Author Archives: Leah Kingman

Designer Spotlight: Fine Silver by David Andersen

David Andersen opened his eponymous shop in Christiania (now Oslo) Norway in 1876. As a designer and retailer specializing in jewelry and silver wares, Andersen’s business model closely mirrors that of Danish silversmith Georg Jensen, who was twenty-three years his junior. Jensen opened his shop in 1904. Upon Andersen’s death in 1901, his sons took over company operations and designs. Today, David-Andersen (the company’s name since the early 20th century) is practically synonymous with mid-century enameled silver jewelry.… Read More

The Mediterranean Revival Style of Quattro Venti

Designed and furnished in the Mediterranean Revival Style, Quattro Venti is the last great private residence in Annisquam Village, a small fishing hamlet near Gloucester, Massachusetts. Quincy Bent, vice president in charge of production at Bethlehem Steel at the turn of the last century, built the summer retreat around 1912.  His forebears purchased quarries in West Gloucester in 1820 and originally used the property, situated on the tip of the Annisquam peninsula, to transfer stone from river barges to schooners for delivery to cities up and down the East Coast.… Read More

A Trip to the Original Miami Beach Antique Show

Each year, for five days from the end of January to the beginning of February, about nine hundred antique, jewelry, and fine art dealers converge inside the Miami Beach Convention Center. The result is the largest indoor antique show in the world.

Della Robbia Pottery: A Fanciful Wall Plaque by Ellen Mary Rope

Children join hands and dance around a tree in this fanciful wall plaque designed by Ellen Mary Rope for Della Robbia Pottery. The plaque will be sold in the March 31, 2012 European Furniture & Decorative Arts auction at Skinner.

Della Robbia Pottery, founded in Birkenhead, England, near Liverpool, in December 1893, produced art pottery espousing the tenets of the British Arts and Crafts movement. Directors Harold Rathbone and Conrad Dressler set out to create domestic wares and architectural elements with local labor and raw materials. They wanted to emulate the manufacturing methods as much as the aesthetics of the Florentine Renaissance family of potters from which the company got its name: Della Robbia Pottery.