Designed by architects

Margo Grant Walsh began collecting silver and metalwork as a respite from the quotidian demands of her high-powered career as a managing principal at the prominent international architecture firm Gensler. The fluky nature of her story may sound familiar to many collectors: in 1981 her team of interior architects was enlisted to design a display case for a seventeenth-century silver tankard in a Wall Street client's office. The object intrigued her, and so on a Sunday afternoon two weeks later she attended a silver auction preview at Sotheby's in New York City. She studied the offerings and bought the sale catalogue, but found most of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century objects not quite to her liking and beyond her budget anyway. Still intrigued, she attended the Fall Antiques Show at the Pier in New York City two weeks later and her life changed.

American arts and crafts silver and jewelry were Grant Walsh's first passion, but she quickly became interested in British silver and metalwork from the period as well. On numerous business trips to London over the years she made use of every spare hour she could find to meet with dealers, attend flea markets and antiques shows, and study the collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum, never missing an opportunity to nurture her growing passion and build her collection. The result is an extraordinary group of silver and metalwork ranging from the late nineteenth century to today that includes arts and crafts objects from the United States, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany, and Austria, as well as later Mexican, Native American, and British objects informed by the arts and crafts legacy.

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One aspect of the collection is the subject of an exhibition on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston this spring and summer. Entitled Designed by Architects: Metalwork from the Margo Grant Walsh Collection, the show includes some fifty works--mantel clocks, flatware, tea and coffee services, and other forms--all designed by leading architects of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, among them Charles Robert Ashbee, Josef Hoffmann, Eliel Saarinen, William Spratling, and Henry van de Velde. The focus of the exhibition, which may be seen from March 15 to August 3, is to highlight connections between architecture and the object by demonstrating the various international stylistic influences at play during the period.

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A catalogue of the collection is written by Grant Walsh and Timothy O'Brien, with an introduction by Cindi Strauss, the curator of modern and contemporary decorative arts and design at the museum. Entitled Collecting by Design: Silver and Metalwork of the Twentieth Century: The Margo Grant Walsh Collection, it is published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and may be obtained by telephoning the museum at 713-639-7360 or through the Web site (www.mfah.org).

Be sure to check "Before You Go" on the Resources page at www.themagazineantiques.com for suggestions to facilitate and enhance your visits to the exhibitions we highlight here.

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