Collecting

On a recent trip to lecture in Boston, I had the great privilege to visit the home of Dr Horace Wood ‘Woody’ Brock. Woody was probably the first collector I ever met. Before I joined Christie’s as a graduate trainee in September 1997, I visited the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair, at the time the most important art fair in the Western hemisphere, a place where the international great and the good would visit to buy the best the world’s dealers had to offer. As I wandered around the fair, I walked onto the Asprey stand - probably the last fair Asprey’s attended - and inspected a rather elaborate English clock with superb gilt bronze mounts. I don’t remember the maker, but it was highly decorative. After a minute or two, I was approached by a tall, rather impressive figure in glasses, dressed immaculately in a dark chalk-stripe suit. He demanded - in his unmistakeable firm East Coast American tones - why I was interested in said clock. This had never happened to me, and I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone to take any notice of me. Was he, perhaps, more interested in my girlfriend who I had dragged along and was rather bemused by all of this? No, it seemed he was curious - insistent even - to know what I was doing with my life, where I had been to university, and which department I was to be joining at Christie’s. As I said that I was shortly to join the furniture department, he sensed a like-minded soul (and he was right). To my great surprise, I was invited to meet him later in the week for breakfast at Claridges, where I tried hard to keep up with his insistence that I will enjoy furniture - having never previously shown any interest in that direction. Woody was right of course, and it all changed after I joined Christie’s in September 1997 and found that I really did enjoy the study of 18th century furniture, which Woody considers in our discussion here, to be the zenith of great design of almost any age.Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, ‘Emperor’, 1992. Krystian Zimmerman (piano), Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic OrchestraSome objects from Woody’s collection in US museums today:Furniture presented by Woody to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where these superb pieces are beautifully displayed in a Regency-themed room.Woody’s chosen object: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rufusbird.substack.com

In this podcast episode, I sit down with my former colleague at the Royal Collection Trust Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures from 2005-2021. In this episode, we discuss the particular role of royal collectors, and if there is really a motivation for art collecting as a Prince and how that sometimes becomes a form of ‘national’ collecting (if there is such a thing). During my ten years working at the Royal Collection, Desmond and I worked closely on a range of curatorial matters: in particular exhibitions. The First Georgians (2014) was led by Desmond; likewise he led on Charles I at the Royal Academy ( 2018, with Per Rumberg), while I worked on the coeval exhibition on Charles II at The Queen’s Gallery (2017, with Martin Clayton). We also spent a lot of time thinking about ‘palace display’ - we both worked on the improving the appearance, picture hang and arrangement of furniture and objects in the State Apartments at Windsor Castle, all of which came under the broader ‘Future Programme’ project, which was mostly completed just prior to lockdown in March 2020. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rufusbird.substack.com

1. James Stourton. A new occasional podcast, with interviews about why we collect art. In this, the first interview, Rufus speaks with James Stourton, formerly of Sotheby's and a writer on collecting. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rufusbird.substack.com