The 2013 Winter Antiques Show, held January 25-February 3 presents Expert Eye, a six-part lecture series, featuring renowned experts in their fields speaking on their recently published books. Book signings will follow each lecture. Topics range from early Southern painting to Thomas Jayne’s discussion of the role of antiques in contemporary interiors.  All lectures take place in the Tiffany Room at the Park Avenue Armory, 67th Street and Park Avenue, New York City. Seating is on a first-come basis and is complimentary with admission to the Show.

Thomas Jayne will present Creating a Sense of Place: The Role of Antiques in Contemporary Interiors on Friday, January 25 at 4:00 p.m.  Thomas Jayne, chronicler and creator of fine interiors, is the author of the recently published book, American Decoration, A Sense of Place, which documents his own interior decoration, and also The Finest Rooms in America, 50 Influential Interiors from the 18th Century to the Present. The presentation will focus on the way he uses antiques in the rooms he creates using examples from his new book.

Thomas Jayne is the founder and principal of Jayne Design Studio in New York City. His interiors reflect his passion and wide-ranging knowledge of classical traditions and his quest to foster those traditions within more contemporary design. Jayne holds a Master’s degree in American decorative arts and architecture from Winterthur, and has completed fellowships at the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. His projects have been featured The New York Times, House Beautiful, Town & Country, House and Garden, and Vogue.

On Saturday, January 26 at 5:00 p.m., Carolyn Weekley will present The Magazine Antiques Lecture, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South: 1735 to 1780.  The lecture presents new and older research from letters, diaries, newspapers, and other sources about painters and paintings in the early American South, all of which is published in the book of the same title.  Issues covered include the web of relationships connecting sitters, friends and relations, clients, and artists; stylistic trends of the period; the lives and training of artists; and the range of paintings created for the wealthiest southerners to the middle class.  The talk focuses primarily on art from the settlements along the east coast from Maryland to Georgia. 

Carolyn J. Weekley is the Juli Grainger Curator at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. She has also held key curatorial and management positions at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She is the author of John Singleton Copley: An American Painter Devoted Entirely to His Art; The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks; Joshua Johnson: Freeman and Early American Portrait Painter; and Painters and Paintings in the Early American South.

Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill will present The Life of the House: How Rooms Evolve on Sunday, January 27 at 4:00 p.m. In this presentation on her most recent publication, Lady Henrietta celebrates the life of great rooms over the years and the evolution of their architectural features and interior decoration.  The eldest daughter of the 11th Duke of Marlborough, Lady Henrietta has long been dedicated to the world of interior design, forming her first company, Woodstock Designs, in 1981. Her textile collections are sought internationally and her work encompasses full-service interior design and renovation of country house properties, with projects in Atlanta, New York, Virginia and Dallas. Recent work outside the U.S. includes a house built by architect Lewis Edmund Cook, a Cape Dutch style house in Nevis, West Indies, a villa in Istanbul, and a 25,000 square-foot house in Scotland.

Lady Henrietta is an international lecturer and author, and has lectured at the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She is chairman of the “Churchill Memorial Concert,” an annual fundraiser held at her family home, Blenheim Palace. She has written more than a dozen books on classic design and entertaining, and her television programs include “A Moment of Luxury” on PBS.

Benjamin Macklowe will present French Art Nouveau Horn Jewelry on Monday, January 28 at
2:30 p.m.  This lecture, derived from Macklowe Gallery’s lavishly illustrated catalogue Nature Transformed, bridges the worlds of Fashion, Jewelry History, and Art History, not only documenting how the horn jewelry was made but also examining how its aesthetic wove together artistic and fashion trends of the day.  The social milieu of the department store, La Vie Parisienne, advertising and popular concepts of women’s fashion will provide an exciting backdrop for the discussion. The lecture will also explore how prominent themes of the period such as Japonisme and a fascination with the East are reflected in both the vocabulary of insects and flowers as well as in the shapes of many horn bijoux de fantaisie.

Benjamin Macklowe, Vice President of Macklowe Gallery (exhibitor at the Winter Antiques Show), has served as managing director of the world’s premier dealer of 20th Century Decorative Arts for the last 16 years.  Celebrating 41 years on Madison Avenue, Macklowe Gallery is known for Tiffany—lamps and glass, French Art Nouveau furniture, bronzes, and ceramics, French cameo glass by Daum and Gallé, pâte-de-verre by Walter and Argy-Rousseau, and lithographs by Alphonse Mucha as well as Fine Antique and Estate Jewelry from 1800 forward. 

On Wednesday, January 30 at 5:00 p.m. Elle Shushan will present, Lust & Love: The Eye Miniature in Georgian England.  Elle Shushan is the co-author of The Look of Love, a stunning volume that explores the little-known subject of "lover’s eyes," hand-painted miniatures of single human eyes set in jewellery and given as tokens of affection or remembrance. In 1785, when the Prince of Wales secretly proposed to Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert with a miniature of his own eye, he inspired an aristocratic fad for exchanging eye portraits mounted in a wide variety of settings including brooches, rings, lockets and toothpick cases. 

As the largest resource for exceptional portrait miniatures in America, Elle Shushan specializes in the full realm of the art; American, British and European miniatures on ivory, vellum and in enamel, ranging from the 16th through the 21st centuries.  In addition to many notable private collectors, Elle Shushan works with outstanding museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, MESDA and the Yale University Art Gallery.

On Saturday, February 2 at 4:00 p.m. Kenneth Rendell will present The Western Pursuit of the American Dream: The Challenge of Collecting an Idea.  Private collections that have become world class, and frequently become permanent cultural institutions, all have two factors in common: a vision or concept and a practical approach to acquiring the artifacts.  The thread that ties a collection together may not always be apparent at first, but it becomes apparent as the collection is formed.  The practical means may not seem to be an issue if there are many dealers and auction houses in the field, but can be very limiting if important pieces that are the lynch pins of the subject can’t be acquired.  Mr. Rendell will discuss these issues, tracing a collection that started as a kid buying war surplus in the 1940’s to what is now described as the most important World War II Museum in the world.

Kenneth W. Rendell is a longtime exhibitor at the Winter Antiques Show and has been a dealer since 1959 in historical letters and documents, from the Renaissance to the present time, with offices in Boston and a gallery in New York City.  The business encompasses all areas, from the law, to politics, art, literature, music, science, etc. He authored the standard reference books in the field, including History Comes to Life.  His most recent publication, The Great American West: Pursuing the American Dream, will be released this year. 

About the Winter Antiques Show

The Winter Antiques Show celebrates its 59th year as America’s most prestigious antiques show, featuring 73 renowned experts in American, English, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts in a fully vetted Show. The Show was established in 1955 by East Side House Settlement, a social services institution located in the South Bronx. All net proceeds from the Show benefit East Side House Settlement. The Winter Antiques Show will run from January 25-February 3, 2013, at the Park Avenue Armory, 67th Street and Park Avenue, New York City. The Winter Antiques Show hours are 12 p.m.-8 p.m. daily except Sundays and Thursday, 12 p.m.-6 p.m. Daily admission to the Show is $20, which includes the Show’s award-winning catalogue. To purchase tickets for the Opening Night Party on January 24, 2013, or Young Collectors Night on January 31, 2013, call (718) 292-7392 or visit this link on the Show’s website.

About East Side House Settlement

East Side House Settlement was founded in 1891 to help immigrants and lower income families on the East Side of Manhattan. In 1962, it moved to the South Bronx where it serves 8,000 residents annually within one of America’s poorest congressional districts, the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. Among the initiatives that focus on educational attainment as the gateway out of poverty is the innovative and highly acclaimed Mott Haven Village Preparatory School. For more information, please visit www.eastsidehouse.org.