Last fall we educated a television producer who was thinking of making a new reality television series and wanted to learn more about quirky antiques. We had fun, and in talking about our favorite things, we fell in love with this business all over again. I thought I’d share with you a few items that we discussed.
Antique objects often serve as ambassadors for a period of history. While our knowledge of history is written and oral antiques are a reminder of the concreteness of our past. For example, the stanhope tells a tiny part of the history of photography, cinema and of our collective hunger for fantastical audience experiences.
Our Victorian Stanhope, which we selling for $395
John Benjamin Dancer adapted a medical magnification device and created the stanhope in the mid-19th century. The stanhope suspends a tiny image, the size of a grain of rice, in front of a magnifier. These magnifiers come in many different forms and were sometimes embedded in small objects such as crosses. At first glance, the stanhope looks simply like a magnification glass, or even a small cabochon stone. One must peer through the magnification to see the tiny image hidden within. The pleasure of the stanhope is in the surprise. Images in a stanhope can be anything, although religious icons and naked women were equally popular. Our stanhope features a japanese pagoda. At a time when people were increasingly excited by images (photography had just been invented, and the Lumier brothers would soon invent moving pictures), the stanhope was an magical experience for its audience.
Although distorted, this is an view of the tiny image through the magnifying glass.
People loved the stanope because of the element of surprise and unbelievability of the whole experience, not just of the image. In this way, the ipad and 3D technologies exist on a continuum with the stanhope. Our desires haven’t changed, but our expectations have become more sophisticated.
For more interesting design ideas, cynthiafindlay.com
Stay tuned, next blog will be about the Derby Grotesque Dwarves.
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Stanhope
Last fall we educated a television producer who was thinking of making a new reality television series and wanted to learn more about quirky antiques. We had fun, and in talking about our favorite things, we fell in love with this business all over again. I thought I’d share with you a few items that we discussed.
Antique objects often serve as ambassadors for a period of history. While our knowledge of history is written and oral antiques are a reminder of the concreteness of our past. For example, the stanhope tells a tiny part of the history of photography, cinema and of our collective hunger for fantastical audience experiences.
Our Victorian Stanhope, which we selling for $395
John Benjamin Dancer adapted a medical magnification device and created the stanhope in the mid-19th century. The stanhope suspends a tiny image, the size of a grain of rice, in front of a magnifier. These magnifiers come in many different forms and were sometimes embedded in small objects such as crosses. At first glance, the stanhope looks simply like a magnification glass, or even a small cabochon stone. One must peer through the magnification to see the tiny image hidden within. The pleasure of the stanhope is in the surprise. Images in a stanhope can be anything, although religious icons and naked women were equally popular. Our stanhope features a japanese pagoda. At a time when people were increasingly excited by images (photography had just been invented, and the Lumier brothers would soon invent moving pictures), the stanhope was an magical experience for its audience.
Although distorted, this is an view of the tiny image through the magnifying glass.
People loved the stanope because of the element of surprise and unbelievability of the whole experience, not just of the image. In this way, the ipad and 3D technologies exist on a continuum with the stanhope. Our desires haven’t changed, but our expectations have become more sophisticated.
For more interesting design ideas, cynthiafindlay.com
Stay tuned, next blog will be about the Derby Grotesque Dwarves.