The Magazine Antiques articles from October 2005

The Magazine Antiques archives from October 2005

Autumn in San Francisco.(Current and coming)(de Young Museum)(San Francisco Fall Antiques Show)
October 1, 2005... As Mark Twain observed in a letter to the Virginia City, Nevada, newspaper Territorial Enterprise in December 1865: "San Francisco is a city of startling events." This autumn, when the spectacular weather alone draws visitors, two events in...

Tiffany, virtuoso designer.(Current and coming)(Louis Comfort Tiffany)
October 1, 2005... For those who did not grow up with an iPod in one hand and a computer mouse in the other, Louis Comfort Tiffany is a familiar name. His prolific contributions in many mediums were internationally influential. This month more than 120 examples...

Expansion in Portland.(Current and coming)(Portland Art Museum)(Hesse: A Princely German Collection)
October 1, 2005... In this age of museums expanding into new buildings, it is rewarding to see more than one institution electing to move into an existing building of architectural interest rather than tearing it down and starting anew. The Portland Art Museum in...

Museum accessions.(Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)
October 1, 2005... The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, traces its origins to the nineteenth-century newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson's feeling that Kansas City was "incredibly commonplace and ugly. I decided that if I were to live...

Eighteenth-century fashion.(Report from Europe)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... In the eighteenth century, France was the world's fashion leader. Paris was not only its political capital but also the center of fashion. Rose Bertin, known as the "ministre de la mode," was the main provider of dresses to Marie Antoinette,...

More than an illustrator.(Report from Europe)(Beatrix Potter)(Brief Article)(Biography)
October 1, 2005... Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866 to a middle-class family that spent summer holidays first in Scotland and then in the Lake District, where Potter later lived permanently. She showed an early aptitude for drawing, particularly plants...

Barbara Hepworth.(Report from Europe)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2005... Barbara Hepworth was one of the most important British sculptors of the twentieth century. It is not surprising, therefore, that her two-dimensional works are less known. A loan exhibition at the London dealer Hazlitt Holland Hibbert brings...

Five centuries of self-portraits.(Report from Europe)(Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary)
October 1, 2005... Even the most impoverished artist has one model readily available: he or she has only to look in the mirror. Remarkably, there have been scarcely any major exhibitions on the subject before Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary, a large...

Missouri silver.(Books about antiques)(Missouri's Silver Age: Silversmiths of the 1800s)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Because books are published in absurd numbers a great many vanish like Shakespeare's "poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more." Sometimes this swift and ignominious passage is planned before the...

Nathan Starkey redivivus.(Collectors' notes)(Biography)
October 1, 2005... Fifty years ago, in this very column, a collector named Ralph B. Little introduced readers of The Magazine ANTIQUES to the work of Nathan Starkey, a nineteenth-century Philadelphia maker of portable desks and other types of small chests. (1)...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
October 1, 2005... An unfortunate transmission error led to the misidentification of the painting illustrated below in our Report from Europe column last month (p. 38). It is shown here with the correct caption. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Russian Empire: Architecture, Decorative and Applied Arts, Interior Decoration, 1800-1830.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Russian Empire: Architecture, Decorative and Applied Arts, Interior Decoration, 1800-1830 By Arcadi Gaydamak MA-321 Our price $125.00 The Empire style, which spread quickly throughout Europe in the early nineteenth century,...

Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World Edited by Page Talbott MA-322 Our price $40.00 Published in conjunction with a series of exhibitions celebrating the tercentenary of Franklin's birth, this beautifully produced...

A Jeffersonian Ideal: Selections from the Dr. and Mrs. Henry C. Landon III Collection of American Fine and Decorative Arts.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... A Jeffersonian Ideal: Selections from the Dr. and Mrs. Henry C. Landon III Collection of American Fine and Decorative Arts By Vicki Fama and others MA-323 Our price $40.00 Assembled over four decades, this collection includes...

Chinese Export Art at Historic Deerfield.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Chinese Export Art at Historic Deerfield By Amanda E. Lange MA-324 Our price $65.00 Lange's fascinating study of several towns of the Connecticut River valley reveals that residents had access to Chinese goods earlier than...

Missouri's Silver Age: Silversmiths of the 1800s.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Missouri's Silver Age: Silversmiths of the 1800s By Norman Mack MA-325 Our price $55.00 Between 1800 and 1900 silversmiths were working in many cities and towns in Missouri. Norman Mack and his late wife. Beatrice Davidow...

American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings By Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison MA-326 Our price $45.00 This welcome addition to the literature on institutional collections...

Ceramics in America 2005.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Ceramics in America 2005 Edited by Robert Hunter MA-327 paper covers Our price $55.00 This annual compendium is devoted to ceramics made or used in the United States. Articles in this edition explore ceramics that relate...

Georg Jensen Jewelry.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Georg Jensen Jewelry Edited by David A. Taylor MA-328 Our price $65.00 The Danish sculptor, silversmith, and jeweler Georg Jensen is considered one of the leading designers of the early twentieth century. This comprehensive...

The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The Lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany By Martin Eidelberg and others MA-329 Our price $75.00 Tiffany lamps are admired by collectors around the world for their astonishing artistic qualities and high level of craftsmanship. The...

Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design By Jewel Stern MA-330 Our price $75.00 The first publication to trace the history of the design of American silver between 1925 and 2000, this volume was issued in conjunction...

The Pennsylvania German Broadside: A History and Guide.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... The Pennsylvania German Broadside: A History and Guide By Don Yoder MA-331 Our price $49.95 Since broadsides were designed to be given away or sold. Yoder divides his study of these illustrated advertisements according to the...

Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Louis Comfort Tiffany: Artist for the Ages By Marilynn A. Johnson and others MA-332 Our price $49.95 This beautifully produced catalogue of a traveling exhibition provides a lucid and thorough account of one of the most...

Frederic Church.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Frederic Church By John K. Howat MA-333 Our price $50.00 Howat's monograph on this key figure among Hudson River school painters discusses Church and his relationship to his mentor and teacher, Thomas Cole, and places him in...

Painting Lake George, 1774-1900.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... Painting Lake George, 1774-1900 By Erin Budis Coe and Gwendolyn Owens MA-334 paper covers Our price $29.95 Lake George, called the "Holy Lake" by Thomas Cole, was a popular destination for artists. Thus, it is surprising...

A Brass Menagerie: Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
October 1, 2005... A Brass Menagerie: Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement By Anna Tobin D'Ambrosio MA-335 paper covers Our price $29.95 Household accessories and even pieces of furniture made of a variety of metals, including brass,...

Calendar.(Calendar)
October 1, 2005... The arts here and abroad--a compendium of exhibitions, symposiums, and lectures California LOS ANGELES J. Paul Getty Museum: "A Masterpiece Reconstructed: The Hours of Louis XII"; October 18 to January 8, 2006. [??] "Painted Prayers:...

Antiques.(Victorian era)
October 1, 2005... That not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom. John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667, Book 8, lines 191-194 The nineteenth century in...

American art brass: innovative and artistic applications of industrial metals in the form of what was called art brass or artistic bronze goods by manufacturers and retailers gained the attention of style-conscious American consumers during the 1880s.
October 1, 2005... The terms refer to visually and materially complex metal furniture and accessories--including tables, accent chairs, candelabra, sconces, other lighting devices, and fireplace implements--which were made in response to the consumer demand for...

The grand salon from the Hotel Gaillard de La Bouexiere.(Biography)
October 1, 2005... The salon in eighteenth-century Paris functioned as a gathering place for reading literature, engaging in conversation, and indulging in diversions such as music. The architecture and decoration of these rooms were intended to make them...

Company paintings of the Taj Mahal and Agra.
October 1, 2005... The Mughal emperors Akbar the Great, Jahangir (r. 1605-1627), and Shah Jahan (Pl. III), the builder of the Taj Mahal, ruled India during the golden age of the empire, and all were sophisticated patrons of the arts. (1) They supported...

Living with antiques: the Mary and Robert Raley collection.
October 1, 2005... On August 12, 1986, in Harrisville, New Hampshire, at a reception in his honor given by Mary and Robert Raley, Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) exclaimed, "My dears, you have a witty house!" The renowned composer and critic was in a jovial humor,...

Private devotional altars of the baroque.
October 1, 2005... Between 1545 and 1563 Catholic prelates from all over Europe met twenty-five times in ecumenical council in the small Italian Tirolean town of Tridentum (now Trento). Their stated purpose was to ponder, discuss, execute and bring speedily...

Mayer Carl von Rothschild of Frankfurt: collector and patriot.(Biography)
October 1, 2005... Arococo gold-mounted jug in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon; a bejeweled and enameled gold cup in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (Pls. I, VIII); a massive neo-Gothic horn in a private London collection (Pls. VIa, VIb);...

The English overmantel looking glass.
October 1, 2005... The height of magnificence for English looking glasses occurred with the great awareness of fashionable European styles beginning in the 1740s. These styles bad a freedom of design dramatically different from earlier classical sources, and they...

Calendar of shows.(Calendar)
October 1, 2005... October 7-11, 2005. New York, NY. THE INTERNATIONAL ART & DESIGN FAIR 1900-2005. The Seventh Regiment Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street. Admission $18. Opening Night, October 6, for The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts,...

Elegant architectural carving.(Design notes)
October 1, 2005... On pages 110-117 of this issue, Jason T. Busch gives a detailed account of the creation of the boiserie for an early eighteenth-century Parisian mansion and its recent restoration and installation in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. While...