Of all the faces, famous and not, that I saw at the 59th Annual Winter Antiques Show preview (one of a series of events organized by the Decorative Arts Trust) last Saturday morning at the Park Avenue Armory, the only one that spoke, as it were, was a marble third-century Roman portrait head. Perhaps it was the the disembodied humanity of it silhouetted against black but of all the wonders to be seen that day at the antiques show and during the weekend at the Metropolitan Museum, the apartments and houses on and around Park Avenue, it is this head, or its semblance of humanity across the ages, that occupies me still.
After lunch in the sombre Tiffany-designed Veterans Room we went our freezing way to the Metropolitan Museum where our group's guide, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts curator Wolfram Koeppe, alarms constantly sounding, showed us highlights of the exhibition Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens. The exhibition is now ended and I am glad I saw it, for it was one of the most superb exhibitions I have ever been to: ceiling-scraping cabinets, desks, chests, gaming and dressing tables were beautifully and generously displayed in all their decorative, secretive and mechanical glory. One of the most charming exhibits was the automaton of Queen Marie Antoinette playing a dulcimer, apparently an object that was put away quite shortly after she received it.
Saturday evening was spent very happily with Daniel and his partner in their entirely personal and beautiful apartment for drinks and thereafter for dinner at La Boite en Bois. Good food, good booze, good company and good music. Their place is not a long walk from our usual hotel but it was that evening I finally realized how much a Southerner I've become and how I have grown to hate cold weather, especially when shirt, woolen sweater and a woolen overcoat, a scarf, and a tweed cap are not enough to keep me merry and bright. I groused and shivered, shivered and groused all the way back to the hotel.
Looking just now through images on my phone I saw how little I photographed at the antiques show – this Anatolian bronze recumbent stag bowl, second millennium BC, the portrait head above, and a William Morris (not Morris and Co., the dealer pointed out) "Hammersmith" carpet. The rest? Gorgeous, fabulous, stunning, superlative, important – believe me, these adjectives all apply but, simply put, I'm just glad I saw the best at my leisure and under one roof.
With diffidence, I have to say that I never understood Americana and Folk Art but in the space of a few hours at the Armory I came to appreciate it – a little. I wouldn't collect it even now for aesthetic and financial rather than anti-American reasons for I feel it just wouldn't fit, even if we has space for anything else and we could afford it. There was a time when Americana did fit in, but the 1976 Ethan Allen "Don't give up the ship" painted aluminum eagle is long gone, as is the carved pair of swans (beaks touching with the cutest of heart shaped spaces between above an incised motto "Friendship") from Mable's on Madison Avenue. Mable was the first person, not French, I'd ever heard refer to herself as "moi." I was charmed.
Call me superficial, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree – anything for a quiet life – but, having lived through the rage for marbleizing, graining, distressing, Bi-Centennial reproductions of American furniture and the effects of Mrs Henry Parrish's "decorating shot heard around the world" when, via Bloomindale's, "Made in India" Wedding Ring, Bear's Paw, and Saw-Tooth Block quilts came to land on any surface not yet chintzed, faux-finished or distressed, I could say I live in hope I never see a second-coming of Neo-Colonial Revival decorating or that faux-finishes will ever again bring rapture to every keeping room in suburbia.
So, in a roundabout way the subject of marbleizing and graining brings me to this apartment and the thought that if there's a surface rarely considered in a modern room, it is the ceiling. Not so in this Park Avenue apartment where nearly every architectural surface, including the ceilings and doors had been marbleized using a bravura technique by the owner herself many years ago. Where was not painted was upholstered, occasionally in gaufrage velvet, layered with medieval tapestries, romanesque and medieval paintings and mural fragments, in front of which stood baroque, renaissance, medieval cabinets, tables, chests, fragments of pietra dura, bronze sculptures and a coffee table surfaced with a fragment of mosaic from Caligula's floor. A marvelous place, reminiscent of Renzo Mongiardino's complexity of design and the whole enlightened with scholarship and taste.
This last photograph, a vignette that in many ways sums up the whole place despite the ceiling being plain, shows an exquisite baroque cabinet allegedly (if I heard rightly) was deaccessioned from Buckingham Palace.
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The marvel of this post is that it not only includes an arresting Roman head, but paragraph sentences that make perfect sense- a different kind of arrest. Please keep writing my friend.
ReplyDeleteA compliment indeed. Thank you, Daniel. As ever, it was good to see you.
DeleteForgot the mention: we saw the Roentgn exhibit some weeks ago. Glad you saw it. Was not to be missed. Mr. Husband was especially fascinated with the Queen Marie Antoinette automation. Uncanny bit of engineering.
DeleteDaniel, uncanny is the right word to describe that automaton and I suspect that is precisely why Marie Antoinette gave it away. I loved it, nonetheless, especially when "museum feet" had struck and I leaned against a pillar watching the video of it play.
Delete".. anything for a quiet life" is, hearing no expression to the contrary from the House, carried as the resolution of the year, at the very least.
ReplyDeleteLaurent, thank you. "The resolution of the year" - a mighty fine thing to say, sir, and thank you.
DeleteI share your lack of enthusiasm for the cold, whereas as once it never particularly bothered me. Age and thinning blood I suspect, and therefore I agree, viewing things under one roof is a boon. That said, the joy of moving within airconditioning at the height of summer here is also infinitely more pleasurable. Age perhaps, but I do actually traverse the pavements here when it's hotter than most would bear, but it's merely a more sensible way to get from A to B when the traffic is at its worst.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the "deaccessioned from Buckingham Palace" piece, this seems unlikely. Art and pictures collected by Charles I were sold after his execution in 1649, but of course Buckingham Palace wasn't yet built. Possibly the guide meant sold from the Royal Collection, if it was part of Charles's collection, and the dates would tie in. Since then most incumbents have been avid collectors, allowing the collection to be valued at over GBP10 billion.
columnist, thank you. I agree with you about the deaccessioning from Buckingham Palace seems unlikely since what I also heard (or thought I did) was that the palace was redecorating and room was needed so the cabinet was let go. That I found highly unlikely so didn't report it. Clearly I need to check on this so watch this space.
DeleteThank you for following my blog - not least because it has given me the joy of discovering your own, which is full of delights.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from an unexpectedly snowy Ireland (definitely not something a Southerner like yourself would enjoy).
The Irish Aesthete
Irish Aesthete, thank you. I'm glad I found your blog – at least I'm glad an ex-neighbour living in New York told me about it.
DeleteI've only lived in the South for twenty years – before that Lancashire then Holland for thirteen years. Believe me, I know all about Siberian cold air swooping down to freeze the canals of Amsterdam. Snow? Not so much, but ice certainly. Two years ago we had a snowstorm that closed the city for almost a week – the city does have any provisions for keeping itself going in snow which is, admittedly, very rare in quantity.
Thanks yet again. No travelogue I enjoy more, like I'm with you in the room, on the street, at dinner, learning something, sensing some asides that don't make it to the blog. Great fun for this layman. No surprise about the sculpture, you've blogged so many rooms with sculptures. It's a pleasure searching for them. Bravo.
ReplyDeleteTerry, I'm sorry for the late reply. I do love sculpture and it was you who found it to be a thread in my posts. Before then, I'd not thought about it, so thank you.
DeleteWith book deadline looming, I have had to turn down invitations to all warm climes--Lyford, Costa Rica, etc., and even to NY for the Winter Show, which I hate to miss. Luckily for me, you were there. The bust is unforgettable.
ReplyDeleteSometime, not here, not now, we'll have a conversation about the fine decor of the real Colonial Revival---not Mrs. Parish's giddy soup, and all her 'fun' followers, but the real thing.
Dilettante, I'd love to have a discussion about the real Colonial Revival - a style still beloved in the South and also by me. When it's good, it's brilliant.
DeleteThe bust is beautiful, is it not? So human. I wonder if, as it thought about other Roman sculptures, it was painted to look real. If it was it must have been quite moving especially it was a posthumous portrait.
I apologise for the late reply.
The picture of "park avenue" apartment reminds me of Helen Fioratti's apartment...one could imagine her having a piece that came from Buckingham Palace.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thank you. As columnist pointed out above, the cabinet was likely deaccessioned from the Royal Collection some time ago. I reported only what I thought I'd heard from Mrs Fioratti's living room.
DeleteOH- it is from HF's apt! It was just a wild guess. I was there over a decade ago. Such a curious place, a very unique mood not seen anywhere else in NY, except in the 1920s. Funny, the hall was one of the rooms I remember liking the most.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, the apartment is very beautiful and you're right about the unique mood – I was impressed by it immensely. The hall's single impressive object was the Baroque cabinet. Enlarge the picture and you can see wonderful details.
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