Curious Objects

The Magazine Antiques
  • 4.9 (166)
  • ARTS
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY
Curious Objects

Through interviews with leading figures in the world of fine and decorative arts, Curious Objects—a podcast from The Magazine Antiques—explores the hidden histories, the little-known facts, the intricacies, and the idiosyncrasies that breathe life and energy into historical works of craft and art.

  1. SEP 25

    Learning to Love Antique Rugs, with Jan David Winitz: Part 2

    In this episode with Claremont Rug Company, president and founder Jan Winitz and Ben Miller explore myths about rugs, and the symbolic meanings of colors in rugs and importance of signatures. Winitz introduces his Oriental Rug Market Pyramid, which categorizes rugs from high collectible to reproduction levels, illustrating this and other points with four Persian Ferahan Sarouks, each of which represents a different quality level and degree of rarity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    43 min

  2. SEP 11

    Learning to Love Antique Rugs, with Jan David Winitz: Part 1

    In part one of a two-part episode with Claremont Rug Company, president and founder Jan Winitz gives Ben the goods on the first Oriental rug he ever acquired. Made on a vertical loom over the course of nearly a year by a group of women, its imagery includes dragons (for the masculine principle of the cosmos) and phoenixes (for the receptive, earth-rooted feminine principle). It made such an impression on Winitz that he’s never attempted to sell it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    30 min

  3. AUG 28

    The curious histories behind board games, at the American Folk Art Museum

    In this week’s episode, Ben Miller speaks with Emelie Gevalt, curatorial chair for collections and curator of folk art at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. On view starting September 13 at the museum is the exhibition Playing with Design: Gameboards, Art, and Culture, an exhibition co-curated by Gevalt, who has brought along one special example to discuss: a nineteenth century painted-wood Game of the Goose board. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    41 min

  4. AUG 14

    Tiffany's frog-shaped creamer and pufferfish sugar dish, at the Met

    In this week’s episode, Ben Miller speaks with Annamarie Sandecki, who describes herself as the “semi-retired former director” of the Tiffany Archives, and Medill Higgins Harvey, curator of American decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the light table are a curiously shaped creamer and equally curious sugar bowl, the first in the shape of a frog and the second shaped like a pufferfish. Both were made by Tiffany under the aegis of design director Edward C. Moore, whose personal collection of decorative arts objects from around the world served as an inspiration to Tiffany in the later 1800s, and is the subject of a current exhibition at the Met, Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany and Co. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    41 min

  5. JUL 31

    CO Bites: Pretty, Dangerous

    In this week’s episode, host Ben Miller speaks with Sarah Margolis-Pineo about a turning chair prototype made at the Mount Lebanon Shaker community. But don’t sit in it. Looking like a Wendell Castle sculpture avant la lettre, its bird-bone-thin spindles and threaded metal swivel mechanism are too delicate to support the weight of a full-grown adult. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    13 min

  6. JUL 17

    Introducing Mitchell Owens

    ANTIQUES has a new editor in chief! Mitch Owens, formerly of World of Interiors, joins Ben Miller on this special episode to give listeners an inside look at his art and design philosophy, and his plans for the magazine. Sneak preview: when Ben asked what would be the salvation of the antiques world, Mitch replied that it’s essential to inspire collectors to acquire objects “promiscuously.” “People love things, people are magpies, and I think we should do everything in our power to encourage these explosive affairs of the heart,” he says, even if they occur across diverse collecting categories. An example of our editor’s own “promiscuous” taste is this week’s curious object: a copy of a fifteenth-century enameled and gilded wedding cup made by the Murano glass-making family Barovier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    49 min

  7. JUL 3

    The "Confirmed Bachelor" Who Forever Changed American Homes

    In this episode, Ben digs into the history of Beauport, the Gilded-Age mansion perched on a rock ledge overlooking Massachusetts’s Gloucester Harbor. Built by Henry Davis Sleeper, one of the country’s first interior designers, it was conceived as a house-sized Valentine for the statesman and economist Piatt Andrew, the object of Sleeper’s (unrequited) affections. Vin Cipolla, president and CEO of Historic New England, which stewards the house today; the institution’s curator of collections Erica Lome; and writer and curator R. Tripp Evans feature. Additional music by @JackIsidore @SamGriffinGuitar Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    42 min

  8. JUN 19

    THROWBACK: The WPA Origins of the American Doll, with Allison Robinson

    During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration funded an interracial labor program in Wisconsin that employed over five thousand women to craft handmade goods: the Milwaukee Handicraft Project. Especially noteworthy among the rugs, quilts, costumes, and books that the women produced is a run of exquisitely crafted and clothed toddler-sized dolls. Host Benjamin Miller learns from scholar Allison Robinson about how these dolls—made to represent different ethnic groups both foreign and domestic—provide insight into New Deal–era debates over women’s labor, race, and cultural nationalism . . . and into the origins of Barbie and American Girl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    46 min
See All (117)

4.9
out of 5
166 Ratings

About

Through interviews with leading figures in the world of fine and decorative arts, Curious Objects—a podcast from The Magazine Antiques—explores the hidden histories, the little-known facts, the intricacies, and the idiosyncrasies that breathe life and energy into historical works of craft and art.

Information

  • Creator
    The Magazine Antiques
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2024
  • Episodes
    117
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © All rights reserved
  • Show Website
    Curious Objects

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