Displaying items by tag: Newport

Despite the sometimes irreconcilable differences that culminated in the Civil War (1861-65), Newport and other Northern cities maintained close social, economic, cultural, and artistic ties with the South from the Colonial period through the Gilded Age. The 2015 Newport Symposium, North and South: Crosscurrents in American Material Culture, invites a fresh look at regional differences in American furnishings, silver, textiles, painting, architecture, and interiors to reveal the complex exchange of ideas and enduring influences.

An historic mansion on Newport, RI’s famed Bellevue Avenue is scheduled to be sold via telephonic auction by noon on Saturday, October 19, 2013. Built in 1851, Swanhurst has an asking price of $4.4 million.

The contents of the mansion will be available at an estate sale being held from October 18 through the 20th from 9AM to 3PM. Offerings will include French and English antiques, fine art, furniture, decorative objects, tableware, silver, crystal, glassware and vintage clothing.

The mansion is being sold through California-based auction company, Premiere Estates. The 7,600-square-foot home was one of the first mansions built on Bellevue.

Prominently situated on the shore of Newport Harbor in the historic Easton’s Point neighborhood, Hunter House (circa 1748) (Fig. 1) exhibits the work of craftsmen practicing in eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island. The collection demonstrates the quality and breadth of Rhode Island-made furniture, silver, and pewter, among other decorative and fine arts. The northeast parlor of the house and its interior woodwork, rich in classical details, serves as a backdrop for the collection. Here, locally made wares appear in their appropriate domestic context: within an eighteenth-century structure, its original interiors, and in constellation with the objects used alongside them. Newport’s distinct design tradition is evidenced in the decorative arts and architecture of the house, which reveal the variety of artisans working in close proximity to one another and to Hunter House in the second half of the eighteenth century.