Curious Objects The Magazine Antiques

In Part 2 of a special two-part podcast, host Benjamin Miller speaks again with Peter Siebert, president and CEO of Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum, this time about a Revolutionary War–era naval signal book made for English Admiral Richard Howe. “Prepare to haul to the wind together on the starboard tack when in order of battle, and the ships are to haul to the wind forthwith when the admiral fires a third gun” and other such recondite orders fill this hand-printed and watercolored volume, belying its usefulness as an eminently modern tool of warfare.
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In Part 1 of a special two-part podcast, Curious Objects’ host Benjamin Miller speaks with Peter Siebert, president and CEO of Philadelphia’s Independence Seaport Museum about a folk art watercolor from the late 1700s that’s been the subject of a major research project. Called Navigation Lesson, the painting is believed to depict the artist, Cornelius van Buskirk, receiving instruction from Commodore John Barry (1745-1803), the man regarded as the father of the United States Navy.
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On this week’s episode, Ben Miller speaks with Elena Kanagy-Loux, lacewear trendsetter and co-founder of the Brooklyn Lace Guild. The focus object is a seventeenth-century Italian handkerchief, but Ben’s and Elena’s conversation also touches on that time she worked for Courtney Love; good (and bad) representations of lace and lace production in cinema; and Refashioning the Renaissance, a five-year project to investigate popular dress trends and meanings in early modern Europe.
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The Romanov dynasty was wiped out in 1918 . . . but what happened to all their stuff? Well, some of it ended up at Heritage Auctions, whose Imperial Fabergé and Russian Works of Art auction on May 17 hopes to move a treasure trove of ikons, furniture pieces, diaries, and gold-encrusted baubles. To discuss the sale—and in particular a Fabergé bonbonnière given to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna—Ben Miller welcomes guest Nicholas Nicholson, specialist in Russian works of art at Heritage.
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In the newest installment of our advice series, Ben Miller speaks with Jordan Heres, co-founder with his wife, Ingrid, of the Charlottesville, Virginia, rug purveyor Weft and Wool. The focus object is a rug from Karaja, Iran, made in about 1900, but Ben’s and Jordan also tackle such subjects as how often a rug should be washed, why you should never use a beater bar when vacuuming a rug, and where the best rugs can be found (spoiler: it’s Istanbul, but the runner-up might surprise listeners).
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In this special throwback episode, Benjamin Miller speaks with Ellery Foutch, assistant professor of American studies at Middlebury College, about a “relic Windsor chair” assembled by Henry Sheldon (founder of the Middlebury museum named in his honor) in 1884. This unique piece of furniture was built with fragments of wood salvaged from structures with local or national significance—such as the warship Old Ironsides, the William Penn House in Philadelphia, and a colonial whipping post. (Look here for a full list of the chair’s components.) And thanks to Foutch’s and her student’s efforts, the nineteenth-century chair now has a twentieth-century twin.
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