The Litchfield County Antiques Show, Conneticut

The Litchfield County Antiques show, Connecticut.
By Jan Lee
(As seen in October 09 Issue of Conneticut Cottages and Gardens)

Despite a torrential downpour, the Litchfield County Antiques show opened without a hitch. The show had a strong representation of fine American, European and Asian antiques.

Eve Stone, amidst her renowned 18th and 19th century copperware collection, had some items of particular interest to me as a dog owner, three antique dog collars. Large European dogs, such as mastiffs were highly valued as sport hunters and farmstead or estate guardians. Mastiffs accompanied the games keeper as he did his daily rounds.

Eve’s dog collars were inscribed with both the dog’s and the owner’s names, much in the way they are today. However, these were complete with a working lock and key ensuring the security of the collar as well as the animal’s identity should the dog ever get lost. The obvious difference between these immaculate antique examples and today’s collars is the workmanship. Each collar represents many hours of specialized craftsmanship, work we don’t associate with something as utilitarian as a dog collar today.

As testimony of their importance as guardians, companions, and status symbols, these collars tell us a great deal about man’s relationship to dogs in 19th century Europe. Leeds Castle museum, in Kent , England houses the largest dog collar exhibit in Europe , with a collection spanning five centuries!

Each of Eve’s collars is unique, one was solid, hand -formed brass, another was leather with metal accents, and yet another a combination of several materials. All represented diverse craft disciplines, and each a work of art.

Guarding over a beautifully edited collection of rare Chinese jades and archaic bronzes in the Asiantiques booth from Winter Park, Florida stood a pair of Q’ing dynasty wood-carved “Fu dogs” of the mythical kind.
“Fu” means good fortune in Chinese, and these guardians have been instilled with bringing good fortune to the owner’s home whilst keeping negative energy and bad spirits away for hundreds of years.
This pair still wears traces of their original gilt and color, and according to the Lorins, owners of Asiantiques, the fine-carving detail hints at a possible imperial workshop “pedigree”.


Fine workmanship prevails in a set of 19th century Nantucket nesting baskets from Roberto Freitas American Antiques. As Roberto pointed out these were not so much functional as they were decorative statements of superb craftsmanship and family bonds. The set of eight baskets fit neatly into one another. As we opened up the set and put them side by side their precision and restraint left me awestruck. I’m always attracted to handmade objects that celebrate the material, in this case rattan cane and wood. The method of construction involved wooden molds to ensure uniformity and symmetry.

It is a study in discipline and austerity. Mr. Freitas pointed out that it came from a family in Nantucket who had treasured the set as a family heirloom and kept it intact. Extremely rare to find a complete set, which, along with its patina contributes to its five-figure price.

Austerity and fine workmanship continued as I found Jeff of Jeff R. Bridgeman American Antiques, who told me about his early 19th century “country” Windsor settee. Jeff explained that this settee, was found pretty much as we see it today, in the basement of a library in Dover, New Hampshire and that it had “probably been there since the building was built” , which Jeff guesses was in the 18th century.

We agreed that the piece has all the lines of a more formal Windsor settee, but like many country versions, possessed more evidence of the maker’s hand and was more pared down than its city “cousin”. Its seat was made from a single board, gently shaped by hand, as were the forty finely-turned spindles, each perfectly matched to the next in a rhythmic pattern providing both strength and lightness to the piece.

Like so many of Jeff’s pieces it could reside as comfortably in a stark Manhattan loft as it would in a period home. The simplicity of so many of his pieces, from his rare early American flags to his furniture, transcend the obvious placement and challenge us to reinterpret American folk art in today’s environments.

My love of the rustic surface drew me to a Gustavian cabinet in the booth of Dawn Hill of New Preston, CT. Jane Fredrikson who was manning the booth for Dawn Hill owner Paulette Peden gave me a crash course in authentic Swedish antique furniture as we discussed this simple cabinet.

I asked what distinguished this Swedish piece from anywhere else in Europe? Jane pointed to the French influence of the Gustavian period, when French craftsmen in Sweden removed much of the extraneous decoration found in traditional French furniture thus simplifying the lines.

Much of the furniture, though not all, was painted because they didn’t have the expensive woods found in France. This piece was probably for a dining room in a country estate, but Jane was sure to point out it didn’t come from a grand manor house. “The French would have so many more embellishments”, she said and this is what makes this piece Swedish. It’s also why Swedish furniture has enjoyed much popularity, as today’s interiors have embraced simplicity with less emphasis on creating period museum vignettes.
In fact, all of these pieces are as viable today as when they were created due to their workmanship and simple lines. The Litchfield County Antiques show was an eye opener for me. I have, throughout my career, focused on ethnographic and ancient material, however these finds were just as exciting. The folk art quality common them was greatly appealing to me.

Tramp Art

Tramp Art
By Jan Lee
As Seen In July/August 09 Issue of Conneticut Cottages and Gardens

Owning a business that is as varied as mine, part antiques dealer, part gallery owner, part wood worker leads me to meet some of the most interesting people and often times even more interesting objects. Over a decade ago I hired a local woodworker to refinish an antique Chinese demilune table. A few weeks after I dropped it off I came back to the man’s shop located on an upper floor of a Jay Street Brooklyn industrial building. The table was stunning, perfectly refinished with a satin glow while retaining its worn and battered surfaces. I knew this man was a master of his trade from just this simple project. I learned from subsequent repair and refinishing projects we collaborated on that my new found friend and later woodworking mentor was originally from St. Petersburg, Russia. He had a classical woodworking apprenticeship starting at age 14.

I eventually hired him and for nearly a decade we traded skills, he taught me about wood working and I taught him the ins and outs of the complex and often trying antiques market and custom furniture design business which I grew to eventually be represented in two New York Showrooms.
One day I started to see numerous notched boxes piling up in the workshop, which I now owned completely, and I learned that someone named Cliff was dropping them off for repair. Each had a little nick here and a scratch there, an entire chunk was missing on some. They were about the size of a tissue box covered in small triangular notches with a stepped design like that of a ziggurat topped with a finial. Most of the boxes had cloudy layers of oxidized varnish making the color a uniform dull brown.
As the weeks went by I saw the boxes, one by one, receive entirely new strips of notched mahogany carefully inlaid where there was previously a gap. With the precision of a surgeon the “teeth” were fitted to look as though they were always there, next a matching stain was applied. I used to hang out with my Russian friend amidst the sawdust and wood chips in the workshop and chat about what we thought was the history of these curious and “primitive” folk art pieces that were no longer limited to just boxes; there were picture frames, and even clocks and sculpture.
We surmised these were Polish, Russian, Pennsylvania Dutch, perhaps South American. We wondered what they were worth.
All of our questions were answered by Cliff Wallach, the owner of what turned out to be one of the world’s largest and best collections of “tramp” art. Cliff, at the time, lived in D.U.M.B.O. ( down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass), Brooklyn which is where my workshop and showroom is located, only a few blocks away. Cliff was humble and through a distinct New York native accent he explained to me that “I have a ton of this stuff in my showroom”. Little did I know at the time, he had already published a book on the subject, appeared on T.V., in print, and lectured on what is often overlooked in the antiques market, this subject of “tramp art”. We traded stories about what antiques shows we liked , which ones we didn’t like, and which ones we’re scheduled for in the coming year. I learned about tramp art through osmosis and casual conversation with Cliff and our master repair man as each piece was lovingly restored with as much care as its original maker put into it.


Cliff explained the intriguing history the “tramp” artist. “Like the art form it is steeped in intrigue & romance” he said. Contrary to the often repeated fable of the itinerant tramp whittling a cigar box into a charming keepsake in exchange for a few nights rest in the farmer’s barn during harvest season, Cliff paints an entirely different and more plausible if less dramatic account of the origins of this art form.
He derived his account from over two decades of scholarship and literally thousands of examples that have come through his hands. He points to numerous examples that include such motifs as hearts, a symbol of love. Starting from this iconic symbol he builds upon the notion of love being a central theme in much tramp art. Although the craftsmen had no formal training and probably no formal education they were making objects that reflected what their heart felt, for their fiancé, their family, their friends, or even their own parents who may have been far away. The tramp art craftsman was a man who worked primarily in one place, not at all the traveling hobo antiques dealers make him out to be. He was a family man who could have worked in any number of industries, but at home he sat quietly and with a simple pocket knife and relaxed by making art using materials that were cheap (discarded cigar boxes available all over the world) and glue. As Cliff points out “over 40 ethnic groups practiced the art form in this country from the Lebanese man who made a frame for his daughters wedding in 1908 to the tramp art box with the Ten Commandments on its top in Hebrew”.
In the decade that my workshop made repairs for Cliff I saw countless picture frames, boxes, figures, and at one time a museum quality five foot tall frame with its own easel entirely covered in chip carving complete with eagles and the stars and stripes. It was head and shoulders above us and truly magnificent. It was a “once in a lifetime” piece as Cliff puts it.
What struck me about many tramp art pieces is the modernity of them. Even though many of the examples I see are over 75 to 100 years old, they possess an almost pop art quality that transcends their humble origins. Being a collector of African and Chinese folk art, I see the common language of the folk artist in tramp art. What is initially dismissed as “primitive” and created by the “tramp”, upon further examination is often a milestone in modern design once isolated. As mid century artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Chuck Close held a microscope to their oversized images sharing with us the individual “pixels” that made up the image, the tramp art craftsmen used the notches and stepped configuration to build up the three dimensional form while celebrating the process, the texture and the technique in a naïve and subconscious way.
My Russian friend eventually moved on to greener pastures, seeking lower overhead in the Midwest. My relationship with Cliff Wallach remained even though he moved his home and showroom from DUMBO, Brooklyn to Greenwich Connecticut. We see each other at antiques shows and we marvel at his latest pieces. Cliff has transformed, through editing and scholarship, a once humble and overlooked folk art genre into a “must have” for some of the most sophisticated collections from the Hamptons to Geneve.

Cecelia Bauer, Jeweler

An Ancient Technique Lives On – Master Goldsmith Cecilia Bauer
By Jan Lee, As seen in Conneticut Cottages and Gardens October 2009 Issue

A coal fire is coaxed to white hot by an apprentice pumping a bellows. At the other end of the crucible the master goldsmith, with a blow pipe in his mouth, directs a stream of oxygen from his lungs into the flame and, with surgical precision, focuses the heat onto his work. In a flash a row of spherical grains of pure gold, one tenth the size of a pin head, are fused to a gold band. In total his masterpiece will comprise of some 20,000 grains all fused in exactly the same way. Only with experience can the master goldsmith judge the precise moment at which the grains will be permanently bonded, a subtle color change tells him when its about to happen. He moves his flame, the bond is made, success. Just as quickly his entire masterpiece can be melted into a mass, grains and all, if he so much as blinks. The place is East Anatolia , the year is 900 B.C.
Amazingly not that much has changed in the making of this extraordinary art form in the twenty first century. As master goldsmith Cecilia Bauer explains “ we do pretty much the same thing as they did then with copper plates, hide glue and the placement of the granules one at a time onto the substrate with fine sable brushes. For example the Etruscan pieces, no one has done better before or since. The pieces they were making were for the Gods. It was jewelry for a higher purpose.”

She adds “ it’s extremely meditative, four or five hours can go by when I am doing granulation work and I don’t even realize it.” Cecilia in fact loves this painstaking technique known as “granulation

Cecilia Bauer began her career as a master goldsmith in New York City in the mid seventies. A graduate of Pratt Institute, she was trained as a stone sculptor. Her love of “all things classical” has remained within her design sensibility to this day.
“It all started when a girlfriend of mine showed me a piece she had made in a class, it was enamel cloisonné, and I said to myself ‘I want to do that!’” Once she began to learn about the process of ancient goldsmithing techniques she became “obsessed immediately”, to the point where she devoted herself fulltime and apprenticed with Robert M. Kulicke and Jean Reist Stark of the Kulicke-Stark Academy. Cecilia taught for a few years at Kulicke-Stark and began taking on commission work, culminating in the opening of C.Bauer Studio in 1991 where she teaches fine jewelry making from beginner to advanced. Gold granulation is a specialty of Cecilia’s.
Cecilia credits her mentor and teacher Robert M. Kulicke, a renaissance man of the mid twentieth century, for single-handedly changing American attitudes towards jewelry as art. Mr. Kulicke who passed away only recently, was a self taught goldsmith, inventor of the metal art frame used by the Museum of Modern Art, and art historian. “Forty Years ago people didn’t consider jewelry in the same way we do today, they didn’t regard it as art. Bob (Kulicke) changed that by referencing classical designs in his pieces and celebrated jewelry as an art form.” I feel that Cecilia has continued to bring awareness to classical jewelry styles and techniques in this country with her school and her modern take on classical styles. Her portfolio is replete with pre-Columbian, Mughal period India, Victorian and Roman era references.
In Connecticut Isabel Dunay, of Dunay Joaillier by appointment
203.552.5229 includes in her custom made selections this beautiful pair of diamond stud earrings with granulation. Striking in their simplicity, their classical lines allow the beauty of the diamonds to shine through. “We currently have two more orders for these ” Isabel points out, speaking on the renewed popularity of gold granulation as of late. Isabel is an appointment only showroom located in Greenwich.
Gloria Karp of Glorious, an appointment only showroom located in the Westchester area Phone: 646-778-1266 E-Mail: gloriousity@optonline.net, shares with us a circa 1870 European made Etruscan revival bracelet in gold granulation with authentic Roman classical era coins “it has a matching brooch with a similar coin” said Gloria, pointing out that she personally loves granulation and she currently has a few pieces in her collection.
There will always be a client who appreciates the craftsmanship, the history, and the design of a classical jewelry piece. For the time being we can rest assured that at least one master goldsmith is passing along the traditions and techniques that have endured through thousands of years and across numerous cultures.

Cecilia Bauer can be reached for commissions or classes at
C.Bauer studio
135 West 29th Street
NYC NY 10001 , 212-643-8913.

Whimsical Flower Vases on Etsy

Glass artist Kanik Chung introduces these charming flower vases available now at www.kanikchung.etsy.com