from The Magazine ANTIQUES, January/February 2011 | Students of American ceramic history have special reverence for the story of domestically made eighteenth-century porcelain. This tale begins with Andrew Duché’s discovery of “Carolina Clay” in the 1730s and his purported experimental production in Charleston, South Carolina, though no physical evidence of his endeavors has ever come to light. Meanwhile, some nineteen …
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein
We are certainly entitled to call Eugene Von Bruenchenhein an outsider artist, but he himself would not have seen it that way. Yes, he was self-taught and impoverished and surely he felt deeply alienated from the society that surrounded him. But you could say as much for many another artist who achieved success over the past century. As for Von …
Moving Forward at Bayou Bend
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2010. Houston has been called a wholesale city—a great place to do business and buy big. It feels as though it is lounging flat out, like some huge deflated blimp. The very notion of commercial/residential zoning remained problematic until rather recently, and less than a generation ago smallish escort service motels sat cheek-by-jowl near great …
Grant Wood
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2010 | In the following passage from Grant Wood: A Life (Knopf, 2010), R. Tripp Evans’s new biography of the man behind American Gothic (1930), the author examines a critical work from the artist’s mid-career: 1934’s Dinner for Threshers. Fig. 1. Dinner for Threshers by Grant Wood (1891–1942), 1934. Signed and dated “Grant Wood, 1934” …
Alice Neel and Carlos Enriques: Starting out in the twenties
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, Summer 2010 | Fig. 2. Carlos Enríquez by Alice Neel (1900–1984), 1926. Oil on canvas, 30 ¼ by 24 inches. Estate ofAlice Neel; photograph by Malcolm Varon © Estate of Alice Neel. Fig. 3. Alice Neel by Carlos Enríquez (1900–1957), 1927. Inscribed “La Habana/1927” at lower right. Oil on canvas, 23 ⅝ by 19 ⅝ inches. …
Los Angeles Folk
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, Summer 2010 | Fig. 1. Frame decorated with the ceremonial symbols of the International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), American, c. 1870. Wood, paint, and gilding; height 27 ¾, width 22 ½ inches. Fig. 2. Hand-carved and painted heart-in-hand IOOF staffs, American, 1880–1930. Fig. 3. Mounted above a grain-painted Pennsylvania stand of c. 1830 is a …
Thomas Spencer
Figs. 1,1a. Desk-and-bookcase probably by Thomas Spencer (1752–1840), East Greenwich, Rhode Island, 1775. Mahogany, chestnut, yellow poplar, and white pine; height 91 ½, width 41 ¾, depth 19 ¾ inches. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift in loving memory of Nancy Fraser Parker by her husband William A. Parker Jr., and her children William A. Parker III, Isobel P. Mills, …
Shearer Loyalism and Heritage
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, April/May 2010 | Figs. 1, 1a. Desk-and-bookcase made by John Shearer (active c. 1798–at least 1818), Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), 1801–1806. Inscribed “Down with the Cropper of Ireland” and “Cropper is Repenting and his Master is Angry” in the top drawer of the case. Walnut, cherry, mulberry, yellow pine, and oak; height 8 feet 10 …
Furniture at Boscobel
Fig. 1. Boscobel, built in Montrose, New York, 1804–1808, and moved and reerected in Garrison, New York, 1957–1961. All photographs are by courtesy of Boscobel, Garrison, New York. Fig. 2. Sofa probably by Duncan Phyfe (1770–1854), New York, c. 1815–1820. Mahogany and cherry; height 32 ½, length 85 ¼, depth 24 ½ inches. The brass feet are replacements; the modern …
The Moores
Fig. 1. Slingshots carved and painted by members of the North Carolina Cherokee tribe during the first half of the twentieth century for the tourist trade (see also Fig. 6). Fig. 2. A rare nineteenth-century gourd fiddle and two banjos by African American maker Bill Plummer (1873–1942), of Chilhowie, Virginia, hang in the den (see also Fig. 10). Fig. 3. …