Gary Sullivan's Antique Clocks and Furniture Blog

Winterthur Museum Furniture Forum, 2011.

On May 4, 2011 in General by Gary Sullivan

I'm heading home from this year's furniture forum, which was terrific. The subject of the conference was the furniture of southeastern Pennsylvania. It was accompanied by a new book entitled Paint, Pattern & People: Furniture of Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1725-1850. The book and exhibit represent several years of research and hard work by Winterthur Senior Curator of Furniture, Wendy Cooper and her assistant, Lisa Minardi. For the exhibit, they assembled an amazing collection of 18th and early 19th century furnishings. The exhibit includes some super Pennsylvania German pieces with excellent original painted decoration. I was thrilled to see that the exhibit also included quite a few tall case clocks.

With the maker's name and location often inscribed on the clock dials (faces), they are excellent documents in determining local cabinet making styles. When researching regional furniture, we don't have the luxury of reading the place of origin right on the face, as we can with clocks.

Folk Art Museum May Partner With Seaport Museum

December 21, 2011 The American Folk Art Museum and the Seaport Museum, two New York museums that weathered difficult economic conditions this year, may partner for a series of exhibitions at the Seaport Museum in 2012. DNA info reports that the news broke at a city council hearing last week, where interim Seaport head Susan Henshaw Jones announced the museums’ intentions: “‘We are very much hoping that the Museum of American Folk Art will do exhibitions in four galleries [at the Seaport Museum] starting in June,’ Jones said at a City Council hearing last Friday.” The Folk Art museum moved out of its building on 53rd Street next to the Museum of Modern Art this July, after selling the building to MoMA. The Seaport Museum suffered similar economic difficulties, though in September, it was announced that it would receive a $2 million Manhattan Development Corp. grant for the post-9/11 recovery of nonprofits. By Dan Duray- [Read his article]
Winterthur: Furniture Forum 2012

March 7, 2012 I have just returned from the Winterthur 2012 Furniture Forum, where I lectured on the subject of northern clockmakers trading with the southern market during the 1st quarter of the 19th century. It was entitled “Clocks For Corn: Northern Clockmakers Trading With The South”. The Forum was called “Furniture In The South: Makers & Consumers”. It included two days of lectures and a fascinating field trip to Homewood Museum At Johns Hopkins University and Hampton National Historic Site. Both were well worth the trip. Add a tour of Winterthur’s Southern Furniture Exhibit on Saturday and it became a four day event. The forum was very well attended and the speakers were excellent. We recorded my lecture which you can now watch on my website. Click Here. Most of the attendees were from the South, so I was one of the few Yankees on hand. We had a lot of fun teasing each other about our accents. The crowd was largely made up of museum professionals and collectors, but there ware also a number of auctioneers, private dealers and restorers.
First new American art museum in half a century

November 14, 2011 Here is a story from Antiques and the Arts Weekly. I find it to be encouraging. First Major Museum For American Art Established In Almost A Half Century Opens By Stephen May If you are a fan of adventurous museum buildings and great American art, you are going to love the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and its world-class collection. Marking a significant development on the US cultural scene, the institution, the brainchild of Alice B. Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, opened to the public on November 11. It is the first major museum devoted to American art established in almost a half century. Housed in an innovative building designed by architect Moshe Safdie, the museum is located in a 120-acre forest that used to form the backyard of the Walton family home. Crystal Bridges draws its name from a nearby natural spring, which flows beneath the graceful pavilions. In keeping with his commitment to attune his buildings to their internal purposes and natural surroundings, Safdie nestled the 200,000-square-foot museum within a ravine, flanked by two wooded hillsides, surrounding ...
Willard Clock Museum news

September 7, 2011 The Willard House and Clock Museum in North Grafton, MA. boasts the largest collection of Willard clocks in the world. The extraordinary clock collection, along with many rooms of period furniture and decorations are housed in the 1718 Willard Homestead, the 1766 Benjamin Willard clock shop and in two modern galleries. The Willards were the most influential family of clockmakers in early America. With over 90 Willard clocks dating from the 18th and early 19th centuries on display, this museum is a must see for clock enthusiasts. The work of Benjamin, Aaron, Simon and Ephraim (among others) can all be found here. Perhaps this is a shameless plug, as I’m a trustee of the museum, but I encourage folks who are visiting the area to stop by. It is just minutes off the Mass. Turnpike and a short trip from Skinner’s Marlboro location. The Museum has some news, which is that we are welcoming Patrick Keenan, former Museum Assistant as our new Director and are confident that he will excel in his new role. We wish our capable former Director, ...
2014 recap blog

January 16, 2015 I looked at our last blog over the weekend and I was embarrassed to see that it was posted over a year ago. Well that is certainly not due to lack of effort. 2014 was the busiest year I can remember. Now we are headed into 2015, which will be my 40th year in the antiques business. It seems fitting that I start by recapping 2014 and highlighting some of those things which have kept Matt and I too busy to blog. Then I promise to keep up with events and maybe sprinkle in some “best of” stories from the past 40 years. The last blog was prior to the opening of an exhibit of Early American Musical clock that I curated at the Willard House and Clock Museum. The exhibit was a massive success. The clocks all played their music beautifully and it was impressive to see all these masterpieces together in one space. Thank you to all who participated. The catalogs are still available at the Willard House. You can take a video tour of the exhibit here. The ...
Brock Jobe’s latest research

August 23, 2011 I met with my colleague and friend Brock Jobe on Cape Cod today. Brock was one of the co-authors on our 2009 release “Harbor & Home”. He is traveling with his students who are enrolled in the Winterthur (Museum) Program in American Material Culture, a highly regarded University of Delaware program. My roll was to assist him in examining and discussing with the students, an exceptional private collection of early American antique furniture. I was thrilled to have had an opportunity to handle the great clocks in the collection. Brock is working on a new project, an in depth study of early furniture from Boston. The project is just getting underway and sounds like it will be quite extensive, with multiple institutions being involved. We could certainly use some scholarly research on Boston furniture. Brock is the Pied Piper of American decorative arts, so any research that he is involved in will certainly be well received. As the facts become clearer, I’ll share them.