Boehm Art Middle Class “Classy”
EG sent me a photo of a magnificent seventeen and a half inch porcelain Blue Jay perched on raspberry branches. Its brilliant plumage modeled in hard-paste porcelain and hand-painted with …
French Circus Poster A Memorial Of Time
This week FF sent me a French advertising poster with the narrative theme of enjoyment at the circus. Well-dressed 1930s crowds enjoy a carnival, (buy your tickets!) signed Émile Finot. …
Fashionable Singerie Monkeys
Singerie, you say? Yes. DD owns a delightful group of color lithographs ‘after’ Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin‘s celebrated Le Singe peintre and Le Singe antiquaire. One monkey is an artist, the other …
Kerosene Lamp Carries Rich Story Over 2,460 Miles
This little green kerosene lamp proves a point. Objects possess much the same uncanny property as the old theory of “six degrees of separation.” The principle suggests that any two …
Music Box Captures Memories of Romanticism and Ragtime
LB owns an 1898–1902 Symphonion crank-operated tabletop music box. It spins perforated seven-and-a-half-inch steel discs on a double-comb movement patented in Leipzig by Symphonion Musikwerke. The photograph shows a bound …
A Sculpture With Compelling Dignity
JS sent me a chunky, hand-carved wooden sculpture of a powerfully built male figure with an amputated left leg below the knee. He’s shown in a direct, full-frontal pose, seated …
Mirror Reflects Remarkable Story
DD sent me a 19th century etched and blown-glass dressing table mirror, angled on an easel back. She asked about the history of “self-reflection” and its value. In the Golden …
Art Glass Raises Lots of Questions
Tacky? Bad Taste? Or a nice change from beige, black, and taupe? High or low culture? A serious work of art or a frightening mess from the 1980s? HG’s pseudo …
Moorish Box Spans Cultural Loop
HH owns a large jewel box that encompasses three cultural styles across ten centuries. Yet it’s neither rare nor particularly pricey. This vintage handmade inlaid box draws from the traditions …
Bracelet with a Wonderful Background
Historian BG sent me a bracelet passed down from a friend of her grandmother’s whose husband served in North Africa during WWII. This bangle comes from Egypt. I know by …