Artist Spotlight: Gino Miles
During last year’s Original Miami Beach Antique Show (OMBAS), mixed in among the Miami-themed décor and the treasure hunt of exhibitor stands, were large scale sculptures created by celebrated artist, Gino Miles. Working in both monumental and small dimensions since the 1970’s, Gino is primarily inspired by 20th Century European masters such as Moore, Brancusi, Archipenko and Marini.
Our Other Bag is a Birkin…
In the luxury market, customers are often courted into making purchases and rewarded for their showcase of loyalty to a store or a brand. A returning client may have a chilled bottle of champagne waiting for them upon their next appointment, or their lunch paid for at the bistro next door after they’ve left the shop. Good sales associates remember birthdays and important milestones, they memorize coffee and scotch preferences and pets’ names, children’s birthdays. Yet when it comes to a Birkin, the perennial “It” handbag by French luxury design house Hermès, prospective buyers are the ones doing all of the wooing.
If These Pieces Could Talk: Triumphs of Tiaras and Headpieces
While seemingly antithetical to the current, “Quiet Luxury” trend of today, tiaras and other headwear are making a decided comeback. At the recent Cannes film festival, as reported by Marion Fasel of The Adventurine, Chanel ambassador Margaret Qualley stunned in a star headband from the brand’s High Jewelry collection, and model Isabeli Fontana wore a stunning brooch by contemporary designer, Elsa Jin, as a hair piece. Earlier this year, at the 2024 Met Gala, celebrities from all walks of life rocked headpieces, from subtle flashes of sparkle to over-the-top-ornate.
The Legacy of Marina B
On February 14th of this year, designer Marina B passed away. She was 93. To say that Marina B was an icon of fine jewelry seems too small of a sentiment. The granddaughter of Sotirios Bulgari, who founded the famed Italian house, Marina finished her studies in art and mathematics before taking over the helm of the family business from her father, Constantino, in 1973. Soon after assuming the role of CEO for the brand, Marina realized that she needed to break from the family business in order to fully realize the potential of her creativity and vision, and, in 1978, she launched Marina B. Her first showroom was in Geneva, with stores in London, Milan, Monte Carlo, Paris and New York quickly following.
Embracing Merriam Webster’s Word of the Year–Authentic
Merriam Webster just announced the 2023 Word of the Year and it is….drum roll….Authentic. They explain in a statement that Authentic is “the term for something we’re thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more than ever.” They attribute the rise of “deep fakes,” and recent discussions surrounding Artificial Intelligence (and the fear and trepidation surrounding those conversations) for causing people to hit their computers to look up the definition of “Authentic.”
The U.S. Antique Show Team Wish List
One of the key perks of working on the U.S. Antique Show team is that we get to be surrounded by beautiful things. While ogling our dealer’s cases and stands is just a fraction of what we do all year, everyone on the team feels rewarded when we finally get on show site and we get to wander the aisles of our shows and see items sourced from across the globe. Though there are, admittedly, varying levels of knowledge among the team, as you can see from this Holiday Wish List we’ve compiled, there is no shortage of taste and style!
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