Fluent French

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March/April 2013 | They filled every nook and cranny of a 1780 stone farmhouse in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with hooked rugs and weathervanes, pottery and samplers. They reared two sons amid the blessings and constraints that come with living with the fine and rare. They devoted weekends and holidays to the hunt. And when they were …

Philadelphia collects: City folk

Editorial Staff Art

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March/April 2013 |  Twenty-five years ago in these pages, Beatrice B. Garvan wrote about an anonymous collection of Pennsylvania folk art that was already more than a quarter-century in the making. Garvan was struck by the coherence of the assemblage that was ever in flux, by the sense of motion generated by the collectors’ unyielding search …

Philadelphia collects: The torch bearer

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March/April 2013 | This issue celebrates the long history of Philadelphia as the city of great artist-artisans. That history would be even more impressive had there been a Helen Drutt on the scene in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to make sure that absolutely nothing of value was lost to posterity. What Drutt has done for …

Monumental confidence: restored Roosevelt murals

Editorial Staff Art

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, January/February 2013 | One hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, the act of monumental commemoration was a relatively simple affair. A victory in battle or the founding of an institution was seen, at least as re­garded the monument in question, to be completely good. A massacre or natural catastrophe was assumed to be completely bad. Anyone deserving …