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“Theft, looting, and illicit trafficking of cultural property is a crime,” states UNESCO’s Illicit Trafficking Unit. “It deprives people of their history and culture; it weakens social cohesion…and fuels organized …

A reader, Louise, asked about my favorite books on THINGS, so I compiled a list for her:  1. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America by Lawrence Levine A …

A time machine to the future, the ultimate anthology, a museum on the moon, a message in a bottle: all these phrases describe the Lunar Codex, a massive contemporary art …

What do these faces from the McKenney historical portfolio reveal? We see Native American Chiefs circa 1838 pictured in two wonderful lithographs. JF owns these two portraits of distinguished Native …

A client owns a series of works dear to my heart. Scottish artist David Roberts (Edinburgh 1796-1864) painted these landscapes in lithographs. During graduate school at the University of Edinburgh, …

“Mr Watson, come here, I need you,” Alexander Graham Bell said to his assistant in 1876. The first words heard, and understood, through a telephone wire. Bell summoned his assistant …

I received a call to appraise vintage French Bicycle advertising posters, so I headed to my client’s huge garage in Ojai. Not only did I see wonderful early 1900s lithographic …

Walt Disney put white gloves on Mickey Mouse when he made The Opry House in 1929. Those big white gloves stop at the wrist and fasten at the back with …

In the 1960s in St. Ann, Missouri, my favorite aunt on Dad’s side, used plastic dinnerware made in the 1950s called Melmac in her modest home. When I visited my …

Fashion values became front and center when the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC opened Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, showing through to July 16. Last week I wrote …