Word: curiosities
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Actually, the interest began with Mother, whom the Rockefeller sons have always talked of in capital letters. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller was a woman of powerful prejudices, and most of them were good. She collected Indian art before many people thought it worth collecting, ventured into Greenwich Village to see the...
With regard to the black people, or vis a vis the history of manufacturing in America, or the collection of American antiques, or an interest in American art, one might feel a dillettante, or boorish. Listen to any knowledgeable person--especially a European--and he will tell you to study...
When Louis XVI succeeded Louis XV in 1774, the rococo was superseded by the neoclassical mode, an improbable amalgam of Roman severity and Bourbon frivolity exemplified by the small writing desk that stands between two tapestry-covered Louis XV armchairs. The desk's spare lines are in conflict with...
No Victorian parlor was complete without its whatnot crammed with porcelain curios and bric-a-brac. Potters of that day found an endless market for glossy, sentimental figures of puppies, kittens, grazing sheep and cows (sometimes used as milk pitchers). Today the ceramic gimcrack is coming back, this time destined...
One of the earliest pioneers was a former lute player, Danish-born Thomas Wilfred. In 1921 in New York, he built a kind of visual Wurlitzer, which he called the Clavilux. By moving sliding keys, he activated a battery of projectors behind a translucent screen. He became so skillful that...