It’s been almost seven years since The Magazine ANTIQUES launched its podcast Curious Objects. The show is going stronger than ever, and last fall we made the decision to increase its frequency from monthly to weekly. Amidst the recent flurry of activity, we caught up with the show’s host, Benjamin Miller. By now there are over one hundred episodes of the podcast.
What’s the best place for new listeners to start?
Benjamin Miller: I would recommend an episode that’s close to my heart: “Once Upon a Bowl,” a story about a trio of silver objects that belonged to the Delancey family of New York in the 1700s, and which came to my attention through an incredible series of coincidences. A favorite from the early days of the podcast is the episode with Paul Becker, a luthier in Chicago. Through him I had the opportunity to handle one of the oldest violins in the world, made by Antonio and Hieronymus Amati in 1620.
Tell us about how the project has evolved for you over these seven years.
Back in the mid-2010s I had done a couple of articles for the magazine that got me interested in the idea of writing about antiques. I realized that many of the very best storytellers in the antiques world are dealers. They’re great storytellers, but not necessarily great writers. So the original idea was to sit down with a dealer, put a mic on the table, and see what happened. What I’ve been thinking about more in the last year or so is how to start connecting with a broader, more general audience. Along those lines, something we’ve started doing recently is advice episodes. For Valentine’s Day this year we did one with Matt Imberman of the New York jewelry firm Kentshire, where he gave tips on buying vintage engagement rings.
Any topics you’d particularly like to cover in the future?
There’re so many fields that we haven’t covered yet. We’ve done very little work with Latin American, African, or Native American material. I’d love to do an episode about automata—but that might be a little hard in an audio medium. There are many quirky fun things that we haven’t tapped into yet—I don’t think we’re going to run out of topics anytime soon.
Parting thoughts?
The driving force behind the podcast really is the idea that the objects that we care about are built on stories and vice versa. What fascinates all of us about the fine objects that we engage with is the layer upon layer upon layer of human complexity that is implicit in each of them. The podcast is about digging through those layers, uncovering the hidden stories that bring these pieces to life for us, and thereby give us another way of falling in love with them.
