While speaking recently with a friend and trying to explain the challenges of choreographing the issue
of The Magazine ANTIQUES now in your hands, I chuckled when she responded, “It’s like you’re putting together a brilliant dinner party.” So be it. Despite having written and photographed countless magazine articles and over sixty books on design, architecture, preservation, and agriculture, I have never had the opportunity to compose an entire issue of a magazine. I have, however, always gravitated toward an informed and interesting mix, so here we go!
I began composing the lineup of this issue while looking back on a 2010 trip to Athens, Greece with my father, Carl, and my son, Elio. With obsessive, almost maniacal curiosity, I had read and plotted out the trip for months before leaving, familiarizing myself with the subtle nuances that the deliberate and meticulous “refinements” implemented by the architects of the Parthenon in the fifth century BC had contributed to the history of architecture. Upon observation in Athens, I witnessed for myself the curvature of the stylobate of the temple, and the entasis of the Doric columns seen behind me in the photograph shown above, and I officially became a Philhellene.
With the architectural vocabulary of ancient Greece fresh in my mind, I returned to the United States, where I went to see what was soon to become our home, Staats Hall—a Doric Greek revival marvel in Duchess County, New York. It had been built in 1839, the year that photography was invented concurrently in both France and England, and it was on a street that contained my Dad’s nickname. Listening to the universe, I bought it immediately.
I then jumped into the challenging abyss of restoring a historic home and beginning a collection of classical American furniture to furnish it. I started buying very slowly at first while we were working on restoring the house. My eye had become well trained while first collecting Amish quilts and restoring Caucasian carpets as a kid, frequenting the flea markets at Clignancourt in Paris and the photography sales at Sotheby’s in college, later discovering mid-century French architects’ furniture, and finally putting together a very unexpected collection of nineteenth-century photographs of veiled women in the Levant. All this energy seemed to dovetail with my areas of study or travel.
By the time my son was ten, he and his friends were well acquainted with lions, eagles, serpents, sphinxes, and medusas due to the scavenger hunts at Staats. You will read more about his experiences growing up with a father who dragged him to historic sites and museums starting on page 48. Through my work writing for Interview in college, then photographing for Vogue, ELLE Decor, Architectural Digest, and presently at The World of Interiors, I have met the most illuminating and learned collectors as I evolved from shooting fashion to shooting interiors, architecture, and travel.
The clients that I have the most fun with willingly explore the odd stories that we all have accrued on the search for our personal Holy Grail. Which brings me to several questions that continue to fascinate me: how and why do atypical collections come together? What is the driving force, psychosis, or even primal trauma that plays a part in putting together a truly important or unprecedented collection?
I have specifically asked all the writers in this issue to dig in significantly deeper than one might expect to offer the reader some profound insights into what passions and curiosities are explored and, if ever, satisfied. Our homes are often the repositories of our collections, and they can also be magnificent opportunities for self expression.
Putting together this issue has been a wonderful experience, as I’ve had the opportunity to explore these themes through photography, which you will see in the pages of this issue. I have felt supported by the entirety of the editorial team, art director, and publishers—all of whom miraculously pivot with each guest editor’s perspective and approach. Many dear friends have been generous enough to share their wisdom, homes, and skills here, and to join the guest list of this metaphoric, and as you will soon see, literal party inside these pages. Dinner is served!
