Member Spotlight: Kaveh Bahar
Kaveh Bahar
High school student and collector
New York City
@kaveh.d.bahar (Instagram)
Fine Objects Society Member since 2024
Cabinet of Curiosities
What’s the object you can’t live without?
Oh, there are so many!
It would have to be a 19th century Iranian weaving which was likely handmade by a family member. It’s one of the few things I have from my ancestors, and makes me think of the stories I was told about early life in Iran.
Form or function?
Form, but there are so many antique utilitarian objects that I love, too.
One material you wish people appreciated more?
Gutta Percha!
What do you collect?
I collect many things, the most important being my “book collection” on death and attachment. I put “book collection” in quotes, because I accompany the books with ephemera as well as some funerary objects/paraphernalia. In the collection are newspaper articles, periodicals, children’s books, novels, hairwork jewelry, victorian mourning clothing, and some other very old funerary/cinerary objects. I was grateful to win 3rd place this year for my collection in the David Ruggles Book Collecting Prize!
I also collect little silver spoons, vintage (wool, mohair, and cashmere) sweaters, and antique desks – one davenport, one partner’s desk, and one butler’s chest.
Can you describe the first object that truly captivated you, and what it revealed to you about beauty or craftsmanship?
When I was seven, I visited my great aunt’s stained glass studio in Memphis for the first time. I could see shards of colored glass, unfinished projects, and enormous glass landscapes on worktables.
In the center of the main warehouse space sat a large room divider which my great aunt had constructed, depicting a peacock surrounded by trees made out of multicolored stained glass. I remember seeing cobalt blues, light greens, and mottled browns alongside bits of beveled (window) glass and pieces recycled from antique lamps. I knew that it had taken her a very long time to construct, and that every shard of glass had been hand selected. It showed me how beauty could be created by giving broken things new life.
What’s the most enigmatic object you've handled, and what questions did it raise for you?
When visiting a thrift store in Massachusetts, I stumbled upon a serpentine figure in a shop display. Holding it at the thrift store, the fact that I knew nothing about it made it all the more interesting. Even the sticker from the thrift store said “Inuit???” with three question marks, which was how I felt, too. I decided to buy it and bring it home.
I understand why they might have thought Inuit. It has humanlike features that are abstracted through straight, diagonal cuts. I looked for images of similar things online, and then chose to look through library archives as well.
My preliminary research showed that it resembled figures from the Mezcala civilization circa 300BC-300AD, which used stones from river boulders to carve in their lapidaries. It looked most similar to figures of the M18 archetype. I honestly couldn’t believe it was even possible that this thrift store find could’ve been ancient! I kept digging to try to find out what it could’ve been used for.
I found a book on the subject at the Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum, written by Carlo T.E. Gay, which explained that even scholars of Mezcala art were unsure of the purpose of these figures. Some think that they were used in rituals by priests, while others suggest that they were used as offerings during burials. I still wonder if their true purposes will ever be discovered.
It’s such a strange feeling to handle an object that was used in a way that’s still unknown for certain. You really want to discover what its purpose was so you can tell its story.
To add another layer to the whole thing, stone objects are famously hard to date. There are also many forgeries of Mezcala art, which makes it hard to tell if the piece is genuine or a copy, adding another layer of mystery to the figure.
I still don’t know if it's real or not, but still treat it as an object of importance.
In an age of machine precision, what role does imperfection play in your evaluation of a piece?
Early repairs always make me excited when I find them. They can tell us so much about how the object has lived since its creation, and the way that others have loved it.
You can see this more frequently on antique clothing and books, where small repairs have been made, either by adding fabric/sewing up holes, or by hand sewing on a new binding to a book.
This was the case in an Edwardian silk mourning dress that I bought at an estate sale, where the skirt had been reinforced at the waist with a thick piece of cotton fabric, which had made it smaller. The bottom of the skirt was also shortened.
It makes you wonder who else the dress had belonged to: maybe it was passed down from a mother to a daughter, an aunt to a niece, a grandmother to a granddaughter.
To me, it gave the garment more life to know that it had been cherished by more than one generation.
I suppose that in things like Chippendale chairs, Gallenga dresses, or first editions of Pliny’s History of the World, repairs are what detract from the value. And other objects with later repairs that ended up damaging the pieces (giving antique dresses synthetic linings that disintegrate over time) are not great, either. But when antiques have been loved and appreciated, and actually display those things by having wear, patina or early repairs, it always makes me think that I’m the next in line who can love the object as much as those people did
How do you approach the display of objects to evoke curiosity rather than just admiration?
I’ve only recently started to think more about “curating” a space and arranging objects in interesting ways.
Before, my main problem was not displaying things without any thought, but not displaying them at all! I was letting them hide away in drawers to protect them rather than admire them.
Maybe I thought that I was on par with a museum archive, but last summer, while interning at the MET’s Ratti Textile Center I realized how silly it was to keep stuff hidden! I was able to see how textiles were wrapped in archival paper and put into boxes. The entire space was cleaned daily, and things were organized meticulously.
Even though nothing can be displayed, things are of course brought out for viewing, and quickly returned to their homes.
Which is basically what I used to do when, on a saturday, I wanted to look at the pocket watch I had bought a few weeks before!
What I found to be most exciting while interning there was how people could request things that have nothing to do with each other, or have everything to do with each other, and view them together. Some people were looking at things for their own research, but some came in and requested different textiles, simply because they liked them.
I’d like to apply this sensibility at home, where I’d, for example, place a victorian mourning bodice next to an Iranian textile which shares the paisley design. These two objects have an interesting communication with each other, as one is the product of industrialization (even seen with its jet buttons) and the other is the product of hand weaving on a loom.
I won't, however, keep things hidden away!
What can decorative objects teach us about how people once lived—and how we live today?
After being around antique objects for a while, I always think about how much more people cared about craft and beauty, but also how old things were reused.
I remember watching an old Antiques Roadshow rerun, where an 18th century dresser had its drawers removed to reveal boards which dated to the 17th century. Even books had reused parts, like the spines of some 17th century volumes whose filling of wastepaper was made of cut up illuminated manuscripts.
I guess since the old materials that were recycled were made from the same things that the new object was made of, it was okay. But imagine if today you bought a chair with hay stuffing from the 19th century. Or owned new furniture for long enough that it was repaired with other found parts.
Can you share a moment when an object (or a collection) reoriented your professional path?
I guess I can’t talk about something that's reoriented by professional path (yet), but I do remember finding something that changed the way I did research.
I had bought a set of 18th century books of poetry, which were all owned by a woman named Juliet Foord–Bowes, who had placed her bookplate in each volume.
I started by looking up her name and family crest, but couldn’t find anything. After walking through Mount Auburn cemetery, I had looked into their registry because I was curious about one of the graves I walked by. It was then that I realized that I could use grave databases to find out exactly where people whose books I owned were buried.
After looking on a database for a cemetery in Yorkshire, I found St. Mary’s Churchyard where Juliet was buried. She was given a plaque in the church which had been built by her husband. It was almost surreal to see the images of her grave, and sit at home holding a book that belonged to her, a small piece of her memory.
What’s one piece in your collection or experience that has an unexpectedly scandalous or eccentric backstory?
I would have to pick a small volume about an 18th century female murderer named Elizabeth Brownrigge which I bought at an antique store where it was being used as “decoration”.
It was compiled by John A Spoor, nicknamed by some as the “JP Morgan of the Midwest”.
He bound together a newspaper clipping from 1767 which discussed the murders of Eizabeth Brownrigge and tipped in some grisly etchings of her in the act, with a short story from 1832 which told a fictionalized version of her life. The 1832 work was published anonymously, but is believed to have been the first piece of writing Thackeray ever published!
Spoor also decided to add a contemporary, fake title page to wrap everything in the volume together, which credits Thackery with writing the piece – but we’ll never know if that was true or not!
Another man, Henry Sayre Van Duzer, who purchased the book and pasted his bookplate inside, amassed a Thackeray library and was a cataloguer for his work.
Last year, I was able to purchase the auction catalogue for Spoor’s book collection, where the precious volume was listed as lot 1033
It’s such a morbid, yet fascinating little volume!
Follow Kaveh on Instagram at @kaveh.d.bahar.