OBJECTS OF DESIRE
Thatcher Freund · 1995
Where to buy
Amazon’s price changes daily, so the most accurate place to see it is there, at the moment you buy.
View on AmazonThis is an affiliate link: if you buy through it, the site earns a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps us bring quality content and maintain the site. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
About the book
This vivid journey into the world of antiques follows the fortunes of three eighteenth-century pieces of American furniture as they pass through the hands of twentieth-century pickers, dealers, restorers, and collectors, accruing new value while becoming objects of desire. Among the many desirable objects on offer during the 1991 Americana Week in New York - the annual high point of antiques sales - are three prized pieces. One stands in a spolight at the Winter Antiques Show: a pine blanket chest made for a farmer in the 1750s and still wearing its original coat of robin's egg blue paint. The asking price is $250,000. A few blocks away, on display at Sotheby's, is a rare Chippendale card table, created in Philadelphia in 1759. The auction house is hoping that bidding for the piece will reach one million dollars. Also on display at Sotheby's is an inlaid sofa table from the Federal period, valued at $100,000, one of the prized possessions of a collector forced by circumstance to sell his cherished objects . How these three pieces came to be at the apex of the American antiques market is the story of the evolution of the world of antiques: a world of bold enterprise, canny deal making, consuming aesthetic vision, and obsessive pursuit - all fueled by a passionate attraction to objects.
Book details
- Year
- 1995
- Language
- English
- Publisher
- Penguin Books USA Inc.
- Editions
- 3
- Pages
- 304
- ISBN
- 9780140244809
Data source: Wikidata