Antiques

Free design consultation with award-winning designers

Written on April 27, 2011 at 11:43 am
By Doris Athineos

Consider cruising the five-day Spring Show NYC as 65 dealers from around the country strut their stuff at the Park Avenue Armory. The show opens this Thursday and all opening-night proceeds benefit the ASPCA which explains the spotlight on animal-themed antiques. At the press preview, we fell for an ancient bronze ganesh, a pair of dashing Chinese porcelain hawks, a powerful terra-cotta Mastiff (above), and eagle-topped bull’s eye mirror, but you may also leave with one of the  leashed critters (up for adoption!) greeting guests at the door Thursday evening. On Friday night, Traditional Home’s award-winning “New Trad” designers will offer one-on-one design consultations gratis so come armed with your photos, paints chips and floor plans. There’s also a chance to bid for more extensive consultations with designs pros Patrik Lonn and Sara Gilbane, among others.

Never has the Armory looked more alive!

Fiesta Forever (happy 75th!)

Written on April 13, 2011 at 11:49 am
By Candace Ord Manroe

Here are few fave facts about Fiesta ware I picked up recently.

1) It’s been in production 75 years. Happy birthday!

2) Between 40 to 45 percent of all brides register for Fiesta.

3) Any purchase comes with a 5-year “chip” warranty. Seriously? Unbelievable. How can they do that for families like mine? Answer: the product seldom chips!

4) It’s the number-one collected dinnerware on E-Bay. That doesn’t really surprise me.

5) It’s still made entirely in the USA, in Newell, West Virginia. (Only the metal parts on Fiesta’s colorful flatware, introduced three years ago, are made in China, but that’s not Fiesta’s fault; it’s due to a lack of American metal companies.)

6) Did you realize all Fiesta ware is ovenproof? Guess I didn’t. And now the Fiesta Bakeware line of cookware can progress directly from the freezer to an oven of 500 degrees. (There’s little flint in the pottery so that it defects the heat.)

7) 88 percent of all customers buy two or more colors with their first purchase. Mix-and-match is definitely Fiesta’s “thing.”

Fiesta’s best-selling color caught me off guard: scarlet. I would’ve guessed an earthier tone.

9) The second best-selling color is “lemongrass.” Sharp, punchy, lovely, and just a couple of years in the line.

10) This company actually receives letters from grateful shoppers saying, “Thanks for being made in the USA.” And: “Thanks for making me happy.” Nice. Again, Fiesta, happy birthday. Available at department stores like Dillard’s and Macy’s.

Masterpiece theatre for design junkies

Written on April 13, 2011 at 9:11 am
By Doris Athineos

Springtime means a fresh start for the Art and Antiques Dealers League of America (AADLA) and its inaugural Spring Show, slated for the Park Avenue Armory April 28 through May 2, feels like a winner. The AADLA seduces us with a heady mix of bold antiques, dramatic paintings and vintage jewelry displayed in fancy wrapping. Designer Lars Bolander created the special effects with eye-popping color and theatrical lighting which emphasizes the armory’s soaring ceiling, a formerly hidden asset.

Go to see antiques in a variety of styles (Georgian, Queen Anne, Louis XVI)  mix with younger upstarts–mid-century modern Bertoia sculpture, a Carlo Bugatti copper inlay table or a colorful wool tapestry by the awesome, Russian-born painter Sonia Delaunay. If you can’t wait until next week, cruise by Bergdorf Goodman where windows on West 57^th Street feature some of the show’s animal-themed antiques (opening-night party proceeds go to benefit the ASPCA). Still not convinced? The exciting lecture program features the director of London’s Sir John Soane Museum (the most inspiring house museum in the world) and one of the world’s leading experts on Tibetan Buddhism (Dr. Robert Thurman) who will talk about collecting Tibetan bronzes.

The Connoisseur Committee includes 1^st Dibs Michael Bruno, designers Bunny Williams, Michael Smith, Vicente Wolf, Celerie Kemble and Mile Redd and honorary chairs Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

As an added bonus, Traditional Home’s award-winning New Traditional designers will help shoppers navigate the show. Bring your paint chips and fabric swatches and let the design pros help layout your room.

Masterpiece theatre for a new generation

Written on April 12, 2011 at 1:26 pm
By Doris Athineos

Springtime means a fresh start for the Art and Antiques Dealers League of America (AADLA) and its inaugural Spring Show, slated for the Park Avenue Armory April 28 through May 2, feels like a winner. The AADLA seduces us with a heady mix of bold antiques, dramatic paintings and vintage jewelry displayed in fancy wrapping. Designer Lars Bolander created the special effects with eye-popping color and theatrical lighting which emphasizes the armory’s soaring ceiling, a formerly hidden asset.

Go to see antiques in a variety of styles (Georgian, Queen Anne, Louis XVI)  mix with younger upstarts–mid-century modern Bertoia sculpture, a Carlo Bugatti copper inlay table or a colorful wool tapestry by the awesome, Russian-born painter Sonia Delaunay. If you can’t wait until next week, cruise by Bergdorf Goodman where windows on West 57^th Street feature some of the show’s animal-themed antiques (opening-night party proceeds go to benefit the ASPCA). Still not convinced? The exciting lecture program features the director of London’s Sir John Soane Museum (the most inspiring house museum in the world) and one of the world’s leading experts on Tibetan Buddhism (Dr. Robert Thurman) who will talk about collecting Tibetan bronzes.

The Connoisseur Committee includes 1^st Dibs Michael Bruno, designers Bunny Williams, Michael Smith, Vicente Wolf, Celerie Kemble and Mile Redd and honorary chairs Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

As an added bonus, Traditional Home’s award-winning New Traditional designers will help shoppers navigate the show. Bring your paint chips and fabric swatches and let the design pros help layout your room.

Hip, Hip, Hibiscus

Written on March 30, 2011 at 3:35 pm
By Rebecca Christian

The hibiscus is an immodest, look-at-me sort of flower, so impossibly showy and over the top, even for a tropical, that it’s even used as inspiration for tattoo art. It’s as temperamental as the soprano in an opera, too, only blooming in late summer. I like it anyway.  So I was pleased to find out about this one, a Rose of Sharon hibiscus, with blooms more subtly colored than most and beautifully variegated foliage. Called Miss Jilene, it is cold-hardy enough to bloom until first frost. It does well in full heat and sun in zones 5-8, but also blooms in partial shade. Nationally distributed for the first time this year, it will bloom its first growing season and is available exclusively at Nature Hills Nursery for $32 (http://www.naturehills.com/product/miss_jilene_rose_of_sharon.aspx).

Cyberspace 1st Dibs lands at The New York Design Center

Written on February 17, 2011 at 4:08 pm
By Doris Athineos

Do you even remember what shopping was like before 1^st Dibs?  Still, we miss the random encounter with a bold antique that suddenly crosses your path. Now you can have it both ways. The online powerhouse 1^st Dibs, which connects shoppers to 1,000 art and antiques dealers around the country (as well as Canada, Paris and London), just opened a loft-like pavilion at the New York Design Center (200 Lexington).  No longer confined to cyberspace, design devotee can now cruise the merch of some 50-plus dealers spread out across 33,000 square feet. The selection is tightly edited by  Michael Bruno and only the boldest, most beautiful objets make the cut.  This is a collection of art, antiques and furnishings with a point of view.

What’s different is that you get a real sense of a dealer’s style walking around their room-size booths. We fell in love with special exhibition curated by Roger Prigent of Malmaison. Does anyone not love the over-the-top, glow-in-the-dark Lucite sleigh bed that once belonged to makeup diva Helena Rubenstein? Mr. Prigent’s large shell mirror by Renzo Mongiardino is killer too. Love the lavender walls, sparkling Jansen chandelier and Palm tables by Serge Roche (1898-1988). The mood was very romantic and somehow exotic.FOUR STARS

The monochromatic black assemblages by Philadelphia artist Maria Nevelson are just the kind of random encounter that will keep you coming back for more. “She’s the granddaughter of Louise Nevelson,” explained dealer Eve Kelly Herman of Highland Park. Who knew? Check out the steampunk style furnishings at Get Back Inc.

What did you find?

Frost-smitten cabinetmaker goes fractal

Written on January 5, 2011 at 12:41 pm
By Doris Athineos

Inspired by the patterns of frost fogging up his windows, cabinetmaker David Lamb grabbed his sketchbook. Then he began reading about fractal geometry. “Mathematicians explain that frost and wood-grain patterns are fractals–self-replicating patterns,” says Lamb, who phoned Traditional Home from his studio in Canterbury, New Hampshire. After contemplating frost and fractals, Lamb settled on the design for his dynamic demilune table (detail above) which he named “Palladian Frost-Birch Fractal.”  Wow!

Lamb turned math into art. The pattern of the veneer looks like the facets of a diamond. And the crotch-birch grain pattern looks like a rippling tide. “All the nooks and crannies are another fractal feature,” explains Lamb. “The Bauhaus school of architecture is so sterile and reflects straight Euclidian geometry shapes. I prefer more detail. Fractals are all around us–snowflakes, frost, ferns, mountain ridges.”

The “Palladian” reference refers to the half-circular shape (“like a window”). We love the sweep of the stretcher, which Lamb explains is “the same curve as the apron.”

Lamb has other ideas he would like to explore if a patron were to commission another piece based on fractals. The demilune table pictured here isn’t for sale. For a closer look at the work of New Hampshire’s Artist Laureate  (and a member of the New Hampshire Furniture Masters Association), tap into David Lamb cabinetmaker.

Sound and Vision

Written on December 15, 2010 at 12:29 pm
By Doris Athineos

New paintings by Ethiopian-born Tesfaye Tessema were unveiled at New York’s Skoto Gallery last week (on view through January 22). The soft-spoken artist is at the peak of his performance. Tessema describes his art as “playing jazz with a brush.” We call it eye music. If you put Duke Ellington’s big band on canvas, it would look like Tessema’s “Symphony in Color.” His abstract language of color swings and the United Nations agrees. A few years ago, they turned one of his paintings into a stamp (to raise money for famine relief).

Affordable Art for the holidays

Written on December 6, 2010 at 10:45 am
By Doris Athineos

Art is at the top of my holiday wish list. And one of the best ways to find affordable, museum-quality paintings is by discovering young, emerging talent or rediscovering an established master with a museum track record. That’s why I can’t wait for Thursday, December 9, when Tesfaye Tessema, a native of Ethiopia who lives in Harlem, unveils his newest work at New York’s Skoto Gallery (529 West 20^th Street). The artist caught my eye several years ago, but he has a following among top gallerists, museum curators and serious collectors. The Guggenheim Museum has exhibited his paintings and the artist was invited to paint murals for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. But nothing prepared me for his latest abstract paintings bursting with juicy color. I love the dancing dots and squares.  High-energy and life-embracing, these abstract jewels have a musical quality and shouldn’t be missed. In fact, I’d like to find one hanging on my wall come Christmas morning.

the art of giving

Written on December 3, 2010 at 6:06 pm
By Amy Bleier Long

For all you art lovers out there—and for those who know art lovers, and for those looking for a good cause to support this holiday season—Zatista.com has something for you.

Zatista, an online art gallery, has partnered with activist organization Housing Works to host an online charity auction to coincide with the Art Basel Miami art fair. One-of-a-kind works by the site’s most popular artists are up for grabs.

#198 by Kaley Rhodes, Mixed Media on Canvas, 24″h x 36″w (photo courtesy of Zatista.com)

All proceeds benefit Housing Works, the US’s largest community-based group providing services for the homeless and those living with HIV/AIDS. Visit housingworks.org to find out more about this amazing organization.

So, if you can’t be in Miami Beach, you can still get an original work by an up-and-coming artist this weekend and help others in the process. The auction is live now through 8pm EST on Sunday, the 5^th.