Back on October 23, I posted about an article written by antique collector Ben Mijuskovic. In that article, which appeared in the Maine Antique Digest, Ben gave a short history of antique Victorian furniture in America and then told the story of a particular Victorian chair that he and his wife had found. If you haven’t read that one, you can find it here.
Ben has since called my attention to another of his articles, which came out in Antiques and Fine Art. Like the previous article, this one is about a Victorian chair, the “loveliest Victorian chair” as the title tells us. Also like the previous one, this article is on a higher intellectual plane than your average writing on antiques.
What I didn’t know about Ben when I wrote that first post is that he’s a professor of philosophy as well as a collector of Victorian antiques. His expertise in philosophy stretches from the ancient to the modern. He does research into ethics, existentialism, and the philosophy of religion and could tell us a thing or two about Hume, Hegel, and Husserl.
We’re just fortunate enough that Ben is also captivated by antique Victorian furniture and enjoys sharing his experiences with it. The depth of Ben’s insight is evident in every sentence he writes. In this article he relates how he and his wife found an antique Victorian chair at their favorite antique shop in San Francisco. In keeping with the theme of mystery that has lately crept into The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog, the chair defied identification. Ben and his wife promptly bought the chair and then set out to get some answers.
I don’t want to give away too much here. It’s Ben’s mystery, and he tells a charming story. I’ll just remark that there’s a puzzling four-point star theme to the chair and a “delicately painted” Grecian urn that give Ben the opportunity to discuss a famous episode from the Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid, the Greek priestesses known as sibyls, and the god Apollo.
That’s all I’ll say. Not a word about that sliver of wood that provided the final bit of evidence.
Thanks for this one, Ben!