Displaying items by tag: Decorative Arts

Modern art, architecture and decorative arts created in the middle of the 20th century were swamped by the reactionary ruckus of the late 20th century post-modernist movement. 

Given the quality and originality of so much of the mid-century’s aesthetic industry, its relegation to obscurity was a big mistake and a now recognized lapse of taste. However, all wasn’t lost.

The Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design Fair (also known as SOFA) opens on Thursday, November 5, at Festival Hall at Chicago’s historic Navy Pier. The show, which has run continuously since 1994, is celebrated for its sharp focus on three-dimensional works that blur the boundaries between fine art, decorative art and design. This year’s fair will feature seventy-plus dealers from around the world exhibiting everything from ceramics, wood, glass, and fiber to jewelry, paintings, photography and works on paper.

SOFA will debut a brand new look this year thanks to...

When: Friday, November 13, 2015 at 1:00 PM EST to Sunday, November 15, 2015 at 1:00 PM EST

Where: Deerfield Community Center, 16 Memorial St., Deerfield, MA 01342

Join Historic Deerfield for an in-depth examination of the decorative arts of New England's inventors, merchants and peddlers during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

When President Adams moved into the new White House in 1800, innovation and adaptation already drove the creative designs of many New England-made objects. Even as elite tastes maintained traditional ties to European styles and materials, the consumer demands of an expanding middle class fueled inventive entrepreneurial approaches to making and selling cheaper American-made attractive goods. At times protected or even encouraged by embargo, war, and westward expansion, New Englanders made and sold a profusion of wares including patent clocks, popular prints, glassware, stoneware, tinware, pewter, cast iron stoves, and stenciled and painted furniture. First competing with and ultimately replacing European manufactures for many families, they infused their products with artistic energy and excitement that spurred a national impulse to "Buy American." Forum speakers and demonstrators will include Peter Benes, Deborah Child, David Jaffee, Amanda Lange, Ned Lazaro, William McMillen, Mary Cheek Mills, Sumpter Priddy, Andrew Raftery, Christine Ritok, and Philip Zea.

The 34th San Francisco Fall Antiques Show (FAS) will kick off on Wednesday, October 21, with an opening night Preview Gala at the Fort Mason Center’s Festival Pavilion in the city’s posh Marina District. The distinguished fair, which brings together an extraordinary range of fine and decorative arts, including American, English, Continental, and Asian furniture and decorative objects, fine art, jewelry, and much more, will be chaired by the leading interior designer Suzanne Tucker.

Says Tucker, “Many of the finest dealers from...

Christie’s is re-vamping its spring New York sales calendar and introducing a new centrepiece auction. Six sales of mostly pre-Modern art, including the new “Revolution” sale, which includes work made from the 18th to 20th centuries, have been consolidated into the new “Classic Art Week,” which will take place from April 12-14, 2016. Five other sales (antiquities; the two-part Old Master paintings auction; sculpture and the “Exceptional” sale of decorative arts) have been moved into the week from December and January as part of an overall push to cross-pollinate across departments.

Old Sturbridge Village has a remarkable collection of early American objects - the furniture, tools, clothing, toys, decorative arts and other artifacts of life in rural, inland New England during the period 1790 to 1840.

Old Sturbridge Village regularly hosts Collectors' Forums in order to focus on this collection, bringing together curators, experts, collectors and the public to examine a large sampling from the collection and learn about new scholarship and perspectives on the collection. This annual event is being held in conjunction with the opening of our new exhibit, Kindred Spirits: A.B. Wells, Malcolm Watkins and the Origins of Old Sturbridge Village.

Christie’s announced on Tuesday an auction of works from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of English furniture and decorative arts to benefit the Met’s acquisition fund in that department. The sale, which includes more than 200 lots, will take place October 27, in New York. The works up for auction are being deaccessioned as the museum prepares a renovation of its British galleries.

In a statement, Luke Syson, the Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, had the following to say: “This has been just the right moment thoroughly to reassess our British collections for the first time in half a century.

The inimitable Baltimore Summer Antiques Show will celebrate its 35th anniversary from August 20 to August 23, 2015, at the Baltimore Convention Center. Located in the flourishing Inner Harbor area of downtown Baltimore, the fair is the largest indoor antiques show in the country.

Produced by the Palm Beach Show Group, the 2015 Baltimore Summer Antiques Show will feature nearly 400 international exhibitors offering everything from furniture, silver, Americana, porcelain, glass, and textiles to major works of fine art, antique and estate jewelry, and Asian antiquities. According to Scott Diament, CEO of the Palm Beach Show Group...

Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, today announced the appointment of curator Margaret K. Hofer to the role of Vice President and Director of its Museum division. Ms. Hofer has contributed to or overseen New-York Historical’s decorative arts collections and exhibitions for over two decades, and spearheaded the groundbreaking 2007 exhibition and publication A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls, which revealed previously unrecognized achievements of Tiffany Studios’ women designers.

Experts and enthusiasts will flock to the French Quarter July 30 to Aug. 2 for the nearly sold-out New Orleans Antiques Forum, hosted each year by The Historic New Orleans Collection.

This year's forum features representatives from 16 states, from New York to California. "It has been incredibly well responded to," said Jack Pruitt, director of development and community relations with the Historic New Orleans Collection. "I'm really proud of that.