Nicholas Lowry, the 53-12 months-previous president of Swann Auction Galleries and a longtime host of PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow,” describes his Manhattan condominium as a “wunderkammer,” or a cabinet of curiosities.
He’s stuffed the one-bed room rental with items that keep him content — these kinds of as some 50 busts of figures from Beethoven to Elvis and roughly 60 vegetation (such as three trees) that entrance a 15-foot window — and he hopes they also charm any individual who visits.
“A good deal of people [say], ‘Oh my God, this is likely to take me hrs to go by means of, there’s so a lot to see,’ ” the Manhattan native instructed The Write-up. “And I’m content to permit folks do that when they come over.”
Lowry has lived in this stately apartment around Union Square — whose wonderful place functions wooden paneling and gargoyles under a 27-foot beamed cathedral ceiling — for 7 several years, and he intends to continue to keep filling the area with curios.
“It genuinely is the outer manifestation of my interior brain,” he reported. “I’m a tiny Add, I’m a tiny little bit of a hoarder and I like things about me. The way I costume is extremely vibrant and eclectic, and I guess that is the way I reside … it helps make me comfy.”
Lowry recently opened his doorway to Homeworthy, a true estate- and inside design and style-concentrated media enterprise that profiles significant personalities and the grand households they reside in, which got a initial-hand peek of his assortment of, properly, every little thing.
In the Oct-shot video clip, Lowry also exhibits off a gumball device stuffed with matchbooks, a classic newspaper/magazine rack now used as a bar, even a copy of a accommodate of armor whose helmet is topped with a crown of pink bouquets.
What is more, Lowry also retains a inventory of classic posters — significantly a assortment of hangings from his father’s indigenous Czechoslovakia — numerous of which he can’t cling. They number in the hundreds, but it isn’t wall house that helps prevent him from displaying them.
The wonderful room’s walls occur adorned with a effectively-preserved golden brocade fabric, which he neither would like to deal with nor demolish — so he hung some of them in a hallway main to his bedroom. One is a 1930s advertisement for Czech motorcycle maker JAWA, which demonstrates a guy cruising on a lipstick-red ride.
But it’s an additional poster that has his heart.
Perched on the mantel over his excellent room fire, there’s a framed illustration of Consul, the executing chimpanzee who was regarded as the smartest monkey in the environment, who’s dressed in a patterned go well with and riding a bicycle.
“It speaks to me on so many ranges,” Lowry told The Put up of this piece. “It speaks to my poster collecting, it speaks to my interest and information of heritage, and it speaks to style — due to the fact generally that monkey is dressed the way I dress.”
In his kitchen area, a further prized poster. A riff on a 1960s advertisement marketing campaign for Levy’s Jewish Rye Bread, which famously confirmed individuals of numerous ethnicities taking in sandwiches underneath text saying, “You really don’t want to be Jewish to really like Levy’s,” Lowry’s frame reveals a chimp feeding on a piece of bread. “You never have to be human to really like Levy’s,” it reads.
“Having been in the [antiques] business as prolonged as I have been, which is some 30 odd a long time nearly, there are some points I’ve by no means noticed right before – and that actually cracks me up,” he claimed.
Alison Kenworthy, 38, an Emmy-profitable television producer who previously labored for “Good Early morning America” — and who’s the founder and govt producer of Homeworthy — saw Lowry as a best fit for the aged globe-design and style condominium he calls property.
“The dude wears three-piece satisfies and a handlebar mustache — and explained his house as a ‘bohemian hangout or post-apocalyptic garage sale … smorgasbord of almost everything,’ ” she mentioned. “He is just an eccentric and attention-grabbing charismatic person, and his condominium is a best reflection of that.”
“I’m another person who suffers from ‘clutter-itis,’ ” Lowry stated in the video – but does that signify he’s finished collecting? No, he explained – he’ll keep filling the area as a great deal as he can. Even now, he’s on the hunt for a copy Egyptian-type sarcophagus to use as décor.
“I hear from numerous men and women, ‘You really don’t have home for nearly anything else!’ ” he reported. “There’s constantly area for a little something else.”