Upcoming events
Baltimore’s Decorative Arts Treasures With DAS
Invited on behalf of the Decorative Arts Society: Discover Baltimore’s Decorative Arts Treasures
Join us for a two-day visit to Baltimore, Maryland, for three curator-led tours of the city's finest museum collections!
Thursday, November 19
1:30 pm: Tour Homewood, one of the nation's finest examples of Federal-period Palladian architecture, and explore its collections with Michelle Fitzgerald, Curator of Collections.
3 pm: Tour The Baltimore Museum of Art’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American Art collection with Brittany Severt, the Anne Stone Associate Curator of Decorative Arts; Virginia Anderson, Senior Curator of American Art; and Charlotte Gaillet, Curatorial Assistant.
6:30 pm: Enjoy dinner at Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen, located in The Baltimore Museum of Art.
Friday, November 20
10 am: Tour The Walters Art Museum, including highlights from the ceramic collection and a preview of the new European galleries with curator Earl Martin, the Deborah and Philip English Curator of Decorative Arts, Design, and Material Culture. Afterward, guests will have the opportunity to view Luxury & Loss: Feather, Shell, Tusk, Horn, which explores the history of objects made from these materials, featuring the Walters’ Asian, European, American, and African art collections.
Amenities included in the trip fee include admission to the three museums and dinner hosted by the Decorative Arts Society at The Baltimore Museum of Art’s restaurant Gertrude’s. Guests are responsible for booking their own transportation and overnight accommodations. The Hotel Revival, a short walk from the Walters, is recommended.
Cost: $60 per person
Limited to 15 attendees on a first-come, first-served basis.
Lecture by Amy Dehan - From Frontier to Finery: Cincinnati Silver
Following the establishment of Cincinnati as an American settlement in 1788, the frontier outpost’s strategic location along the Ohio River fueled its rapid growth. Within a few decades, Cincinnati transformed into a thriving center for commerce, wealth, and cultural ambition, creating a strong market for luxury goods, including silver.
The city’s first known silversmith, Celadon Symmes (1770–1837), was active as early as 1789, only a year after Cincinnati’s founding. His work marked the beginning of a remarkable tradition that would attract hundreds of silversmiths, jewelers, watchmakers, and clockmakers from the Eastern seaboard and abroad. By 1850, Cincinnati boasted a greater concentration of these artisans than any other city in the Midwest. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the city emerged as one of the nation’s premier centers for the production and sale of luxury silver wares, earning a reputation for both artistic excellence and technical innovation.
This presentation traces the development of the city’s silver industry from its earliest days, through the rise of mechanization and industrial production, and into the twentieth century.
Image credit: Tureen, 1872, Duhme & Co. (1843–1893), silver, Private Collection. Photography by Rob Deslongchamps
Zoom information to come.
Tour of Design Across time With Curator Emily Orr
Invited on behalf of the Decorative Arts Society, Emily Orr will be leading a tour of the Cooper Hewitt's Design Across Time, a reinstallation of its permanent collection
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Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is unveiling its permanent collection galleries with Design Across Time: Exploring the Smithsonian’s Design Collection. The landmark presentation showcases a selection of 125 works drawn from Cooper Hewitt’s collection installed throughout the first floor of the museum’s Carnegie Mansion. The exhibition provides visitors with a new thematic take on the collection and expands access to its vast repository of historic and contemporary design, including significant works newly brought out of storage, recent acquisitions on public display for the first time, and canonical objects of American and global design history.
The exhibition is rooted in the idea that design is everywhere, that it serves a civic purpose and that from small objects to larger systems, everyone is an expert user and active participant of the built environment.
Cooper Hewitt has been collecting design since its founding in 1897. The national collection now has more than 215,000 objects spanning six continents and thirty centuries, including product design, architecture, graphic design, fashion and textiles, wallcoverings, and digital and interaction design. From sketches and prototypes to finished products, the collection continues to evolve to represent new areas and ideas of our time, reminding us that design is constantly around us.
Lecture by Elizabeth Williams - Recasting American Silver in the Modern Age: The Gorham Manufacturing Company and Erik Magnussen 1925-1929
The 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris served as a catalyst in recasting the direction of the Gorham Manufacturing Company and its design staff, which that year included its leading Modern designer, Danish émigré Erik Magnussen. Gorham hired Magnussen, who came to Providence from Copenhagen in 1925, to infuse a strong dose of modernism into their product lines. Magnussen developed his style in the same artistic circle as Georg Jensen, and his early works for Gorham were in the vein of contemporary Danish silver design.
Magnussen’s most memorable and radical creation positioned Gorham in the vanguard of modern design among American silver firms. Resplendent with a gleaming surface of sterling, gold, and dark-patinated silver triangular facets, the designer’s Cubic Coffee Service was a three-dimensional manifestation of Cubism. The service caused an immediate sensation when it was displayed in the company’s Fifth Avenue showroom. Described by Gorham as being “…based on tall buildings seen from various perspectives and from sun shadows on set-back skyscrapers,” the set was hailed “The Lights and Shadows of Manhattan” by the New York Times.
Private Tour of Peter Marino's Tiffany collection at the Peter Marino Art Foundation
We will have a private tour of the foundation, concluding in the current exhibition of Peter Marino's collection of Tiffany & Co. Silver.
The exhibition is accompanied by a lavish publication with an introduction written by NYSS members
Mark McHugh and Spencer Gordon, who will share insights during our visit to the exhibition.
Spots are limited and will be granted in the order in which RSVPs are received. Participants will get themselves to the Peter Marino Art Foundation.
It can be reached by car, Hampton Jitney, or LIRR.
For more on the foundation, see https://www.petermarinoartfoundation.org/about
(The $20 admission fee can be applied to the cost of the publication should you decide to purchase it.)
PLEASE RSVP BY EMAIL - NYSilversociety@gmail.com
A Day At the Philadelphia Museum of Art With the Decorative Arts Society
Join us for an exciting day of decorative arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We will begin with a tour of Workshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, led by co-curators David Barquist, the H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., Curator of American Decorative Arts, and Colin Fanning, the Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts. After lunch at the museum cafe, Alexandra Kirtley, the Montgomery-Garvan Curator of American Decorative Arts, will lead us on a tour of A Nation of Artists.
Brimfield Meetup
For members attending Brimfield we’ll have a casual meetup at the food trucks. Come share what you found in the fields!
Look for the silver flag!
Annual Cocktail Party with Show & Tell
Our annual dinner will be an annual cocktail, this year in honor of Margo Grant Walsh. Show-and-tell, too.
More on Margo Grant Walsh
Private Viewing at Sotheby's Americana Week Auction
A Pair of American Silver Wine Cups, Paul Revere Jr., Boston, 1792, est. $600-900k.
Evening lecture to discuss Marcus & Co. Three Generations of New York Jewelers
With authors Beth Carver Wees & Shelia Barron Smithie.
Free event sponsored by the New York Silver Society. Space limited to 50 attendees. Please RSVP by October 28th.
Christie's Auction Preview
Exclusive members only auction preview of Christie’s next big silver sale.
