Paper Caper

Marlen KomarArt, Furniture & Decorative Arts

Imagine walking along your downtown street, ready to spend an afternoon shopping. But as you’re glancing into shop windows, you don’t see wool sweaters or cotton dresses—instead, it’s all paper.

Exhibitions: Out of Obscurity, into the Light

David EbonyArt, Exhibitions

Works by artist Nancy Elizabeth Prophet are rare and seldom exhibited because fewer than two dozen are known to exist. Nearly all of them are included in Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch, the first-ever museum survey devoted to this elusive American artist, whose important contributions to twentieth-century art, especially in the field of sculpture, have only lately been fully recognized.

Udotopia

Luisa Jean CooperArt, Furniture & Decorative Arts

Maverick, villain, libertine, genius. Austrian eyewear designer Udo Proksch has been known by many names, but the book excerpted here dives deeply into his archive, puts emphasis on his working methods, fecund productivity, and the undeniable impact he had on design in the twentieth century—and to this day.

Exhibitions: Late Bloomer

James GardnerArt, Exhibitions

Although Rachel Ruysch is not exactly a household name, she is hardly anonymous: while she lived, she was an honored painter in the Old Masters tradition, and she has had her admirers ever since her death in 1750, at the age of eighty-three.

Travel: Down by the Bay

Sharon Kong-PerringFurniture & Decorative Arts

Erstwhile colonial seat and mid-century destination for the Hollywood elite, San Juan is a city where rich food, good times, and reminders of the past are always just around the corner—nowhere more so than at the Caribe Hilton.

When the Bulb Bubble Burst

Christine HildebrandArt

400 years ago, the world experienced its first major financial crisis — and Dutch “Tulip Mania” was to blame.

Four Decades of Olde Hope

Elizabeth PochodaArt, Furniture & Decorative Arts, Living with Antiques

It may be worth noting on the fortieth anniversary of one of the treasures of the American antiques business, that the portraits, painted furniture, weathervanes, and quilts they purvey at Olde Hope Antiques are, in an important sense, emblems of the owners’ belief in bedrock values of our democracy. 

A New Home for American Classicism

Matthew A. ThurlowArt, Furniture & Decorative Arts

For decades, Kelly and Randall Schrimsher have acquired the best of the best in early nineteenth-century American furniture. Now, much of their collection has a period-appropriate showcase in Charleston, South Carolina.