – 17

Editorial Staff

*  At the sale of European furniture and decorative arts at Skinner in Boston on July 11 the top lot was a Wedgwood Queen’s Ware “Frog Service” platter that sold for $54,510 (estimate $10,000-15,000). Other top sales included a pair of 18th century giltwood mirrors that sold for $28,440 (estimate $12,000-18,000), and a collection of late 18th/early 19th century Italian …

Edward F. Caldwell and Company’s Legacy of Lighting

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

Although the name of Edward F. Caldwell may be unfamiliar to some, the lighting fixtures made by his eponymous firm grace some of the best known public and private architectural commissions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. Caldwell and his partner, Victor F. von Lossberg, a Russian artist he met while working at Archer …