On Books: New and Noteworthy
Making It Modern: The Folk Art Collection of Elie and Viola Nadelman by Margaret K. Hofer and Roberta J. M. Olson (New-York Historical Society in association with D. Giles). 376 pp., color and b/w illus. There’s nowt so queer as folk,” according to the venerable English comment on the vagaries of human personality. Indeed, when the Polish-born American sculptor Elie …
A Demonstration in Pewter Making
By L. M. A. ROY [Originally published September 1949 ; posted in conjunction with Barrymore Laurence Scherer’s “American Pewter,” March/April 2013.] Mr. Roy’s model for this pictorial demonstration was John G. Herrock, “whose family,” he says,” were tinkering with tools from the time they came to Maine in 1799.” Besides pewter, he makes violins, reproductions of colonial furniture, wrought iron, jewelry, and …
The Care of Pewter
By John W. Poole [Originally published November 1938; posted in conjunction with Barrymore Laurence Scherer’s “American Pewter,” March/April 2013.] IN ADDITION to the desirability of maintaining the value of personal property, the owner of antiquities possessing historical and cultural significance owes a very definite obligation to posterity. In some fields, little or none of this responsibility may be shifted …
Glittering competition: the rivals of Faberge
To many collectors of nineteenth-century silver and objets de vertu, imperial Russia is the fount of Europe’s most exotic work. And even for those who can only dream of its legacy de luxe, mention of Mother Russia immediately triggers thoughts of one name, Fabergé. Coffeepot marked by Antip Ivanovich Kuzmichev (active c. 1856-1900), Moscow, c. 1890. Stamped “Made for Tiffany …