New Englad Antiques
Colonial to Modern features objects from the 18th to the 20th centuries, including furniture, paintings by academic and provincial artists, ceramics made in New England and abroad, and personal accessories from diamond brooches to silk brocade shoes. The emphasis is on superb objects with great stories, such as the Quincy family’s Boston-made Japanned high chest, tour de force of 18th century furniture, which belonged to one of New England’s most influential families.
Jeff
Daly, who recently retired as senior design advisor to the director at
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and now heads his own design firm, will
create the installation for the Winter Antiques Show.
A
series of lectures at the Winter Antiques Show will complement the
exhibition. Topics explore different aspects of Historic New England,
from the architecture of its properties to jewelry in its collection.
Highlights of the exhibition:
High
Chest, decoration possibly by Robert Davis or Stephen Whiting, Boston,
1735-45, red maple, red oak, white pine. This high chest, richly
decorated with pagodas and fanciful creatures in a technique known as
?japanning, was rescued twice from fires before 1770. It still resides
in the Quincy House in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Needlework
Picture, Boston, Massachusetts, 1745-1750, wool on linen, silk, glass
beads. This exquisite needlework is the largest of a group of
remarkable needlework scenes called ?Fishing Lady pictures. It
descended in the Lowell family and hung at author James Russell
Lowell’s house, Elmwood, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the nineteenth
century.
Shoes, Jonathan Hose and Son, London, ca. 1770,
silk brocade. Buckles, probably Birmingham, England, 1770-78, colorless
paste, silver, steel. These brocade shoes, like most shoes of the
period, have no right or left but were made to be interchangeable.
Buckles could be set with diamonds for the wealthiest wearers, or, like
these, made of paste. Prudence Jenkins wore these buckles at her
wedding in 1778.
Art Pottery Vase and Bowl, Paul Revere
Pottery, Boston, glazed stoneware, Vase: Attributed to Lily Shapiro,
1915, Bowl: Sarah Galner, 1917. This vase and bowl in the Arts and
Crafts style are products of a remarkable experiment in social
engineering, carried out by and for women. The Paul Revere Pottery was
both a literary club for immigrant girls and a pottery studio that
taught marketable skills and enabled them to earn a living.
Wallpaper,
probably designed by Joseph Laurent Malaine (1745-1809), probably
printed by Hartmann, Risler and Cie (1795-1802), Rixhiem, France
1795-1802. Block-printed wove paper. Wallpapers were the wall finish of
choice after the American Revolution. This example, from Massachusetts
home, displays Medusa heads and Neo-Classical palmettes.
Psyche,
Hiram Powers (1805-1873), Florence, Italy, 1849. After he saw this bust
in the artist’s studio in Italy, Nathaniel Hawthorne rhapsodized: ?A
light
seems to shine from the interior of the marble, and beam forth
from the features. Powers’ sculpture evoked classical ideals of female
beauty and had great appeal in the nineteenth century.
Sewing
Kit, England, 1765-90, silver. This silver fish conceals a utilitarian
purpose—a small knife and scissors for sewing. It belonged to Abigail,
patriot Josiah Quincy’s wife, and reflects both the useful work
required of everyone in New England—in this case an endless round of
sewing and mending—as well as the relative comfort in which Mrs. Quincy
lived.
TAC 1 Tea Set, The Architects Collaborative,
manufactured by Rosenthal, Selb, Germany, 1969. Porcelain. The tea set,
known as TAC 1 and introduced in 1969, was the result of a
collaboration between Walter Gropius and modeler Katherine De Sousa.
Its simple geometric form and suitability to mass production aptly
reflect Bauhaus ideals.
Susan Buttrick, Sade Lowe, Anne
Buttrick, Sarah Wilson Oliver, and Elizabeth Lowe, Lorenzo, G. Chase
(working 1844-1856), Boston, 1848-49. This is a fine example of an
early half-plate daguerreotype taken in Boston, Massachusetts, an early
center for the new art of photography. This example appears to
commemorate a special occasion.
To complement the
exhibition and offer a deeper context for the objects on view, Historic
New England staff will present a series of lectures during the show.
Lectures are held in the ?Tiffany Room at the Park Avenue Armory.
Seating is on a first-come basis and is complimentary with admission:
The Meaning of Things: Historic New England’s Collections
Nancy Carlisle, Curator
Sunday, January 24, 2010, 2:30 p.m.
Heritage from the Home: Do House Museums Still Matter?
Carl R. Nold, President and CEO
Monday, January 25, 2010, 2:30 p.m.
Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England
Lorna Condon, Curator of Library and Archives
Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 2:30 p.m.
Glittering Narratives: Jewelry at Historic New England
Sarah Sherman, Collections Cataloguer
Thursday, January 28, 2010, 2:30 p.m.
Furniture Forensics
John Childs, Conservator
Friday, January 29, 2010, 2:30 p.m.
America’s Kitchens
Lecture & book signing
Nancy Carlisle, Curator
Saturday, January 30, 2010, 2:30 p.m.
About the Winter Antiques Show
The
Winter Antiques Show celebrates its 56th year as America’s most
prestigious antiques show, featuring 75 renowned experts in American,
English, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts in a fully vetted
Show. The Show was established in 1955 by East Side House Settlement, a
social services institution located in the South Bronx. All net
proceeds from the Show benefit East Side House Settlement and its new
initiative, the Winter Antiques Show Education Fund, proudly supported
by Bank of America. The 2010 Show sponsor is The Magazine Antiques,
with Peter Brant as Honorary Chairman. The Winter Antiques Show will
run from January 22-31, 2010 at the Park Avenue Armory, 67th Street and
Park Avenue, New York City. Show hours are from 12:00 to 8:00 p.m.
daily, except Sundays and Thursday, 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. To purchase
tickets for the Opening Night Party on Thursday, January 21, or the
Young Collectors’ Night on Thursday, January 28, please call (718)
292-7392 or visit the Show’s website at www.winterantiquesshow.com.
General admission to the Show is $20, which includes the Show’s award
winning catalogue.
About East Side House Settlement
East
Side House Settlement was founded in 1891 to help immigrants and lower
income families on the East Side of Manhattan. In 1962, it moved to the
South Bronx where it serves 8,000 residents annually within one of
America’s poorest congressional districts, the Mott Haven section of
the South Bronx. Among the initiatives that focus on educational
attainment as the gateway out of poverty is the innovative and highly
acclaimed Mott Haven Village Preparatory School, a national model
profiled in Business Week. For more information, please visit
www.eastsidehouse.org.
About Historic New England
Historic New England is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional heritage organization in the nation. Historic New England brings history to life while preserving the past for everyone interested in exploring the authentic New England experience from the seventeenth century to today. The organization owns and operates thirty-six historic homes and landscapes spanning five states. Historic New England shares the region’s history through vast collections, publications, public programs, museum properties, archives, and family stories that document more than 400 years of life in New England. Visit www.HistoricNewEngland.org.
