An elegant town house on the island of Saint Croix features an exemplary collection of nineteenth-century West Indies–crafted mahogany furniture
Living with Antiques: Compass Points
The man who brought together the furniture and works of art in two Texas homes takes inspiration from several directions.
A charmed life
English inspiration, American creativity, and a bit of historical luck are joined in the author’s house and gardens Fig. 1. The neoclassical façade of the Gordon-Banks house in Newnan, Georgia. Several years ago English friends came for lunch at my house, now called the Gordon-Banks house, in Newnan, Georgia, some forty miles southwest of Atlanta. They walked down a …
The allure of Leeds House: An unparalleled private collection finds its ideal home in Philadelphia
Last winter, one of America’s great private collections slipped quietly from its urban home of nearly two decades in upper Manhattan to the splendor of a historic estate in Philadelphia. Preparing to move the peerless arts and crafts furniture, metalwork, glass, and ceramics, not to mention the sculptures, paintings, and works on paper, consumed the prior autumn months. Art handlers …
Living with antiques: A California family gathers its history in a coast-to-coast collection of Americana
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, January/February 2013 | You might say that this story begins with a canary-yellow jug. As sunny as a Southern California day, the stout Staffordshire pottery vessel printed with black verse occupies the bottom shelf of an eighteenth-century Massachusetts desk-and-bookcase. A small part of a sprawling collection, the jug is a vivid reminder of a man whose presence lingers …
Living with antiques: No velvet ropes–a collection in New Jersey
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2011 | Called the last of the Georgians by the architect Robert A. M. Stern, Mott B. Schmidt dared to be unfashionable, stubbornly designing traditional houses for town and country long after they were in favor.* Schmidt’s houses in the American Georgian manner usually relied on a restrained combination of red brick, dark shutters, and …
European elegance in San Francisco
Photography by Aya Brackett | One of California’s finest collections of eighteenth-century English and European decorative arts is to be found in San Francisco in a large Queen Anne revival house in Pacific Heights. Carefully chosen to evoke the atmosphere of an English country house or a French château, these objects shine brilliantly against the dark brown paneling in the …