Curious Objects guest Kay Collier, who is the owner of Kathryn Hastings and Company, purveyor of fine antique and modern wax seals, has always been a letter writer. You can thank her grandmother for encouraging the habit. Every week when she was a child Collier would receive a card with a piece of bubblegum and a dollar bill, and would send mail back. When she was nineteen Collier took a trip to Europe with her sister. Visiting the Amatruda papery on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, one of the oldest paper manufactories in Europe, her heart lit upon a wax seal. “You just have an intuitive feel for a ..read more

A couple of months ago, Ben Miller turned up at the Salmagundi Club in New York’s West Village to assume an unfamiliar role: that of interviewee rather than interviewer, sharing his expertise on nineteenth century American silver with the audience of the Gilded Gentleman. It’s a conversation that we are proud to present to you now. Silvery was in a state of flux during the nineteenth century. Discoveries of huge lodes such as the Nevadan mother given its name by Henry Comstock, new production methods like silver plating, and most importantly, the maturation of the domestic industry, were shift ..read more

For nearly two hundred years, from his death in 1823, New York potter Thomas Commeraw was out of sight. In 2010 it finally became possible to positively identify him: as a prosperous free Black craftsman with a manufactory in Corlears Hook employing seven people, an enterprise that provided stiff competition to the legacy affairs of Pot Baker’s Hill in lower Manhattan ..read more

A conversation about broadening the scope of collecting practices beyond traditional Anglo-European material, discussing the challenges and opportunities for collectors taking an interest in previously overlooked or under-recognized fields. Led by Ben Miller, featuring Jeremy Simien, collector; and Jesse Erickson, Curator of Printed Books and Bindings, the Morgan Library and Museum. Venue: New York's Winter Show, 2023 edition ..read more

In 1750, a Pentacostal religious movement, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, arose in England. More commonly known as the Shakers for their ecstatic dance, today this movement can claim only two living exponents. But the legacy of Shakerism—ideals such as equality between the sexes and among races, sublime music, and simple furniture that seems to prefigure modernism—lives on. In the second and final part of Curious Objects’ exploration of Shakerism, host Benjamin Miller interrogates the myths that have arisen around this movement in the 150-odd years since its heyday ..read more

In 1750, a Pentacostal religious movement, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, arose in England. More commonly known as the Shakers for their ecstatic dance, today this movement can claim only three living exponents. But the legacy of Shakerism—ideals such as equality between the sexes and among races, sublime music, and simple furniture that seems to prefigure modernism—lives on. In part one of a two-part exploration, Curious Objects host Benjamin Miller considers the Shakers and their material culture in its historical context, with input from Brother Arnold Hadd of Sa ..read more

In 1837 a family group that flew in the face of convention was committed to canvas, presumably by portraitist Jacques Guillame Lucien Amans. It showed four children. Three were white, dressed in their Sunday best and gazing placidly at the viewer. The fourth, standing behind them in a Brooks Brothers livery coat, was a Black teenager. This is Bélizaire, and at some point around the turn of the twentieth century—for reasons unknown—his portrait was covered up. In this final installment of the trilogy we consider Bélizaire’s legacy and that of his portrait. Does the debonair boy of 1837 have an ..read more

In 1837 a family group that flew in the face of convention was committed to canvas, presumably by portraitist Jacques Guillame Lucien Amans. It showed four children. Three were white, dressed in their Sunday best and gazing placidly at the viewer. The fourth, standing behind them in a Brooks Brothers livery coat, was a Black teenager. This is Bélizaire, and at some point around the turn of the twentieth century—for reasons unknown—his portrait was covered up. Last week we took a close look at Bélizaire the person, and his tortured life-path through antebellum Louisiana society. This week we ex ..read more

Sometime around the turn of the twentieth century, the Black child at the rear of this 1837 family portrait was painted out. Why? Benjamin Miller sits down with the painting’s owner—and its primary advocate—Jeremy Simien, as well as scholars, collectors, and other experts in the field involved with the painting’s journey from museum castoff to much-fêted cipher for the Antebellum South, and attempts to nail down why its eponymous figure was forgotten for so long. Part 1 of a 3-part series on the painting "Bélizaire and the Frey Children." Feat. Jeremy K. Simien, Ogden Museum of Art curator of ..read more

As you await the upcoming season of Curious Objects, please enjoy this special bonus episode, in which Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Abraham Thomas, ceramist Roxanne Jackson, and painter Andrew LaMar Hopkins join host Benjamin Miller onstage at the 2022 edition of the Winter Show to grapple with the legacy of Walter Benjamin’s famous 1935 essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” How have Benjamin’s contentions about “aura” fared in the ensuing eighty-odd years since its publication? And how might we apply his thoughts on art to works of craft being produced today ..read more