The Magazine Antiques articles from January 2001

The Magazine Antiques archives from January 2001

Colonial Williamsburg at home and on the road.(traveling exhibition of American colonial plastic arts organized by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... The extensive holdings of the Colonial Williamburg Foundation in Williamsburg, Virginia, now number some sixty thousand objects. A fraction of them are illustrated and discussed in this issue, which celebrates Williamsburg's seventy-fifth...

Byzantine meets Beaux Arts in New York City.(Byzantine art exhibition galleries within Metropolitan Museum of Art)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... The artistic output of the Byzantine Empire between 330 and 1453 was enormously varied and sophisticated. Many of the motifs and decorative elements had their roots in the classical world, yet there were adaptations as Christianity and Judaism...

Museum accessions.(examples from Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's collection of colonial America decorative arts)
January 1, 2001... The collections of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation have been elucidating day-to-day life in the eighteenth-century Virginia town for seventy-five years, as the furniture, silverware, architecture, tools, paintings, ceramics, and textiles...

Mosaics large and small.(publishing of catalogue of collection of hardstone mosaics and micromosaics)
January 1, 2001... Sir Arthur Gilbert was born in London but made his fortune in California. With it, he has formed collections of silver, snuffboxes, and mosaics of hardstones known as pietre dure, and of micro-mosaics made of tiny threads of colored glass...

Matters spiritual.(exhibits in London and Rome of artistic representations of God)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... Two exhibitions, one in Rome and one in London, explore aspects of Christianity and its representation of God. The Hidden God is on view at the French Institute in the Villa Medici in Rome until January 28. The curators are Neil MacGregor of...

Matters temporal.(Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome on exhibit at the British Museum)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... For more than five hundred years the Roman emperors staged spectacular mass entertainments to distract their subjects from financial or political problems, and to retain their loyalty. Entry to these fights, games, races, and other events was...

A study in contrasts.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... When Paris was the hotbed of artistic revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, it spawned cubism between about 1908 and 1914. The innovators were Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, followed by others, including Fernand Leger, Juan...

Queries.
January 1, 2001... THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY colonial artist Thomas McIlwort, an example of whose work is illustrated above, is the subject of a forthcoming catalogue raisonne. He worked in New York City, Albany and Schenectady, New York. He was married to Anna...

ANTIQUES.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... They live in the same neat manner, dress after the same modes, and behave themselves exactly as the gentry in London, most families of any note having a coach, chariot, berlin or chaise.... The habits, life, customs, computations &c of the...

The Peyton Randolph House restored.
January 1, 2001... A historic site that has been painstakingly restored to its early appearance and filled with well-documented furnishings is a wonderful window on the past. Few things are more useful for teaching history. However, historic buildings rarely...

A revolution in taste: Furniture design in the American backcountry.
January 1, 2001... Backcountry artisans have contributed mightily to American culture, but their legacy remains obscured by the superb craftsmanship of specialists in the famous ports along the eastern seaboard. Rarely analyzed on its own terms, rural workmanship...

Likenesses and cultural identity in the colonies and early Republic.
January 1, 2001... Portraits are but one of an infinite number of indexes to society's taste, but they remain one of the most revealing, emotion-laden, and varied. Like other types of marketable goods, likenesses multiplied prodigiously and changed stylistically...

Setting' a stylish table.
January 1, 2001... The journey from penury to prosperity in colonial America was often marked by the acquisition of objects now largely taken for granted. In his memoirs, Benjamin Franklin recalled such a transition when he described his household dining the...

Maps as objects of material culture.
January 1, 2001... The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a tune of great change in both the old world and the new. Tremendous advances were being made in the exploration and documentation of the known world. The extensive trade in natural resources, furs,...

Metals for the fashion-conscious consumer.
January 1, 2001... On November 2, 1749, Joseph Ball wrote from London to his niece, Elizabeth (Betty) Washington (1733-1797), in Virginia: I have sent you by your brother Major [George] Washington a Tea Chest, and in it Six Silver Spoons, and Strainer and...

Textiles: Trade and fashions.
January 1, 2001... Textiles were a vital part of the lives of people during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Just as today they were worn, scrubbed, crumpled, stitched on, walked on, and slept in. In spite of their utility, many textiles were also...

Tools for gentlemen.
January 1, 2001... The 1770 inventory of the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia, taken at the death of Norborne Berkeley (c. 1718-1770), baron de Botetourt and the penultimate royal governor of Virginia, includes among a host of household goods, "1 Chest...

Designs notes.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... William Morris was among the galaxy of Renaissance men who revolutionized design in England during the nineteenth century. These men--Pugin, Dresser, and Godwin to name a few--wrote at length and lectured widely on subjects ranging from...