Ancient Egypt has always inspired awe. Part of its power lies in the grandeur of its ruins, the “vast and trunkless legs of stone” that Shelley described in his sonnetOzymandias. Part of it is sheer age. Founded over 5,000 years ago, Egyptian dynastic civilization seemed ancient even to the ancients: In Plato’s Timaeus, an Egyptian priest tells Solon that compared to his own people, “you Hellenes are never anything but children.”
Continue reading...Classical Antiquities
Lighting Out for the Territory
December 2009If you wander around shops in a city like New York, looking at old maps for their beauty alone in the company of dealers like Harry Newman at The Old Print Shop; or Paul Cohen and Henry Tagliaferro at Arkway; or Graham Arader of Arader Galleries; or Richard Lan, Robert Augustyn and James Roy at Martayan Lan, you could be forgiven for forgetting something important.
Continue reading...In a Nutshell: Box of Brothers
December 2009Toy soldiers have been around for millennia—tiny warrior figurines were found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, and the ancient Greeks and Romans enjoyed them as well—but it was the Britons of the Victorian era who made them a Christmas-morning must for generations of would-be generals. Toy soldiers fired the imagination of Robert Louis Stevenson, who romanticized their power to enliven a childhood sick day in his poem The Land of Counterpane, and that of H.G. Wells, who wrote an entire book,Little Wars, on war-gaming with toy soldiers.
Continue reading...Collecting: Take Me Away
October 2009Toward the end of the 1920s real estate entrepreneur Carl Fisher attempted to repeat the huge success of his Miami Beach residential development, promoting what he called the “Miami Beach of the North” on New York’s Long Island. To promote the 10,000-acre luxury resort, Fisher commissioned a poster that featured star athletes of the time posing in the foreground of his grandiose 200-room Montauk Manor.
Continue reading...In a Nutshell: Fine Print
September 2009When it comes to miniature books, smallness is the point. “What’s nice about them is the fact that they’re so complete and so tiny,” says Catherine Williamson, director of the books and manuscripts department for Bonhams & Butterfields in Los Angeles. “The entire text is there, it just happens to be on a miniature scale.”
Continue reading...Collecting: Blowing in the Wind
September 2009The weathervane collection at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont presents a visual feast of folk art. Dozens of antique wooden and metal sculptures that once crowned barns, churches, meeting houses, town halls and other structures symbolic of small-town America grace the interior of Shelburne’s Stagecoach Inn building. “We’re known for weathervanes,” says Jean Burks, senior curator and director of the museum’s curatorial department.
Continue reading...Ancient Art, New Rules
June 2009The field of antiquities—the art of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt and the Near East—has had some hard knocks lately. A spate of lawsuits and even a headline-grabbing criminal trial have focused the public eye on the pitfalls of the trade and on the international debate over whether or not it is ethical to collect ancient cultural objects. Yet demand and prices for antiquities remain strong. In part this trend is a testament to the fact that there’s no such thing as bad publicity—due to the news stories, more people than ever before are aware that antiquities exist, are beautiful and desirable and are for sale—but also, it reflects the fact that the antiquities trade has made important alterations in the way it functions.
Continue reading...Exhibitions: Shore Thing
May 2009When upper-class Romans looked to escape the stress of modern life in the first century A.D., they ventured to the shores of the Bay of Naples, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, where they built elaborate vacation villas filled with Greek antiquities.
Continue reading...In a Nutshell: Sculpted Stones
May 2009Fashionable women from the Renaissance onward were keen on collecting the carved gems known as cameos, which were commonly worn on jewelry as a symbol of elegance and high status. Queen Elizabeth I introduced the concept of using these carved gems—worn on brooches or pendants—as payment for a service or favor. At one time, Catherine the Great of Russia had more than 400 in her personal collection. And Napoleon’s first wife, Josephine, is believed to have broken up some of the family’s jewelry in order to create perfectly coordinated suites.
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