Curious Objects

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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In this Curious Objects Bites episode, Benjamin Miller examines an 1830s manuscript tune book from rural Vermont. Bound crudely in leather, this book of sacred music was made by a farmer named Bernard Ward as a gift for his grandson, and many years later passed into the major collection of musical instruments, books, scores, and ephemera assembled by Frederick R. Selch. Filling Ben in on the details of this unusual item is Brenton Grom, executive director of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum in Connecticut.

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Rebecca Romney, co-founder of rare book dealer Type Punch Matrix and a frequent guest on Pawn Stars, returns to our podcast Curious Objects this week. She has with her a mid-nineteenth-century abecebestiary, or calligraphic treatment of the alphabet with animal motifs, made by Englishman Charles Eduard Stuart . . . except that wasn't really his name. Charles Manning Allen and his brother John, known as the Sobieski Stuarts, were eccentric book publishers who claimed to be descendants of Stuart claimant to the throne Bonnie Prince Charlie. Volumes produced by the pair such as Romney’s abecedary, what she describes as “Book of Kells meets M. C. Escher meets Game of Thrones,” and bogus guides to Scottish tartans and clans found a ready audience in romantic Victorian England.

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Greg Cerio, editor of The Magazine ANTIQUES, died Saturday. In this special episode, Ben pays tribute to the man who gave Curious Objects the green light, and who foresaw a rich future for objects from the past.

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This week Glenn Adamson returns to the pod to discuss an exhibition he co-curated at the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York. Worlds Within: The Art of Toshiko Takaezu focuses on the work of the Okinawan-American ceramicist, which bridges the gulf between art and craft. In this inaugural installment of Curious Objects Bites—bingeable conversations about fascinating things for the busy listener—Adamson details a “closed form”: a Takaezu pot that confines a bead that rattles around inside.

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Taylor Thistlethwaite, proprietor of Thistlethwaite Americana in Middleburg, Virginia, returns to the pod to defend the merits of “brown furniture.” Whether it’s earthy, richly figured black walnut or the sometimes-overlooked black cherry, it’s important not to “think of wood as just something brown,” Taylor says. “There’s so much life in it. And it matures like fine wine.” Case in point: Taylor’s three-hundred-year-old chest-of-drawers with chunky hardware and unusual feet that is as beautiful as it is rare.

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If you ever start to feel like history is abstract, spend a little time with an object or two that were actually there. For instance, a silver bowl and a pair of candlesticks that once belonged to New York grandees Pieter and Elizabeth Delancey, which suddenly reappeared recently after being lost for three hundred years. In this special rerun of one of Curious Objects’ most popular episodes, host Benjamin Miller revisits the obscure journey made by these three storied objects, with the help of Debra Bach, curator of decorative arts and special exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society, Tim Martin, owner of S. J. Shrubsole, and Delancey heirs Dan and Alice Ayers.

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Last month Benjamin Miller made a guest appearance on Art Slice, hosted by the podcasting power couple—and artists and art historians—Stephanie Dueñas and Russell Shoemaker, and now available here. The trio’s conversation focuses on a dazzling group of mixed-metal wares made by Tiffany and Company in the latter part of the nineteenth century, including such standouts as an 1879 chocolate pot in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a coffee pot shown at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Of special interest is the former object’s patinated copper elements, produced by an alchemical technique that was a closely guarded trade secret during the most fertile period of the silver firm’s history.

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