Antiques Journal, Comprehensive Coverage of the World of Antiques

I’m not usually moved to say good things about TV. I dislike the way that it distorts whatever it touches, and that the distortion always panders to the advertiser. But, that’s the world we live in, and there’s no point wasting good grumbles on what’s inevitable (though I can’t stop myself thinking that football would be a better game if there were no commercials constantly interrupting its momentum).

TV’s so called “reality” shows generally have about as close a connection to reality as I have to the planet Mars. But maybe it’s time for me to take a deep breath and reconsider, particularly for the antiques-based reality shows of the sort that our own Judy Penz Sheluk reviews so admirably and popularly in our TV Review column.

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In My Opinion Archives

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American Art Comes of Age

Hudson River School paintings in the Albany Institute of History and Art

The Hudson River School marked a new moment in American art: It is perhaps the most salient manifestation of a decisive shift in American culture that occurred in the early nineteenth century.

The term “Hudson River School” is used to describe panoramic landscapes made by two generations of artists, beginning in 1825 with Thomas Cole and flourishing for about 50 years. Most of the early paintings were of the Hudson River Valley, the Catskills, the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, but the school came to include landscapes throughout North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. Their subject matter ranges from sublime views of the wilderness, to beautiful pastoral scenes influenced by man, to allegorical pictures with moral messages. The artists took a reverential view of American landscape, which they saw as a manifestation of God. This reverence for the spiritually regenerative power of the natural beauty of America was shared with writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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Victorian design
New York drove furniture design in nineteenth-century America. The city had two enormous advantages – it was the main port of immigration from Europe, and it had a forward-looking population that wanted the latest and best, which, in Victorian times, often meant the most ingenious. Furniture makers and designers in the city won numerous patents for new furniture forms and for new ways of making furniture. Patents became marketing tools because they were a clear sign of innovation and ingenuity – very New York.

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The Isle of Lewis lies off the northwest coast of Scotland. It’s remote and beautiful; it’s wind-swept and sea-beaten. The winter days are short and grey. It’s the sort of land whose secrets are dark and closely guarded.

In 1831 the island gave up one of its secrets. A crofter, Malcolm Macleod, was digging in a sandbank in Uig Bay, on the island’s west coast, when he came upon a small stone chamber that had been uncovered by the sea. It contained ivory figures that he feared were “elves or gnomes upon whose mysteries he had unconsciously intruded.” He fled, but his “fierce wife” made him return and gather up the “pigmy sprites of Celtic folklore.” (The quotations are from an 1851 account of their discovery.)

The marriage of art and industry was a hallmark of American design at the beginning of the twentieth century. And there is no better exemplar than the work of William Grueby. The Grueby Faience Company, founded in 1894, helped define and popularize Arts & Crafts in the United States.

As a major venue for the upcoming Summer Olympics, the eyes of the world will no doubt be on Hyde Park. This London Park will be visited, photographed and viewed by millions of people as it takes its place in the spotlight on the world’s stage. But in the 1930s and ‘40s, it was a different Hyde Park that found itself at the center of the country’s, and sometimes the world’s, attention. Surrounded by homes of the rich and famous, this quiet Hudson River Valley town was catapulted to unprecedented fame and prominence because of its most powerful resident, Franklin Roosevelt. For Hyde Park, New York, was the home of the man who led America on the road back from the Great Depression and then steered the country through World War II. Today, the story of the life and times of the 32nd president of the United States unfolds on a 290-acre national historic site, six miles north of Poughkeepsie. And “Springwood,” as his home is called, continues to welcome visitors.

Somewhat reluctantly, I had agreed to be an appraiser on Connecticut Public Television’s version of Antiques Roadshow, called Connecticut Treasure Hunt. It was a fundraiser, and I guess a fairly successful one. A couple of hundred or more paid $75 to bring their antiques to the morning session, and another 200 or 300 shelled out $50 for the afternoon.

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