Antiques Week in Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Antiques Show

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    From its redesigned catalogue to its sleek new stands, the Philadelphia Antiques Show looked younger than its 51 years when it opened on Friday, April 27, for a five-day run. Organized as a benefit for Penn Medicine, the show is one of the oldest and most traditional in the country with a reputation for top-flight American, English, and …

Antiques Week in Philadelphia: 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show

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  Thurston Nichols, Breinigsville, Pa. 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show.     Charles Wilson,  West Chester, Pa. 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show.     Bruce Shoemaker, Baldwin House Antiques, Strasburg, Pa. 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show.     Jewett- Berdan Antiques,  Newcastle, Me. 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show.     Hilary and Paulette Nolan, Falmouth, Ma. 23rd Street Armory Antiques …

Sewn not hooked

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March/April 2012 | About the same time I bought Mercy Huntting’s rug at auction in 2007 (facing page, top), I was given a full run of The Magazine Antiques. Before shelving them for reference I paged through every issue, and to my surprise, found the rug illustrated in May 1951, in Florence Peto’s article “Some Early …

Seen and Heard at the European Fine Art Fair: TEFAF Day One

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  “The museum doesn’t have a shopping list but I hope our collectors do,” said MFA Boston director Malcolm Rogers, who accompanied a group of American collectors through the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) on its opening day, March 15. “I could be tempted to collect Old Master pictures instead of contemporary art,” Whitney Museum of American Art director Adam …

Teamwork in Piedmont, North Carolina

Editorial Staff Art, Furniture & Decorative Arts

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March/April 2012 | Dr. Thomas H. Sears Jr. and his wife, Sara, are well known in Piedmont, North Carolina, as a couple who are serious about historic preservation and collecting. Over the past forty-five years, their commitment to one another and their shared goals have enabled them to assemble one of North Carolina’s finest collections of …

Early Color

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March/April 2012 |   Color, rather than composition, subject matter, or form, is the true life force of photography. Color is the fluid essence of the quotidian, of life as it is lived in its ceaseless flux and reflux. That is the conclusion to be drawn from the early twentieth-century autochromes of Heinrich Kühn, who is …

Tradition and innovation at Longwood Gardens

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March/April 2012 |   Preservation was Pierre S. du Pont’s goal in 1906 when he purchased a derelict arboretum thirty miles to the west and south of Philadelphia. And preservation remains the most complex challenge today at what became, under du Pont’s hand, one of the premier public landscapes in North America, the internationally renowned Longwood …

Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, 1851-1939

Editorial Staff Art, Exhibitions

from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March/April 2012 | In 1851 Albert, prince consort of Queen Victoria, and the architect Henry Cole realized their grand vision of an international exhibition where the traditions, aspirations, and accomplishments of many nations were showcased.1 Hardware at the Great Exhibition by Joseph Nash (1809-1878), from Dickenson’s Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (London 1852). Color lithograph. Victoria and Albert Museum, …

Miniature discoveries

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from The Magazine ANTIQUES, January/February 2012 | The recent appearance of two portrait miniatures leads to new information about back­country South Carolina artist Isaac Brownfield Alexander. Last year Elle Shushan, a leading expert on portrait miniatures, alerted curators at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) about the pending sale of a rare work by a southern artist-a delightful …