Innehållsförteckning för February 2025 från Town & Country

1973 JOSEPH HIRSHHORN What’s the magic number to be considered a serious collector of something? How about 5,600? That was our low estimate of the treasure trove—which included at least 17 Rodins, 22 Giacomettis, and 21 Matisses, not to mention de Koonings, Pollocks, Wyeths, and Picassos—of Wall Street tycoon Joseph Hirshhorn when we featured him in a 1973 story on the labyrinthine ecosystem of the art world. “Hirshhorn buys so much art so fast that it is an almost impossible task to keep an up-to-date catalogue,” we wrote. “He buys almost every day. If he can’t decide which painting he likes, he buys them all.” Hirshhorn, who grew up in poverty, amassed all of this on his own. As a child he found joy in illustrated calendars; as his fortune…

Classic pursuits are classic for a reason, and there’s no age limit. You can become a collector, creator, or macher. Whenever you are ready. Ready? If the case can be made that the greatest collector of modern times was not a collector at all but an art dealer—Sir Joseph Duveen, in later life Lord Duveen of Millbank, proprietor of the Duveen Brothers gallery and robber baron–whisperer of Frick, Mellon, Kress, Widener, Altman, Huntington, Hearst, and many others—the book to make it is Duveen’s eponymous 1952 biography by S.N. Behrman. With typically impeccable timing Duveen died in 1939, and what began as a series of articles in the New Yorker chronicling his avuncular-to-outrageous behavior remains an essential stop for anyone interested in the history of collecting. (Duveen was responsible for assembling…

“I don’t think there is a right or wrong age,” says Coplan Kaufman, an art advisor based in Los Angeles. “It’s just when someone feels comfortable spending the money and wants to support the arts, as well as make smart financial decisions. I see a lot of people who drop thousands of dollars on furniture but always fall short when it comes to art. A $15,000 sofa loses value the moment you sit on it.” Kaufman primarily works with clients in their late twenties and thirties, many of whom are new to this arena and don’t know where to begin. “Because the art world is such an intimidating space, it can be overwhelming,” she says. “There is this misconception that you have to have millions to start collecting, and it’s…

“Dollhouse school doesn’t exist, of course,” Nicolas Guérin says, though if there ever were such a thing, he could be its dean. The Parisian dollhouse maker had no formal training in his craft apart from the architecture and art history courses he took in college—and an obsession with houses that began in childhood. “All my toys were mini homes from Playmobil or Lego,” he says. At age 12 Guérin took matters into his own hands and started building scaled-down maisons using wood, plaster, and cardboard. Now he specializes in exquisitely detailed châteaux inspired by 17thand 18th-century French architecture (do yourself a favor and follow him on Instagram, @NICOLAS.GUERIN.PARIS.DOLLHOUSE). “Most of my art is creating my own buildings as if I were an architect from the past. It’s a mix of…

Last December a Cartier Art Deco brooch estimated to sell for $100,000 to $150,000 went for almost $1.4 million at Christie’s New York. The piece—of natural pearl, tourmaline, ruby, onyx, and diamonds—was part of the collection of tastemaker Mica Ertegun, which is a partial explanation. But for jewelry experts the key to the high bid is this phrase in the catalog: “Cartier, Art Deco.” That period of design, between the wars, was marked by geometric lines and the influence of booming industry—and by a visible break with the past. The era’s jewelry reflects a freedom from the romance (and diamond garlands) of the Belle Epoque. It was a liberation that has proved highly desirable; signed Art Deco pieces remain some of the most coveted. A similar independence of spirit marks…

When the first Din Tai Fung opened in Taipei, in 1972, the restaurant had four tables. Its owners, the Yang family, lived upstairs. Fifty-three years later the Yangs oversee an empire that doles out Shanghai-style soup dumplings—their delicate skins folded 18 times each—among other delicacies, in more than 165 restaurants around the world. However, for brothers Aaron and Albert Yang, who earlier this year were named co-CEOs of the brand’s North American operation, things are just getting started. “At an early age I saw a lot of potential in the restaurant,” Aaron says from the company’s U.S. headquarters in Arcadia, California. “Back then most guests were Chinese or Asian. But I had diverse friends, and when I took them to eat at the restaurant, they seemed to enjoy the food.…

Look up! Exactly 20 years ago this month, a saffron-colored trail blazed through 23 miles of Central Park. On the snow-covered pathways, from 59th to 110th streets, sweeping, elegant panels of bright nylon billowed in the wind, like curtains descended from the gray winter sky. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates was the largest work of public art Manhattan had ever seen, and a welcome balm for a time marked by lasting grief. “It lifted our spirits as the city recovered from the 9/11 attacks,” recalls former mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was instrumental in bringing the project to life. Now Bloomberg Philanthropies, NYC Parks, the Central Park Conservancy, and the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation are reviving the achievement via augmented reality, recreating on your phone several hundred gates where the originals…

What’s NEXT? Why, I wondered out loud in December while viewing the historic jewels of a living collector being sold at Christie’s, would someone sell this? “Because a collector never stops collecting,” said a knowledgeable source. “These pieces will move on, but they are already searching for the next.” The relentless pursuit of beauty was certainly the theme of that weekend at Rocke feller Center. Diana Vreeland’s Belperron cuff was in one gallery; Mica Ertegun’s Jansen palm trees and ruby JAR torsade were in another. By the next week they had found new homes, and if my source is right, at some point in the future they may find themselves back in these halls, as their current owners indulge in the constant cycle of the devoted collector. We delve into…

“I that sent other jewelry collectors into a collect what I love,” says actress Jennifer Tilly. She references a recent auction frenzy. She resisted. “The pieces were historical but not to my taste.” Reviewing the pieces that have passed the Tilly test—the Paul Flato aquamarine and ruby buckle necklace (right), the Boivin starfish brooch—that taste becomes evident. “I like big, sculptural pieces,” she says. She also believes “jewelry has energy. Before you buy anything, try it on. You will feel it.” Which might explain the other theme that emerges from her jewelry collection. Tilly owns a charm bracelet that belonged to Joan Crawford, a brooch that Eddie Fisher gave Elizabeth Taylor, the Duchess of Windsor’s Cartier minaudière, and a piece from Norma Shearer’s personal collection. (“You know,” Tilly says, “all…

THE FLEX Patek Philippe’s Grand Complications will always win a collector’s heart. This Reference 5236P is a paragon of sotto voce eleganza with a vintage inspired opaline rose gilt dial, white gold hands and markers finished in charcoal gray, and a diamond hidden on the side of the platinum case at 6 o’clock. But the true pièce de résistance is the triple-patented in-line perpetual calendar, which displays the day, date, and month. PATEK PHILIPPE IN LINE PERPETUAL CALENDAR WATCH ($141,400), PATEK.COM THE OG Precision meets pure visual drama in Rolex’s latest gem-set version of the Cosmograph Daytona, which has been elevated to new heights with such luxurious details as black-and-white mother-of-pearl dials and dozens of brilliant cut diamonds. ROLEX COSMOGRAPH DAYTONA ($73,000), ROLEX.COM THE WILD CARD Berneron, co-founded in 2022…

It’s no use denying there’s a thrill that comes from things that are new, especially when we’re talking about playwrights. Just look to London, where this spring Ewan McGregor will return to the stage for the first time in nearly two decades to star in My Master Builder, a new play by Lila Raicek (it’s her West End debut). And last season Jeremy O. Harris arrived in the West End with Slave Play and won raves (on top of the 12 Tony nominations the play earned during its Broadway run). But newcomers aren’t the only ones making waves in London these days. The city’s stages have also seen high-wattage revivals, particularly of works by the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. September kicked off with an adaptation of Oedipus Rex directed by…

“It was important to me,” Sasha Zabar says, “to have something that felt like mine.” Despite hailing from the first family of New York food, and having held jobs at his father Eli’s eateries, Zabar went out on his own to launch Glace, an ice cream parlor that has become a sensation thanks to inventive sundaes and photogenic hot chocolate. While internet ubiquity is nice, it isn’t the raison d’être for Zabar, whose next project will be a Manhattan candy store. “It’s an amazing feeling when it happens,” he says, “but that’s when you need to focus on quality and execution. It can be easy to say, ‘I don’t like this but other people will,’ and you can get really lost doing that.”…

“ The word disruptor needs rebranding,” says Carlton McCoy, the 40-year-old CEO of Lawrence Wine Estates. “Sure, I like to look at how things are done and see if there’s a better way, but it’s not like I want to blow up the wine industry and just make a billion dollars.” McCoy is speaking from his offce in the Napa Valley, where he has spent the past six years, well, disrupting the wine business. “Actually, a billion dollars would be nice.” In 2018 he took the helm of the fledgling Lawrence Wine Estates after its namesake owner, Gaylon Lawrence, purchased the venerable Heitz Cellar winery. Since then the company has gone on a buying spree, adding five California vineyards and one in Bordeaux. The pair have hired notable winemakers and…

In a regular week, the usually homely Maastricht Exhibition & Conference Centre, in the Dutch city of Maastricht, hosts runof-the-mill functions such as a pub quiz and a flea market. Then, every March, for a few days it gets dressed up with banks of flowers to welcome an altogether different crowd. That’s when museum directors, art advisors, and billionaires from around the world descend on this provincial backwater straddling the Meuse River, many of them swooping in via private plane, to attend TEFAF, arguably the world’s most discerning art fair. “It’s truly the best,” says Aerin Lauder, the New York designer, collector, and member of TEFAF’s global advisory board. “The heritage of it, what it represents, and the people who come.” Co-founded nearly 40 years ago by the Dutch art…

YOU LIVE HERE NOW With a restaurant, boutique, and residences, a monument to all things Armani invites you to stay a while. The invitation called for black tie. Eyebrows were raised—for a fashion party? But few dared disobey instructions from the chairman of the board. That would be Giorgio Armani, who touched down in New York City last fall to stage a mic drop of a runway show coinciding with the opening of an Upper East Side compound to rival any Gilded Age mansion. There, on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 65th Street, is a 12-story colossus that runs the gamut of his universe—from Armani/Dolci sweets to made-to-measure to a Ristorante to 10 luxury residences appointed in modern Milanese style. At 97,200 square feet, it dwarfs the original…

WHERE ARE WE GOING? Skiing in the Alps may not be what it used to be—though try telling that to the elite racers who will be schussing down the pistes of Saalbach, Austria, in the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships (FEBRUARY 4–16, SAALBACH2025.COM), a biennial event second in importance only to the Olympics. Salzburg is nearby; stay at the new Rosewood Schloss Fuschl (ROSEWOODHOTELS.COM) to be spoiled like a Habsburg. WHAT ARE WE WEARING? Precision timekeeping has been in the Longines DNA since 1878, when the company introduced a chronograph so good it became indispensable for sporting events. In 1913 the brand put that mechanism in a wristwatch for the first time. That focus on accuracy extends to the entire Longines fleet, including the Conquest, a house classic since 1954.…

“I don’t know if it’s an inherited trait, but I come from a long line of collectors who were both inquisitive and acquisitive,” Beth Hutchens says. “Sometimes it can be a problem.” While family members have stockpiled carnival glassware, souvenir spoons, stamps, and arrowheads, Hutchens, whose primary trade is jewelry (she is behind cult label Foundrae), is a voracious collector of miniatures. She has hundreds of 1:12 scale gems in her inventory—an inch-tall bottle of wine filled with actual vino, a tiny tennis racket with nylon strings, hand-carved ivory binoculars the size of a thumbnail—with which she creates vignettes in various nooks (behind books, inside cabinets) around her homes and boutiques. “None of them are in dollhouses,” she says. “My whole point is that it’s a surprise. They’re in…

“I do think beauty is important,” Timothy Hull says, “and I want my work to be beautiful—as well as intellectually engaging. That’s the challenge.” To be fair, the artist has been quite successful in this endeavor over the course of his career, during which he has built up an oeuvre of paintings that reimagine ancient Greek themes, often through the lens of the queer gaze. For “Anonymous Fragments,” a new solo exhibition that opens this month at Emory University’s Carlos Museum, Hull has trained his inquisitive eye on the Atlanta institution’s collection of ancient Greek vase fragments to create a series of works that not only examine their motifs but directly question their problematic provenance. “It opened the door for a kind of institutional critique, where I could renew and…

“I didn’t know I was a collector,” says the writer and producer Keli Goff, “until I started speaking with curators about what I have.” What she has is a collection of vintage clothing that comprises nearly 150 pieces by Black designers like Patrick Kelly, Stephen Burrows, and Ann Lowe. It all began with a fondness for the fashions from old movies and a recent college graduate’s budget, but it has grown into a formidable assembly. Exhibitions, including one on view now at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, borrow from Goff’s collection, and she’s currently at work on a documentary inspired by her acquisitions. “What I’ve learned,” she says, “is that talking about this collection and these designers helps to keep their legacy alive.” Even if it also makes acquiring their…

“We didn’t even tell you what makes us mad,” says Chelcea Dressler-Crowley. We’re talking about Messermeister, the premium knife company founded by her parents and taken over in 2017 by Dressler-Crowley and her sister Kirsten Dressler Wilson after their father’s death. So what is it? “We love beautiful things,” Kirsten says, “and it makes us angry when people cut corners.” Luckily, Messermeister doesn’t. When the sisters took charge, Kirsten says the firm “needed a new life.” They have provided one, working with international makers and collaborating with chefs like April Bloomfield (right). They have also seen the business boom. “We’re fortunate,” Chelcea says, “that people seem to like our vision.”…

In America we have 48 Hours and Dateline. In Italy they have Quarto Grado, a lurid crime newscast that promises viewers “journalistic analysis of some of the most recent and perhaps too quickly forgotten unsolved mysteries.” One such unsolved mystery came roaring back to life this past November, when Quarto Grado delivered a tantalizing scoop during a segment titled “Il Giallo della Baronessa”—the mystery of the baroness. “For years it was filed away,” the narrator proclaimed, “almost buried, under the same snow that fell at the time on the Sibillini Mountains, where it all began. A double murder of two women, the former English baroness Jeannette Bishop, ex-wife of the banker Rothschild, and her assistant, Gabriella Guerin. An unsolved mystery, at least until now.” Quarto Grado had learned that offcials…

AQUARIUS JANUARY 21–FEBRUARY 19 Various situations that seem stalled will begin to move forward in February, mostly due to your clear-minded intervention. The Sun in your sign is an ego booster, but until Mars changes direction on the 24th, be prepared to be very patient. Some interpersonal magic will be in the air this month, but you also will find that you can’t postpone certain financial decisions much longer. LAGOS ($12,000), LAGOS.COM PISCES FEBRUARY 20–MARCH 20 February will be something of a turning point month. With expansive Jupiter moving forward in a crucial part of your solar chart, you’ll find solutions to lifestyle issues and begin to feel more confident. Mars in Cancer is urging you to get out and play and put your talents to use, and diffcult choices…