Discoveries come in such unexpected ways. You can search for years for a missing piece of your puzzle without success. And then, sometimes, it falls in your lap! That is what happened last year when my friend Tom Jewett, of Jewett-Berdan Antiques, posted pictures of his Christmas decorations on Facebook. Tom and Butch Berdan go all out for Christmas at …
The gold dust twins: Thomas Hart Benton, Walt Disney, and the mining of frontier mythology
Fig. 1. Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), c. 1944. Gelatin silver print, 9 ¼ by 7 ¼ inches. Private collection. Fig. 2. Walt Disney (1901–1966) by George Hurrell (1904–1992). Gelatin silver print, 9 by 7 inches. Courtesy of Laguna Art Museum and Walt Disney Company © Estate of George Hurrell. In March 1946 Thomas Hart Benton (Fig. 1) …
Figures in a landscape: sculpture in the British garden
This article was originally published in the 1987 October issue of ANTIQUES. Pl. XIII. At the end of the beech allée at Chatsworth in Derbyshire is a colossal marble bust of William George Spencer Cavendish (1790 – 1858), sixth duke of Devonshire, on a marble column from the Temple of Minerva Sunias in Greece. No English country-house garden would be …
George E. Ohr
In 1893, in the small town of Biloxi, Mississippi, George E. Ohr’s Biloxi Art Pottery burned down. In common with all calamities of this kind it must have caused considerable disruption and financial distress to the victim, but a propitious effect was to ignite a smoldering radicalism in Ohr, who thereafter began to produce some of the most inventive pottery …
Children’s toys: The New-York Historical Society, 200 years
By Amy a. Weinstein; originally published in January 2005. Appealing to the imagination of children of all ages, the toy collection of the New-York Historical Society offers a miniature window into nineteenth-century American family life. The approximately three thousand objects that constitute the collection are made of wood, metal, paper, ceramic, and cloth and trace the social, economic, political, and …
Chinese botanical paintings for the export market
By Karina H. Corrigan; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, June 2004. A single stem of chrysanthemum explodes off the page shown in Plate I. This exquisite Chinese export painting was executed abut 1823, two years after this variety of chrysanthemum, the so-called quilled orange, had been introduced into English gardens.1 Chinese plants were first brought to Europe in the late seventeenth century, but …
Dealer profile: Lawrence Steigrad and Peggy Stone
In 1989 Lawrence Steigrad and his wife and business partner, Peggy Stone, began dealing in Old Master paintings backed by only a thousand dollars and a few credit cards. For the first year, in case things didn’t work out, Stone continued to work as a cataloguer at William Doyle, returning home to help with research and cataloguing late into the …
Talking past and present
The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, may be this country’s oldest continuing museum…or it may not be. Given its other distinctions, that hardly matters. Founded in 1799 by the wealthy entrepreneurs of Salem whose merchant ships sailed to India, Japan, Africa, China, the Pacific Islands, and beyond, it began with the curious idea of presenting the citizens of Salem …
On the money
By Laura Beach Yorkshire calendar and almanac Calendar and almanac, probably York or Ripon, Yorkshire, England, c. 1425. Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on parchment, each page 6 by 4 1/8 inches. WHY: Priced in the six figures by Les Enluminures of Paris, New York, and Chicago, this calendar and almanac of about 1425, with prognostications in Latin, illustrates the English …
Life Studies: Edward Hopper’s drawings
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2013. The hope of the artist is to resist interpretation. Emerson said that “to be great is to be misunderstood” and, pressed to explain his troubles, Hamlet cried to his interlocutors, “You would pluck out the heart of my mystery.” Among contemporary artists, Jasper Johns has made a creed of reticence, and Edward Hopper was …