Antiques Roadshow, the 44-year-running reality series in which inheritors find out if their family jewels are invaluable heirlooms or passed-down clutter, may have you believe that the only entry point into the rarefied world of antiquities is either by bloodline or copious amounts of disposable wealth. (To be fair, such was the case for a very, very long time.) But as Michael Diaz-Griffith explores in his new Phaidon book, The New Antiquarians, a younger generation of creatives is engaging with these historic objects culturally, personally, and aesthetically—and often in new and unexpected ways.
“I’ve never watched the show,” the New York-based curator, designer, and now author laughs. “But that’s never been my journey. Rather than trying to find an old Tiffany lamp lost in an attic that’s worth however many dollars, I’m more interested in learning about the history of Tiffany.”
Raised in Florence, Alabama by adopted parents, Diaz-Griffith, 36, honed in on his curiosity for craft at an early age and against all odds. His maternal grandmother was a dealer of old-world treasures but her “abusive parenting,” as Diaz-Griffith describes it, left his mother fully against the decorative arts, meaning their family home was all but antique-free. Nevertheless, his passion took hold naturally: Decades before Diaz-Griffith would come to work at various top design organizations and institutions (from the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation to the Winter Show and the Design Leadership Network, where he is now an executive director), he remembers a scrubbed pine, Irish sideboard found in the depths of a flea market in Jackson, Mississippi stealing his heart at the age of eight. “It had a pediment top that I found so fascinating,” he remembers. “Even though it was a rural example, there was this naive kind of attempt at creating classicism in the form of the piece. I was in love.”
It is emotional moments like these that guides The New Antiquarians, which was released last week. Showcasing 22 collectors spanning Los Angeles to London, the coffee table tome dives into the personal environments of a new wave of young people that Diaz-Griffith says are “following in the long eccentric tradition of treating the practice of contour as a serious vocation.”
Many of these subjects’ practices do in fact overlap with their collecting habits—like designers Aaron Aujla, 37, whose studio Green River Project works between interiors and furniture, and Emily Adams Bode, 34, who helms her own eponymous fashion brand—and so their appearance in Diaz-Griffith’s pages is no surprise. The husband and wife’s warm Chinatown, New York loft, which the author calls “Cape Cod-meets-Chandigarh cosmos swirling over Lower Manhattan,” opens the book, serving as a neat invitation into its world. Captured by Brian W. Ferry, who oversaw the title’s primary photography, the wood-paneled scenes highlight the pair’s array of handmade dollhouse furniture, American quilts, Alsace pottery, Bengali literature, and vintage Chanel.
They contrast neatly with the 33-year-old curator Alex Tieghi-Walker’s Shaker design-filled split-level former home in Echo Park, Los Angeles—where raku-fired metal and clay pots from Bay Area artist Andrée Singer Thompson collide with collected textiles from his global upbringing—and Giancarlo Valle’s modernist Dumbo apartment. The 41-year-old architect and designer’s Brooklyn residence is not only home to him, his wife Jane Keltner de Valle, the founder of Paloroma skincare, and their two children, but an impressive array of timeless mid-century French and Italian design, with pieces by Jean Royère and Gio Ponti immediately catching the eye.
Leafing through the chapters, each peek into another home offers more evidence of not only the variety of these types of spaces, but the interests of these collectors, too. Thirty-two-year-old Camille Okhio’s Boerum Hill walk-up allows for a tranquil environment for the design writer to exhibit her Venetian glass miniatures beside books on art history, for instance, while Argentine-British artist Pablo Bronstein’s Deal, England abode is hyper-focused on his own family. “He has this serial collection of antique silver sugar casters that he began collecting after his grandmother gave him one when he was 16,” Diaz-Griffith explains of the 46-year-old. “He’ll talk about the phallic quality of these casters, and make dirty jokes about how they feel in his hand. I love that combination of the traditional collecting practice, and this much more liberated perspective on what these objects can mean.”
For Diaz-Griffith, who s been accruing his own physical obsessions for nearly three decades—portrait miniatures, watercolor renderings of interiors, American painted furniture—the decision to not include his collection was twofold. First, the author moved residences halfway through the production of The New Antiquarians, and second, he wanted to open up the book s focus to the greater creative world. As far as inclusion in a sequel? Diaz-Griffith is working on it. He just needs to find a space big enough to transplant the Irish sideboard from his childhood—then his collection will be fully complete.
