Tag archives: appraisals
PP has a 20” plaster casting of a Dromedary (Arabian) camel ‘after’ (reproduced from) a sculpture by Antoine-Louis Barye (1795-1875), the great bronze artist/animalier of the mid-19th century. Sculpture of this period, in which Barye was a leading figure, had a story to tell; and it was a monumental story. This is the period of […]
Post election, we need deep relaxation, muscle regeneration, pain relief, digestive help, cure for migraine, improved circulation, a repaired immune system, elimination of toxins (too much wine), and better concentration. This may be just the time for an article on JF’s “singing” bowls from his home altar – a collection of Japanese standing “struck” bowls, […]
Kifwebe is a word meaning “mask” for the people of the Congo River basin, the Luba and Songye tribes. High-ranking, ruling elite men in a tribal secret brotherhood called Bwadi Bwa Kifwebe would wear these masks in a ritual dance, complete with a disguise of a woven, tight-fitting net-like costume, animal pelts, and long, thick, […]
HH was told by his grandmother from Boston that the table she left him was made by Duncan Phyfe. Almost everyone who has an East Coast Grandma runs the risk of being told that her family’s furniture was made by Phyfe. For years after his death, Phyfe’s furniture was NOT collected nor desired; it wasn’t […]
HH has a lovely 10” tall Panamanian basket made by indigenous Darién Rainforest artists in the Wounaan tradition; you will see a lifelike bat design woven into the fibers. I would like to tell you that these naturalistic designs have been part of the tradition for thousands of years, but that would be misleading. Not […]
EF, who receives my monthly “Stuff-Whisperer” newsletter, read that I spent the first two weeks of September in Malaga, Southern Spain, visiting my brother. She sent an oil on canvas of her Spanish Lady, as it is known to her family (dated 1887), because I have experienced Andalusian culture recently! EF’s grandparents purchased this work […]
JE has an elegant Art Deco green glass decanter trimmed with gold leaf and topped by an 11-inch clear glass stopper. It is likely of Italian or Czechoslovakian origin, because in the 1930s to 1940s Art Deco glass with gold was a signature of these two glass making centers. The shape is not the kind […]
You know what you look like every morning because you have a bathroom mirror. But until the 15th century no European had a glass mirror, and if you wanted to see yourself, one looked into a lake, or a piece of bronze. When did wall mounted glass mirrors come into existence? HH, who has a […]
JE has a beautiful wrought iron Spanish Colonial Revival Torchiere floor lamp, hand wrought in a time frame from the 1920s to 1930s. When it was created, electricity for lighting the home was a relatively new invention. The first commercial application of the first electric lightbulb was in the 1870s; because of the brightness of […]
KT doesn’t know it, but she has a 1930s ladies evening bag in the tradition of 17th-century Viennese petit point, a style of needlework that originated with the early French Court as a pastime for Royal women. As the Chinese style of needlework was slowly being discovered during the 17th century, the Petit Point stitch […]
Silently listening, a 150-year-old piano has been hidden in the bowels of the Lobero Theatre in a coffin-shaped box standing vertically in wedge of a corner, without legs, a lid, or a keyboard cover. The once beautiful rosewood case and once fine ivory keys identify this ghost as a piano, secreted behind racks of heavy […]
How did a massive, ornately carved, reportedly uncomfortable sofa – shaped like a gondola with arms of carved walnut supporting a pair of winged sphinx figures – get to a remote farm in Buffelspoort, Rustenburg District of South Africa? This is a short story about how the most out of place objects are usually found […]
The ancient Olympic Games took place every four years between 776 BCE and 393 CE and ceased in the 3rd century because of “pagan” claims by a Christian Roman Emperor. The Games were reinvented and reinstated in 1896 by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin; his vision was to create “modern” Games that celebrated excellence in body […]
GJ found two “blob top” straight-sided, shorter-necked low-shouldered amber/brown 23-ounce glass bottles wedged between the ceiling joists in his 1890s house below APS. They were each slightly different and covered with 134 years of dust gathered in their final horizontal resting place amid the lathe and plaster. GJ had been installing a new ceiling fan […]
In HT’s great grandfather’s day, he farmed citrus and avocados on his ranch on Shepard’s Mesa in Carpinteria. He was an early 20th century businessman and had a hacienda adobe in mind for the main house at the ranch. He hired artisans from Mexico, and the house was built with bedrooms opening to a center […]
When I opened that antique dresser drawer, a stiff, corpse-like doll stared up at 12-year-old me. I reeled back in horror, and I have never liked dolls from that day. So as fate would have it, I have an online reputation as a doll expert. A case in point is a photo sent to me […]
This article is the brainchild of a reader who has a wonderful California ceramic collection; he sent me two of his Beatrice Woods (BEATO) bowls that entered his collection and I convinced him to “buy the best” and leave the rest. I polled ten of my favorite clients for their buying or selling regrets regarding […]
In the late 1920s, throughout California, towns and cities saw a boom in a certain symbolic style of architectural decoration; we will recognize the style when we visit San Diego’s Balboa Park, or San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. Santa Barbara contributed to his style in perhaps the most distinctive sculptural work, located in the […]
In a little Midwestern red brick two-bedroom house in 1960s Deerfield, Illinois, there came a burly gentleman who didn’t speak English. He had a four-foot-long walrus under his massive ruddy arm with a blue bow around its neck. That stranger was my mom’s cousin from Germany, and the walrus was a Steiff, a famous German […]
This is an etching that captures the American spirit of the modern, growing metropolis that was New York City in 1926. The work, which shows the city from the shores of Governor’s Island, is by Anton Friedrich Josef Schütz, an artist and founder of the New York Graphic Society in 1925. He was born in […]
