A Fisher-WifeThe soonest mended, nothing said;And help may rise from east or west;But my two hands are lumps of lead,My heart sits leaden in my breast. O north wind swoop not from the north,O south wind linger in the south,Oh come not raving raging forth,To bring my heart into my mouth; For I’ve a husband out at sea,Afloat on feeble …
Completed around 1820, Davenport House, located in the historic port city of Savannah, evinces the post-Revolutionary American taste for contemporary European design. Isaiah Davenport, a master carpenter by trade, looked to the classicizing mode that had become prevalent in residential architecture throughout England and Europe when he constructed Davenport House for his growing family. Today, visitors can experience the excitement …
After months of anticipation, Masterpiece London, the new art and antiques fair from the organizers of the prestigious 75-year-old Grosvenor House Fair, received the permissions necessary to confirm that it will take place on 24-29 June 2010 at the Chelsea Barracks. In spite of the bureaucratic quagmires and delays that these permissions took, those in the know have bet strongly …
It’s easy to fall in love with Victorian jewelry. The combination of beauty and sentimentality in objects such as mourning brooches made of facetted jet and Etruscan beaded bangles is nearly unparalleled, while the symbolism in 19th-century jewels makes them especially alluring for collectors. Names, inscriptions, and the coded languages of flowers and stones all contribute to their significance. One …
When the Museum of Modern Art hosted an exhibition of contemporary unknown artists in 1939 one artist to be discovered was Anna Mary Robertson Moses. Beloved as much for her sweet persona as for her winsome paintings, the self-taught folk artist from Eagle Bridge, New York, was 79 years old at the time. Luckily, for the sake of American art …
An “artist turned photographer of artists,” Edwin Scott Bennett (1847-1915) is the subject of a forthcoming article. Edwin Scott Bennett lived and worked in New York in the late nineteenth century. Bennett initially studied landscape painting under William De Haas and figure painting under William Morgan, and then later took up photography. He took photographs of prominent American painters and …
This short list of notable acquisitions began with a request to decorative arts curators in major American museums to choose and discuss a favorite recent gift or purchase. The design of this elegant Gothic revival center table is attributed to the renowned Alexander Jackson Davis. The leading advocate for the “pointed style” in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, …
This short list of notable acquisitions began with a request to decorative arts curators in major American museums to choose and discuss a favorite recent gift or purchase. This porcelain sculpture representing the ancient Roman goddess Juno is one of only eleven known examples in the world of large-scale figures produced by the Doccia manufactory in the middle of the …
The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, the annual conference on food history, is seeking papers on the topic “Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods,” to be held at Saint Antony’s College in Oxford, England, on July 9 – 11, 2010. For further information on the conference visit the Web site, www.oxfordsymposium.org.uk. From antiquity to modern times, mankind has developed methods …
American art aficionados packed into the Tiffany Room at the Park Avenue Armory last night as part of a series of special lectures hosted by the Winter Antiques Show to listen in as Carrie Rebora Barratt, associate director for collections and administration and curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Lori Zabar, an independent scholar and researcher, spoke on …