House of the spirits

Editorial Staff Art

In time, Sylvanus Griswold Morley would be known as the brilliant Mayanist who exca­vated Chichén Itzá and, controversially, as Agent 53, a scientist who used his Central Amer­ican fieldwork as a cover for spying on behalf of the Office of Naval Intelligence during World War I.1 But in 1910 the young Harvard-trained archae­ologist whose interest in the ancient Southwest brought …

Living history: A New England couple reanimates the past

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

An  interior view signed by James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) hangs above a veneered wal­nut dressing table, Boston, 1710-1730, formerly in the collection of Eric Martin Wunsch. On the dress­ing table, from left, are a delft hand warmer shaped like a book, Lon­don, probably Southwark, dated 1665 and initialed “B./I.E”; a delft jug with armorial decoration, Lon­don, 1699; and a Charles …

All About Eats: Art and the American Imagination in Chicago

Editorial Staff Art

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2013 | Fig. 7. Melons and Morning Glories by Peale, 1813. Inscribed “Raphaelle Peale Painted/Philadelphia Septr. 3d. 1813” at lower right. Oil on canvas, 20 ¾ by 25 ¾ inches. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Paul Mellon. Not so long ago you could learn how to cook an opossum by consulting The Joy of Cooking. …

On the money

Editorial Staff Art

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 …

Pas Banal: A collection of folk, self-taught, and outsider art

Editorial Staff Art

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, July/August 2013. They met again on a Manhattan bus years after they first knew each other from the Chapin School, where their children were friends. Between them they have five daughters, the youngest then still in college. By 2010 Edward Vermont Blanchard Jr., a financier who serves as president of the American Folk Art Museum board, …

On the money (and in the air)

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

        Buncheong bottle Bottle, Korean, Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), fif­teenth to sixteenth century.  Stoneware with iron oxide underglaze decoration; height 11 inches.   WHY Kang Collection, Manhattan specialists in Korean art, sold this pear-shaped wine bottle during New York’s Asia Week in March. Priced at $25,000, it is an example of buncheong, a brushed white-slip stoneware mainly made …

Maine destination

Editorial Staff Art

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, May/June 2013 | Sharon Corwin remembers her first introduction to Maine in 2003. It was April. And dark. “Moose Crossing” signs punctuated the indistinct landscape as she headed north on I-95. In the light of day, Corwin, a Berkeley-trained art historian who came to the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville as its first Lunder …

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 …