Great Estates: Gunston Hall in Mason Neck, Virginia

Editorial StaffFurniture & Decorative Arts

Down a paved road lined with double rows of Black Heart cherry trees stands Gunston Hall, the elegant yet practical residence built by the celebrated statesman and fourth-generation Virginian George Mason (1725-1792).  Completed in 1759 after four years of construction, the estate’s Georgian façade and animated interiors were designed and executed by two highly skilled English indentured servants, architect William …

Jewels and Gems in Boston

Editorial StaffExhibitions

Brooch designed by John Paul Cooper (1869-1933), English, 1908. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; gift of Susan B. Kaplan. Jewels and more jewels are to be found in the new Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which opens on July 19. Jewels, Gems, and Treasures: Ancient to Modern, the inaugural …

Edward Hopper

Editorial StaffExhibitions

Of Edward Hopper shows there is no evident end and that is not a bad thing. This summer the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine, is opening a massive Hopper show on a small Hopper theme-the artist’s oil sketches, paintings, water­colors, drawings, and etchings from his nine summers in Maine between 1914 and 1929. Some forty-five works in …

Hirschl and Adler

Editorial StaffArt

“We’ve done something that hasn’t been done before,” Stuart P. Feld told me, rais­ing an eyebrow ever so slightly above the rim of his glasses, after the opening earlier this year of Hirschl and Adler’s exciting new gallery in the Crown Building, on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street in midtown Manhattan. And indeed, decorative and fine …

The Japanesque silver of the Whiting Manufacturing Company

Editorial StaffArt

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2011 | The 1870s and 1880s were some of the most innovative and exciting decades in the history of the American silver industry. Postwar prosperity, the discovery of silver in the American West, and innovations in manufacturing created an ideal environment for the design and fashioning of original objects. Among the most prolific and successful …

Living with antiques: No velvet ropes–a collection in New Jersey

Editorial StaffFurniture & Decorative Arts, Living with Antiques

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2011 | Called the last of the Georgians by the architect Robert A. M. Stern, Mott B. Schmidt dared to be unfashionable, stub­bornly designing traditional houses for town and country long after they were in favor.* Schmidt’s houses in the American Georgian manner usually relied on a restrained com­bination of red brick, dark shutters, and …

The comeback: The National Academy reopens with six new exhibitions

Editorial StaffExhibitions

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2011 | The National Academy reopens with six exhibitions designed to reclaim its pivotal role in American art and architecture. Many who stroll along New York’s Museum Mile surely break their stride at the handsome Beaux Arts facade at 1083 Fifth Avenue, just to the north of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. They slow down …

The Man Who Could Do Everything: Louis C. Tiffany at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2011 | View of the Daffodil Terrace from the courtyard. Cohrssen photograph.   View of the Living Room gallery from the Reception Hall gallery, showing the hanging turtleback-glass globes and shades, a lunette window, and panels from the Four Seasons window. Cohrssen photograph.   Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) in a photograph by Blank and Stoller, …

Fortunate Son: Reading the memoirs of Albert Sack

Editorial StaffFurniture & Decorative Arts

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2011 | “I was a good student up through 6th grade but then my priorities became play, friends, and girls. Mother kept a beautiful home. Dad was prosperous in carving out his career which interested me not at all.” Card table, John and Thomas Seymour. Boston, c. 1794. Courtesy of the Brant Foundation, Inc. Sideboard, …

American Revivalism: This country’s love affair with the colonial revival

Editorial StaffExhibitions

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May/June 2011 | Entrance hall with staircase to the ballroom in the Susan E. Wagner Wing of Gracie Mansion, New York City, decorated by Jamie Drake, 2002. Photograph by William Waldron, courtesy of Jamie Drake Designs. Howard Johnson’s restaurant, Tichnor Quality Views, produced by Tichnor Brothers, Boston, Massachusetts, c.1940s. Courtesy of the Kummerlowe Archive.   Detail …