Magzter Gold (Sitewide Promotion)

Magzter Gold (Sitewide Promotion)

Digital Delivery

The Magazine Antiques November 1st, 2024 Digital Back Issue Cover

The Magazine Antiques November/December 2024 (Digital)

(4)

Single Digital Issue

November/December 2024

$13.00

Powered By Zinio

Zinio

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Instant Start

Subscribe Instead

1 Year Subscription

6 digital issues

$39.95

($6.66/issue)

Go to Subscription

View Subscription Options

Also available on ZINIO Unlimited logo

Get unlimited access to The Magazine Antiques (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines

1-month free trial

Renews at $8.99/month after trial.
Cancel anytime.

Get unlimited access to The Magazine Antiques (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines. Renews at just $8.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Start Trial Learn more

23 Articles

PUBLISHER'S LETTER

DEAR READERS, Renowned street artist Banksy famously said that the greatest crimes in the world are committed by those who follow the rules. This adage speaks to the inextricable ties between resistance to the status quo and innovation. Related, perhaps, are the truisms that link hardship with surges in creativity. We believe all of this—artistic bravery bestowing virtuosity, the alchemy of struggle giving rise to art—is present in the paintings of Laura Wheeler Waring, best known for her series of portraits of the Harlem Renaissance's noteworthy figures. Her stunning Woman with Bouquet on our cover appears in the newly reinstalled American art galleries at the Brooklyn Museum, examined in this issue by Betsy Pochoda. Waring's work precipitated, captured, and continues to influence American society, beyond the historical confines of the…

PUBLISHER'S LETTER

Redefining Americana

If it were in any other city, the Brooklyn Museum would be a world-class destination—and for the savvy museumgoer it already is. Despite the looming presence of the Met to its north, the museum has always embraced its outer borough status. Founded in 1824, long before Brooklyn ceded independence to become part of the City of Greater New York in 1898, the museum continues to celebrate its singularity, as the events surrounding its two hundredth anniversary on October 4 emphatically attest. One of those events, the reinstallation of its American collection, will occupy me here because, for all its surprising innovations, it is of a piece with the museum's adventurous history. But first a brief overview: situated on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn's Champs-Élysées, the McKim, Mead, and White beaux-arts building completed…

Redefining Americana

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then we need say no more about Arthur Liverant. But that doesn't do justice to a man who has been a friend to this magazine—and to the world of American antiques and fine art in general—for more than half a century. Right after finishing college in 1971 Arthur joined his father, Zeke, in the business (selling “used furniture and antiques”) started by his grandfather Nathan in the small Connecticut town of Colchester in 1920. It was a family affair, all three generations working together, spouses included, and kids, too, for years. Their first ads in The Magazine ANTIQUES (headlined “The Unusual in New England”) appeared in 1960 (that's more than sixty years ago, folks), somewhat sporadically at first; but, recognizing the magazine's…

OBJECTS We don't like to say we have an ostrich problem; we prefer to think we are in search of an ostrich solution. Some years ago, we came into possession of an ostrich egg, dressed up in silver to look like a falcon. The collar inscription reads, in Dutch, “Vogel prys zyn eigen nest” or roughly “The bird praises its own nest.” The hallmarks are inscrutable. At some point before it reached our hands, the egg was broken, and this broken egg, needing a replacement, has left us with a curious problem. How would one put an egg back in the “nest”?-so to speak. The idea of a small silver costume for an empty ostrich egg may well give one pause. It is the sort of antique that leads to…

The Mughal Empire once stretched from Kabul in the northwest almost all the way to the tip of southern India. Eastward expansion began in 1526, when the vast Delhi Sultanate, comprising much of modern India, was invaded and conquered by Prince Babur, a descendant of both Genghis Khan and the Turko-Mongol conqueror Timur. Thus began an age of war and bloodshed across the lands of the Indian subcontinent, but also an era of cultural melding, between the decorative arts traditions of Muslims and Hindus. The art of the Mughal Empire is the subject of an extensive exhibition being mounted by the Victoria and Albert Museum, set to open on November 9. The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture, and Opulence explores the relatively brief period, from about 1560 to 1660, of cultural…

The Alps are an altered state. Perhaps one could say as much for all mountains. Taking us far from the plains where most of humanity has lived since the dawn of time, they seem to bring us closer to the sun, where the air is purer and the din of cities feels like a distant rumor. Something of that mood is distilled in the works of the Italian symbolist painter Giovanni Segantini, who was born in 1858 in the town of Arco, at the foot of the Italian Alps, and who died forty-one years later in Pontresina, amid the mountains in the Italian part of Switzerland. A small, focused exhibition has just opened at the Getty Center in Los Angeles based on Segantini's Study for La Vita, a moody pastel…

Siena, an Art-Historical Brigadoon

In the grand arc of the history of Western painting, Siena is indisputably important, but one is not quite sure in what way. In the last quarter of the thirteenth century, Siena rivaled Florence as one of those watersheds that forever altered the course of our visual culture. If Florence could boast of Cimabue, Siena could claim Duccio. A little later, the Sienese master Simone Martini could stand his ground against Giotto himself. And yet, by the beginning of the fifteenth century, something odd began to happen. Siena continued to produce paintings of great skill and beauty—as is obvious in the works of Sano di Pietro and Giovanni di Paolo—but it ceased to innovate, as Florence would do throughout that period. As late as 1500, Neroccio de' Landi was producing…

Siena, an Art-Historical Brigadoon

Art of the Deal

For the second exhibition at its new gallery space at 18 Cooper Square, the Grey Art Museum of New York University is uncovering a relatively unknown changemaker of Parisian avant-garde art. Make Way for Berthe Weill takes museumgoers on a biographical journey through the life and career of the Parisian art dealer, whose gallery, Galerie B. Weill, assisted in establishing the careers of some of the towering figures in modern art. First located at 25 rue Victor-Massé in Paris, Galerie B. Weill was a hub for showing and selling the work of new artists, particularly fauvists and cubists. Upon meeting Weill, one would receive a business card from her with the motto “Place aux Jeunes,” translating to “a place for the young.” Her successes include being the first to sell…

Art of the Deal

Despite the proddings of conventional wisdom, it certainly is not true that adults suddenly lose their ability to imagine once they leave childhood behind; at least, in my experience, many don't. But there is still the danger that, as our years advance, we become so reliant on what we know that we lose the child's simple faith in the unexpected, in magic lurking around the corner, and within everyday objects. While creatives—as they're called, in a heap— certainly represent a check on that pattern, it is a special subset of these, children's book authors and illustrators, who do so most directly. For isn't managing to keep in touch with childish things, while also managing quite well when it comes to the very grown-up matter of doing good business, something of…

The American Renaissance at Yale

Warren Buffet once told his shareholders that he and his team “enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.” That may be hard to believe for anyone not enjoying his fortune, but the truth is, no matter what the endeavor, it is better to travel hopefully than arrive. With The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876–1917, the Yale University Art Gallery not only focuses on the work of American Renaissance artists (Edwin Austin Abbey, Daniel Chester French, Violet Oakley, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, among others), but explores the planning, procedures, and strategies that led to the final product. The American Renaissance was a period in which artists and architects turned to academic classicism to express the nation's emerging cultural confidence, articulated most assertively in impressive public spaces.…

The American Renaissance at Yale

Changing Nature

“I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in Journal VIII, adding bitterly that, “thinking that I have here the entire poem . . . to my chagrin, I learn that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places.” A pair of exhibitions this fall and winter trace the origins of our environmental crises to the period of Western industrialization in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which remade not only the face of the earth, but also man's relationship with nature. Storm Cloud at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical…

Changing Nature

In 1824 the United States was in the throes of a contentious presidential election. Sound familiar? That year, there were four major candidates when voting began (John Calhoun had dropped out for lack of support), and the Democratic-Republican party, which had won the previous six elections, was splintering. In hopes of easing tensions and reminding citizens of the revolutionary spirit and patriotism that had secured the nation, President James Monroe suggested inviting the marquis de Lafayette, the last living major general of the American Revolution, to tour the country. A close confidant of George Washington, Lafayette had come to be seen not just as a military hero but as a symbol of human rights, including rights for women, and of religious freedom. He arrived in August 1824 for what was…

John Soane's Cabinet of Curiosities (Yale University Press, $45) certainly lives up to its title. For starters, it's a visual delight, leading readers through the haunting, eclectic maze of a London relic: a house museum, frozen in amber since 1837, that displays its trove of forty thousand objects in arrangements fixed by the architect and collector who bequeathed it to the nation. Author Bruce Boucher proves an excellent guide to the art, which includes Hogarth's original oils for A Rake's Progress, an abundance of antiquities and neoclassical sculpture, Gothic glass panes, a splendid Turner seascape, and many oddities—from a quartet of carved ivory Indian armchairs to an aerial view of Soane's biggest architectural project, the Bank of England, shown as if it were already a ruin in a period watercolor…

Print Culture of Critique

When London became the European center for printing and publishing in the late eighteenth century, Britain experienced a “Paper Age.” Its public, both in the country and its colonies, was provided access to a growing print media market—magazines, journals, newspapers, and pamphlets— filled with new ideas on taboo subjects such as race, gender, and religion. Also included in these texts were printed images that, at times, made more radical statements than the words on the page. In her latest book, The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (Yale University Press, $60), art historian Esther Chadwick lays out how printmaking and prints provided artists with new opportunities for challenging and critiquing the British Empire, and even nudged their critiques into areas theretofore unexplored. “Print was not just a…

Print Culture of Critique

Masterworks at the Fenimore Art Museum

Thomas Eakins. Childe Hassam. John Singer Sargent. James McNeill Whistler. These are just some of the artists whose work is now included in the collection of the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Paul D'Ambrosio, president of the museum, reflects on the journey to acquire these works and their powerful place in the collection. Cynthia Falk (CF): Tell us about the Fenimore Art Museum. If people haven't been to visit, what should they know? Paul D'Ambrosio (PD): We're an art museum in a beautiful setting on Otsego Lake in upstate New York with an extraordinary range of exhibitions and programs. We have some remarkable collections that you just can't see everywhere. We have the American folk art collection begun by Stephen Clark in the 1940s, and the Eugene and…

Masterworks at the Fenimore Art Museum

The Politics of Placemats

Besides founding museums and having lots of money, what did Abby Rockefeller, a strict Baptist; Harry du Pont, an introverted aesthete; and the ebullient businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post have in common? As it turns out, linen closets piled with a rainbow selection of Marshal Fry napkins and placemats. In mid-twentieth-century America, Fry was who you called if you took entertaining seriously. Rockefeller, du Pont, and Post did. Today, the only identified linens are the ones he made for du Pont between 1919 and 1961.1 Inspired by schoolgirl samplers and displaying the fine needlework of refugees of the GrecoTurkish War, these are in the collection of Winterthur, the museum du Pont founded in 1951. A prominent New York-based ceramist, teacher, and American impressionist painter, Fry had a curious career.2 Well known…

The Politics of Placemats

In her 1922 guide Etiquette, Emily Post recommended that table linens should be made of plain, high-quality damask, with no trim other than a monogram (or crest). Virtually all of Fry's clients demanded their napkins be monogrammed or initialed, and the placement of this was a major consideration in the overall design of the table setting. “I must always remember that the linens are only background,” Fry wrote to du Pont on March 19, 1930, “and must be so simple on that account and because of the repetition of the units around the table.” Usually, a bride would bring linens marked with her maiden initials to her new home. Custom dictated that linens acquired after the wedding would be embroidered with the initials of her married name, or just the…

A String of Pearls in a Shoebox

Overlooking the formal Blue Pool Garden, the Tea House at Planting Fields in Oyster Bay, New York, is a picturesque structure that encompasses a trellised world where Mary (“Mai”) Rogers Coe held garden parties in the early twentieth century. Long attributed to Elsie de Wolfe, the Tea House remains a subject of fascination to design historians and archivists. De Wolfe's presence is undeniably felt, but a lack of documentation belies claims of her close involvement. William Robertson (W. R.) and Mai Coe, the couple who created Planting Fields, maintained scrupulous records of expenditures for their home. The Planting Fields Foundation Archives contain hundreds of ledger sheets—with painstaking notations in impeccable script—that divulge the logistics of the decoration and upkeep of a country estate. However, numerical records do not capture subjective…

A String of Pearls in a Shoebox

Artful Distortions

A dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked, pensive young Menominee woman in European-influenced attire and colored necklace beads and bright red shawl (Fig. 1). Somber I-a-ca-way (The Loud Speaker), identified as chief of a Saulteaux tribe, at Fort Frances, Ontario. A swaddled Cree child on a traditional head-flattening straight cradleboard (Fig. 5). Cowlitz burial canoes, some accessorized with blankets and cook pots, elevated on wooden legs in above-ground resting places (Fig. 6). The interior of an entire wooden Chinook ceremonial lodge on the Columbia River, seen from its gabled roof to the central fire pit set into the floor. These are among the hundreds of images that represent Canadian artist Paul Kane's attainment of his goal “to sketch pictures of the principal chiefs, and their original costumes, to illustrate their manners and customs, and…

Artful Distortions

In Depth: Childe Hassam

What takes nearly half a century and encompasses more than two thousand works of art? The preparation of a truly comprehensive catalogue raisonné of one of America's favorite artists, impressionist Childe Hassam. The project's origins can be traced back to 1976 when American art scholar Stuart P. Feld, a partner at Hirschl and Adler Galleries since 1967, realized two things: that the gallery held a vast trove of material related to Hassam and that he, Stuart, could set a standard for American art scholarship, then in its infancy, by creating a complete catalogue of the artist's work. What he discovered in the gallery files was information about Hassam assembled in conjunction with the organization of the first Hassam retrospective since his death in 1935, which was held at Hirschl and…

In Depth: Childe Hassam

Mistress of Her Domain

During the fifteenth century, an opulent type of interior space known as the estrado, whose origins can be traced to the Muslimcontrolled kingdom of al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula, began to gain predominance in upperclass Spanish homes. The Diccionario de Autoridades (Madrid, 1732) defines the estrado as the “set of furniture used to cover and decorate the place or room where the ladies sit to receive visitors, which is made up of a carpet or rug, pillows, stools or low chairs.” The earliest interpretations were characterized by a central platform, or tarima, layered with rugs and pillows. By the end of the fifteenth century, the concept evolved into a gendered symbol of wealth and prestige among Spain's upper class, where women entertained guests or relaxed in privacy surrounded by the…

Mistress of Her Domain

Lalique on the Rise

It seems that everyone has at least a passing acquaintance with the name René Lalique and is aware of his reputation as a renowned French jeweler and glass artist. But there is an enormous gulf between knowing the famous name and seeing—and knowing—Lalique's extraordinary jewelry. Fortunately, Macklowe Gallery in New York is presenting a spectacular collection of the artist's work, called “René Lalique: Collector's Reserve,” which will continue through December. Some twenty ornaments by the great French master are on view—a quantity that hasn't been seen together in this country since The Jewels of Lalique was mounted at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (now the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum) in 1998—which encompass a variety of motifs for which Lalique was known, such as the female figure, winged creatures,…

Lalique on the Rise

Sisters in Stitching

Gee's Bend is just the tip of the iceberg. Quilting by Black women in the American South spreads far and wide, with an ongoing history that is not always well understood. From plantation life to the present, quilting has allowed Black women both to find personal liberation and to come together “to forge sisterhood, share resources, and hold space for one another's needs.” Much of what is known about the tradition is thanks to photographer Roland L. Freeman, who, as a stringer for Time and Magnum Photos and director of the Mississippi Folklife Project, traveled through the American South beginning in the early 1960s, photographing and documenting African-American quilters and guilds and collecting their quilts, eventually amassing more than 120. In A Communion of the Spirits (1996), his second book…

Sisters in Stitching

In This Issue

Description

Details

Reviews

Recent Digital Issues Browse all

Recent The Magazine Antiques Digital Issues Browse all back issues

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) March/April 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) January/February 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2023 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) November/December 2023: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2023 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) September/October 2023: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2025 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) March/April 2025: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2025 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) January/February 2025: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) November/December 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) September/October 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription July 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) July/August 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription May 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) May/June 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) March/April 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) January/February 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2023 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) November/December 2023: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2023 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) September/October 2023: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2025 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) March/April 2025: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription January 1st, 2025 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) January/February 2025: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription November 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) November/December 2024: $13.00

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) Subscription September 1st, 2024 Issue

The Magazine Antiques (Digital) September/October 2024: $13.00

Customers Also Viewed

The Magazine Antiques Magazine (Digital) Subscription March 1st, 2025 Issue

The Magazine Antiques Magazine (Digital)

(4)

6 Issues: $39.95 ~~$78.00~~

The Magazine Antiques Magazine Subscription March 1st, 2025 Issue

The Magazine Antiques Magazine

(4)

6 Issues: $29.95 ~~$54.00~~

Reviews

3

1

0

0

0

Ask a Question

Click stars to rate

Please select a rating for the review.

Please enter title for the review.

Please enter content for the review.

Please enter order number.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Upload photo

Cancel Submit

Processing...

Thank you for your feedback! Your review has been submitted and will be published soon.

OK

Be the first to ask a question about this product

Please enter content for the question.

Please enter at least 10 characters.

Your question can not be more than 150 characters.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Submit Processing...

Thank you for your question! Your question has been submitted and will be published soon.

Answer this question

Please enter content for the answer.

Please enter at least 10 characters.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Submit Cancel Processing...

Thank you for your answer! Your answer has been submitted and will be published soon.

OK

×