| Editor: | Mitchell Owens |
| Frequency: | Bimonthly |
| Company: | Magazine Antiques Media LLC |
| Category: | Arts |
| Founded: | 1921 (first issue January 1922) |
| Language: | English |
| Country: | United States |
| Based: | New York City |
The Magazine Antiques is a bimonthly arts publication that focuses on architecture, interior design, and fine and decorative arts. Regular monthly columns include news on current exhibitions and art-world events, notes on collecting, and book reviews.
Antiques was founded in 1921 by Homer Eaton Keyes, a noted collector of American glass and a former business manager of Dartmouth College, with its first issue appearing in January 1922.https://www.themagazineantiques.com/article/antiques-in-the-beginning/https://www.themagazineantiques.com/article/antiques-in-the-beginning/[1] In the inaugural issue, Keyes wrote, "The magazine hopes to be authoritative... It hopes to avoid twaddle... The effort will be, in any one discussion, to secure thoroughness within a limited area of research."
"After seeing the initial copy the success of the magazine is not to be doubted," The Springfield Union stated in its 25 December 1921 issue (page 31). "It is most artistically set up and the lover of the antique will long to crawl into some chimneycorner and read it from cover to cover... It is the handiwork of a true lover of the antique.... Listed are some of the good things that the editors promise are coming: Arms, armor, books, bronzes, china, clocks, coins, draperies, etchings, fabrics, furniture, glassware, hardware, jewelry, laces, lamps, medals, paintings, pottery, porcelain, pewter, rugs, samplers, silverware, stamps, tapestries [and] wall coverings."
In 1947, editor in chief Alice Winchester edited the book Living with Antiques. (The News and Advance, 7 May 1947, page 10)
By 1950, The Magazine Antiques was heralded in the Los Angeles Times (10 September 1950, page 132) in an article written by Grace and Gregor Norman-Wilcox: "Many other magazines for collectors, serving different sorts of audiences, have come and gone, but Antiques in America, like the Connoisseur in England, has achieved a venerable, even a pontifical estate—not that of a magazine, but of an institution." That same year, the magazine published, under the aegis of editor Alice Winchester, The Antiques Book (A.A. Wyn, Inc.), a collection of articles that had appeared in the magazine between 1922 and 1949.
In 1951, Winchester wrote and published How to Know American Antiques, which reportedly sold 500,000 copies in the United States. In a review, Miss Winchester was described as having "made antiques come alive for thousands because of her firm belief that the history of a people can be read in their crafts and arts". (The Macon Telegraph, 4 February 1968, page 22)
In 1962, Winchester edited The Antique Treasury of Furniture and Other Decorative Arts, which was described as a "tour of seven 'living' American museums". (The Baltimore Sun, 5 November 1972, page 135)
In 1973, The Magazine Antiques published Living With Antiques: A Treasure of Private Homes in America, a 366-page compilation of 40 domestic interiors that had appeared in its pages.
The head-of-title note "The Magazine" first appeared in January 1928, but was not used between August 1952 and February 1971.
The Magazine Antiques underwent a complete redesign in 2009.
The publication claims a print readership of 20,000, with 16,000 newsletter subscribers, and 7,800 monthly website uniques.https://www.themagazineantiques.com/media-kit/
From 1929, the magazine was owned by philanthropist Dorothy Whitney Elmhirst, who moved the publication to New York City from Boston. Per the recollections of Alice Winchester, "I think she was rather proud of the magazine, and she enjoyed flipping it — through it, but she was not really interested in it. And, uh, the only reason she bought it was because she was urged to support her magazine on Asia".https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-alice-winchester-13081
In 1984, the magazine was purchased by Brant Publications, a company founded that same year by Peter M. Brant, a newsprint magnate and art collector. In 2016 The Magazine Antiques, along with ARTnews, Art in America and Modern Magazine, became acquired by Art Media Holdings.