Many companies – storied, well-respected companies – produce handbags. But among collectors, and in particular, within the realm of the secondary market for handbags, it’s all about Hermes. Caitlin Donovan, Christie’s New York head of sales for handbags and accessories, told Galerie magazine in 2020 that “Eighty percent of the handbag department is Hermes.” Hermes […]
It is the tallest dome in the world. At nearly 450 feet high, the Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican is awash in color with scenes depicting the 2,000-year-old history of the Catholic church. Near the top, the Latin inscription proclaims, “…upon this rock, I will build my church,” which is ironic, considering […]
The realms of Americana, Folk Art, and Outsider Art covers a startlingly wide range of objects and artifacts. Source materials range from silver, ceramics, cloth, glass, brass, iron, cardboard, wood, tin, paper, and stone. Items that can qualify include board games, trade signs, wind-up toys, fireplace tools, paintings, prints, drawings, carvings, pitchers, plates, paperweights, carnival […]
Japanese woodblock prints have a long and storied history that is rightly tangled up in the genre of Japanese art known as ukiyo-e, which flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries. The powerful allure of the best examples still casts a spell, just like they did on the Impressionists, the post-Impressionists, and generations of artists […]
Many national flags are older than the flag of the United States, but no national flag has changed as often. From 1777, with the adoption of the 13-star design, to 1960, when it assumed the current 50-star pattern, the American Flag has officially changed no fewer than 27 times during the past 245 years. The […]
The Japanese began printing with wooden blocks sometime in the eighth century, but only in 1765 did they come up with a process that permitted printing in full color. That innovation, credited to Suzuki Harunobu, allowed for a golden age of ukiyo-e, the Japanese term for woodblock prints. The images caused a sensation all over […]
Who hasn’t looked at a curve of earth and thought, “I wonder what’s under there?” We’ll never know the names of the humans countless centuries ago who first plunged crude tools, and probably their fingers, into the soil over and over and over again, just to see what might lurk beneath. Some of those ancient […]
Incunabula, a Latin word that means “in the cradle,” describes books created during the infancy of European printing, an era that spans the years 1455 to 1501. These early books evolved from East Asian and Middle Eastern textile block prints as alternatives to costly hand-copied, scrolled manuscripts. Though this printing technique reached Europe in the […]
Great rock concerts can be unbelievably great–literally. The experience can be so fantastic that the words flee from your brain as you try to explain it to another who wasn’t lucky enough to be there. But even if you can remember the best show of your life reasonably well, you’ll jump at the chance to […]
Humans make art, and making art makes us human. Nothing brings this fact into sharp relief quite like looking at tribal art and artifacts. Hundreds of groups, communities, and bands of people–some still with us, some long vanished–used, and continue to use, whatever materials are available to them to express themselves, tell their stories, and […]