The 16th annual Merchandise Mart International Antique Fair is being held April 26-29 in Chicago. It will bring together more than 100 of the world's most notable antiques dealers and their impressive collections as well as several speakers who are antiques experts, including out interior designer Carey Maloney.
Maloney and his husband and business partner Hermes Mallea, who is an architect, began their firm M(Group) in 1984 and have been internationally recognized for their work over the years. Christine Quinn and the New York City Council honored the pair, New York residents, during the 2012 New York Pride Festival and they have also been included on the Out 100 list.
Their impressive architecture and interior design career has brought them into contact with some of the most fascinating collections from decorative to fine art, sculpture to photography, rarefied to everyday objects, old, new, mass-produced or one of a kind finds.
Through their work with clients they have had the opportunity to both learn and teach about collecting and design.
In December 2012, Maloney released the book Stuff, essentially the firm's monograph of their work during the past three decades.
"We wanted to share the work we've created over the past 25 years, but we very much didn't want it to be a typical monograph because we weren't interested in that format," Maloney explained.
So instead, Maloney chose a different format for the book, one that he felt allowed him to better express what he finds most interesting.
"Its been done before of why we painted the crown molding white or why we like dark floors," he said. "That's scattered through the book but the real intent of this was, I look at a picture and to me the most interesting thing about this picture is that little bronze stirrup sitting on the table, and to share information about that."
Maloney realized while he was doing research for the book that he was using a lot of alternative sources, YouTube videos, Wikipedia pages, virtual tours, to pull together the information for the book, prompting him to add a digital component that would allow readers to see and hear those same resources as they enjoy the book.
"The interactive component let me share all these other sources and share how one today learns about things," Maloney said.
The book and its digital counterpart are divided into 40 topics, some of which are: Aboriginal art, American empire style, blue and white export porcelain, Greek sculpture/marble, maps and globes, Moroccan rugs, Georgia O'Keefe, pre-Columbian, scholar's rocks, Tiffany Studios, treehouses and Turkish textiles.
"The whole point of them was not at all to be encyclopedic, but we tried to divide it between fine art and decorative art and really rarified things like Roman bronzes and really not rarified things like protest art," Maloney explained.
By including the digital component readers are able to really dig deeply into the historical aspects of the artwork and the collections, viewing the videos, taking the virtual tours, watching the movie trailers and listening to the same music as Maloney did when he was researching and preparing the book.
"One of the most interesting ones to me frankly was protest art," Maloney said. "There is a wonderful poster that we bought at a book fair years ago called "I Am a Man," and it was from the Memphis Sanitation marches ... it is on page 134 of the book."
The digital counterpart "Protest Art" includes 11 links for readers to delve deeper into the topic of protest art, including links to the New York Public Library's LGBT archive page "1969: The Year of Gay Liberation," a link to the trailer for protest film "The Battle of Algiers," and a link to a video of Nina Simone performing "Mississippi Goddam."
"This is a great example of going into videography, to music and to real hard standard research issues, the public library archives. This was a very approachable one.
"Another good one was Georgia O'Keefe," he said. "Georgia O'Keefe is in the front hall and you can click on the interactive and you can hear her speak about that painting."
During his talk at the Merchandise Mart, Maloney plans to discuss three topics included in the book in a way that will help show how to utilize the book and the interactive component together.
With all his years as an interior designer, Maloney has one main tip for collectors: "You only regret the things you don't buy. People are very reluctant or resistant to buy them. What am I going to do with that little bronze dog? Well if you love it, you buy it and it finds a home."
He said that he views a lot of collections as souvenirs in a way, because anything that brings back a memory is in a sense a souvenir.
"I think people need and love to be surrounded by or have things around them that they have real relations to or memories of," Maloney said about people's desire to collect in general.
He also pointed out that many people don't set out to collect.
"The word collection tends to sort of aggrandize, I mean I've ended up with collections that almost sort of form without me meaning them to be a collection," he explained. "I look back a few years later and there it is."
Maloney will speak and sign copies of his book at Merchandise Mart on Friday, April 26, at 1 p.m.
