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 ..read more

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

How much should you spend? What kind of stone should you get? Is antique better than modern? These are just a few of the many questions that any courter must consider when ring-hunting. Here to share his ring lore on this special Valentine’s Day episode is a true jewelry expert, Matthew Imberman of Kentshire Galleries. First things first: don’t worry about cursed jewelry. In Imberman’s experience, it’s usually not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more

In this week’s episode, interior designer Tara McCauley gives listeners an inside look at her practice, which she likens, curiously, to a travel agency. She says: “I like to think of myself like I’ve gone into the market and I’ve done the research and I’ve talked to the experts and the locals and I’m bringing you the best kind of experience you’re looking for.” She's also brought along a small splatter-painted box by artist Thomas Engelhart, a veteran of the houses of Mugler and Hermès. For his series of handmade objets d’art in the shapes of pyramids, platters, obelisks, and disks, Engelhart ..read more

In 1909, Daisy Makeig-Jones was hired by the Wedgwood firm in Staffordshire, England, to decorate pottery. She would go on to develop the “Fairyland” luster pattern, which combined dazzling iridescent glazes with motifs from fairy tales and would serve to revitalize the Wedgwood brand. Bailey Tichenor, one half of the duo behind Artistoric gallery, comes on the pod to discuss a mid-1920s example of Makeig-Jones’s work called Poplar Trees, which boasts depictions of cypresses and other trees, a Japanese bridge, and winding river on the outside; inside are elves, flowers, and a mermaid medallion ..read more

In what has become an annual tradition, Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller capped off January with a panel discussion at the Winter Show. This year’s edition was named “Catching the Bug: Enriching Your Life Through Collecting,” and featured three distinguished collectors and the objects they live by and through. The Hawkes bowl belonging to conservator Lloyd Zuckerberg, interior designer Marcy Masterson’s Italian side chair, and the Etruscan hand mirror of artist and educator Thomas Lollar provide evidence not only of the discernment of their owners, but of some twenty-five hundred year ..read more

In what has become an annual tradition, Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller capped off January with a panel discussion at the Winter Show. This year’s edition was named “Catching the Bug: Enriching Your Life Through Collecting,” and featured three distinguished collectors and the objects they live by and through. The Hawkes bowl belonging to conservator Lloyd Zuckerberg, interior designer Marcy Masterson’s Italian side chair, and the Etruscan hand mirror of artist and educator Thomas Lollar provide evidence not only of the discernment of their owners, but of some twenty-five hundred year ..read more

In the summer of 1966 the Beatles were in Japan, whirling through the first leg of what would be their final world tour. Hoping to forestall the dangerous excesses of Beatlemania, Japanese authorities confined the Fab Four to their hotel suite at Tokyo’s Hilton Hotel for almost the duration of their one-hundred-hour stay. Casting about for things to do, the Beatles fell to painting: each took upon himself to design one quadrant of an acrylic-and-watercolor artwork known as Images of a Woman, currently on offer from Christie’s as part of the auction house’s annual Exceptional Sale. The painting ..read more