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Ready to Wear

by Sarah Davis

One of the most discerning collectors of costume jewelry is fashion designer Norma Kamali, who has been snapping up lux and creative examples from around the world since the 1960s.
A String of Pearls in a Shoebox

by Marie Penny

In a radiantly decorated and appointed turn-of-the-century tea house on a Long Island estate, the vision of American artist and Elsie de Wolfe protégé Everett Shinn stands revealed.
Mistress of Her Domain

by Alexandra Frantischek Rodriguez-Jack

As a female-coded area, the estrado provided women a degree of autonomy and self-expression not generally possible in Continental or colonial society of the time.

Objects: Enmeshed in Luxury - Unable to stop a spear but singularly effective at getting people to stop and stare, metal mesh handbags were all the rage at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Travel: Down by the Bay - Erstwhile colonial seat and mid-century destination for the Hollywood elite, San Juan is a city where rich food, good times, and reminders of the past are always just around the corner—nowhere more so than at the Caribe Hilton.

When the Bulb Bubble Burst - 400 years ago, the world experienced its first major financial crisis — and Dutch "Tulip Mania" was to blame.

Four Decades of Olde Hope - It may be worth noting on the fortieth anniversary of one of the treasures of the American antiques business, that the portraits, painted furniture, weathervanes, and quilts they purvey at Olde Hope Antiques are, in an important sense, emblems of the owners’ belief in bedrock values of our democracy.

A New Home for American Classicism - For decades, Kelly and Randall Schrimsher have acquired the best of the best in early nineteenth-century American furniture. Now, much of their collection has a period-appropriate showcase in Charleston, South Carolina.

Trail of Tiles - A fantasia in ceramic, Leighton House in London testifies to the decorative sense of its namesake builder, artist Frederic Leighton, and the craftsmanship of William De Morgan.

Exhibitions: Back in Style - Where does a darling of the art deco movement go to retire? For Tamara de Lempicka, once a painter of the rich and famous, known for her evocative cubist-inspired style, it was Cuernavaca, Mexico — by way of Houston, Texas.

Exhibitions: Ties of Friendship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - When Vincent van Gogh set out to make the four portraits of the Roulin family that are the centerpiece of the present show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, he was already an expert landscapist, but was relatively untried in the art of portraiture.

Curious Objects: This Table Came With a Bill of Sale - On the groundbreaking exhibition Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence...

Exhibitions: Tales from the Other Side - For the unbeliever, the skeptic, the misanthrope, few movements could elicit greater disdain than the spiritualism that arose in the late 1840s and swept through American society into the 1920s.

Exhibitions: Hold the World in Your Hands - That’s the idea behind a new exhibition at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: John Smart: Virtuoso in Miniature, on view to January 4, 2026.

Exhibitions: Due North at the Met - A show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrates (if a year late) the 250th anniversary of the birth of Caspar David Friedrich in 1774.