Eighteenth-Century Jewelry

Editorial Staff Art

By JOHN HAYWARD; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, April 1955. Most aspects of eighteenth-century arts and crafts have been the subject of detailed and exhaustive research in the course of the past fifty years. The jewelry of the period, however, has been somewhat neglected in favor of Renaissance jewelry (so called, though much of it dates from the first half of the seventeenth …

A desk associated with George Washington

Editorial Staff Furniture & Decorative Arts

By JOAN SAYERS BROW; from The Magazine ANTIQUES May 1978. The  handsome slant-front desk illustrated here was originally owned by Colonel George William Fairfax (1724-1787), whose estate, Bevoir, was near Mount Vernon on the Potomac River in Virginia. In April 1773 Fairfax took his wife, sally Cary, to England, after asking his neighbor George Washington to watch over Belvoir while they were …

Skippets

Editorial Staff Art

By J. S. BROWN; From The Magazine ANTIQUES, July 1978. Skippets are small boxes made to hold and protect pendent wax seals attached to important documents. Silver, silver-gilt, and gold examples were used by the United States government between 1815 and 1871, primarily on treaties with other countries that had been ratified by Congress. The skippet was suspended from the treaty by …

Two hoof spoons

Editorial Staff Art

By ALBERT SCHER; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September 1978.  When Helen Burr Smith wrote about silver spoons with hoof-shape terminals in ANTIQUES in 1944 there were only four of these interesting survivals from seventeenth-century Dutch New York households known in America. Now two more hoof spoons have come to light.   Fig. 1-Silver hoof spoon, probably New York, seventeenth century. Length 6 …

A Demonstration in Pewter Making

Editorial Staff Art

By L. M. A. ROY [Originally published September 1949 ; posted in conjunction with Barrymore Laurence Scherer’s “American Pewter,” March/April 2013.] Mr. Roy’s model for this pictorial demonstration was John G. Herrock, “whose family,” he says,” were tinkering with tools from the time they came to Maine in 1799.”  Besides pewter, he makes violins, reproductions of colonial furniture, wrought iron, jewelry, and …

The Care of Pewter

Editorial Staff Art

  By John W. Poole [Originally published November 1938; posted in conjunction with Barrymore Laurence Scherer’s “American Pewter,” March/April 2013.] IN ADDITION to the desirability of maintaining the value of personal property, the owner of antiquities possessing historical and cultural significance owes a very definite obligation to posterity. In some fields, little or none of this responsibility may be shifted …

George IV and the arts of France

Editorial Staff Exhibitions

By Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Deputy surveyor of the Queen’s Works of Art Originally published by The Magazine ANTIQUES in May 1966. From the day that George IV, as Prince of Wales, first took up residence at Carlton House when he came of age in 1782, to his death in 1830, he collected French works of art on a scale previously …

Dated English delftware and slipware in the Longridge Collection

Editorial Staff Art

By Leslie B. Grigsby. Originally published in June 1999. The Longridge Collection of ceramics is English pottery Valhalla. Nestled in a New England house with rare English and Continental treen, medieval ivory and metalwork, and early furniture and carvings, this extraordinary collection of ceramics can be divided into two main groups: about 440 pieces of tinglazed earthenware (delftware) and 100 …

How America found its face: Portrait miniatures in the New Republic

Editorial Staff Art

  By Elle Shushan; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, April 2009. The stunning events of July 1804 were almost unfathomable for the citizens of the new American republic. One Founding Father had fatally wounded another. Alexander Hamilton was dead and Aaron Burr  would be indicted for murder. The duel and its aftermath marked a turning point in American culture. Fig. 17. Thomas Cole …