It is an honor to serve as guest editor for this issue of The Magazine ANTIQUES while my long-time friend Mitchell Owens is on the mend. I suppose I got the gig because I am an antiquarian and decorator who weaves history into people’s lives—which I think is much the same goal as this magazine’s. But in a more general sense I’m here because of my family and many friends who love objects and their stories as much as I do—and who formed me into who I am. Above all else, I am the son of my late mother, Georgia Adams Jayne, a remarkable teacher who, from early on, cultivated my love of material culture and social history by regularly taking me to California’s landmarks from Hearst Castle to the art deco splendor of Bullocks Wilshire to Mission San Diego de Alcalá.
My close association with ANTIQUES began in the summer of 1980 when I met Wendell Garrett, then the magazine’s celebrated editor in chief. Still an undergraduate, I was a Historic Deerfield Summer Fellow, and somewhat nostalgic forthe West Coast summers of my childhood. Wendell was the speaker at the program’s closing exercises, and we dined together that evening. I was starstruck. Always full of charm and good humor, Wendell immediately put me at ease. Our conversation touched on old glass, base metals, and historic documents, but Wendell made sure to mention that he was from California too, even pumping gas for one summer in Long Beach. It was a long, long way from the colonial New England town of Deerfield, Massachusetts, he said with a laugh!
Wendell and I became lifelong friends, and, in many ways, this issue is a salute to the friends and associations that make The Magazine ANTIQUES what it is. The contributors I called upon are all serious folks; they
are also friends. They all have a sense of humor; and all of them have successfully incorporated antiques into their modern lives.
Among them is Natalie Larson, the archeologist-turned-historic-curtain-maker with whom, perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve collaborated on many projects—and whose work not infrequently requires her to make the old look new again. I’ve known the matchless Nonnie Frelinghuysen seemingly forever—we met when I was a graduate fellow at the Met in 1986 and we cross paths regularly at the museum, at Attingham Summer School events, and elsewhere where decorative arts enthusiasts collect. It was on a bus ride when we were both participating in the Royal Collection Studies program in the UK a couple of summers back that I first got an inkling about “the window” she writes about. Jeanne Sloane, too, I’ve known for a long time, ever since we were introduced to each other in the old Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel the summer I moved to New York. I worked with her on the interiors of her house in California, where the antique and (some) new live most comfortably together. When Carol Cadou was director and CEO of the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library I offered to decorate Chandler Farm, the Federal-period brick house that serves as the director’s home. We’ve long been in touch regarding her work with the National Society of the Colonial Dames in America, with its network of ardent preservationists telling America’s stories.
Of course, there is also Elizabeth Pochoda—Betsy—who continues to tirelessly serve the magazine she herself headed as editor in chief for eight years. In this issue she compares the current political climate with the tale that is told by political prints of old, showing that no amount of mudslinging is without precedent. She suggested that I ask the brilliant, sometimes provocative Glenn Adamson to write on the one-hundredth anniversary of the Met’s American Wing, and I’m glad she did. You’ll see why when you read his story.
I could go on about the lessons I learned from Wendell, or from the legacy of Henry du Pont at Winterthur, and the contributors to this issue. But maybe it is enough to say that antiques, and our love for them, bring likeminded individuals together. They inspire and enlighten us—and can be the basis of long, happy, fulfilling, and fascinating friendships.
Thomas Jayne
