Antiquities
As you open the door of Dr. John Merkle’s 1890s Compton Heights home, it’s hard to settle your eyes on a single object. Your gaze darts from an enormous framed mirror, unearthed from a basement at Saint Louis University, to the stained glass window in the stairwell, or around a corner to dozens of Chinese funerary sculptures and, finally, down into the living room—mind the step—where they’re drawn to a collection of ancient Roman jewelry.
The semi-retired physician’s interest in collecting began early, spurred by classes in ancient history in grade school in the 1960s. “My buddies were collecting baseball cards, and I was collecting Roman coins,” says Merkle, 66, whose bedroom now features a display table filled with ancient coins from various cultures. “The sixth grade was Old World history, and that’s where you studied the Greeks and the Romans and the Mayans and the Egyptians and all these major ancient cultures. And, of course, I was hooked. I’ve been hooked ever since.”
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Merkle’s interest in antiquities hasn’t limited interest in art from across the ages. Merkle’s home is, in fact, a tour of cultures both ancient and more recent. A walk through the main floor includes stops in ancient Vietnam, modern China, 19th-century England, and the pre-Columbian Americas, among other countries and regions. Upstairs, an intricate carving in mammoth ivory, found in Siberia, rests on a shelf near Incan figurines. The library, built by a friend, is a replica of the sitting room between the primary bedrooms at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. It houses Merkle’s extensive library of mostly art and history books. The study of objects and cultures, and with it the opportunity to connect with others who hold similar interests, has been one of the great joys of Merkle’s passion for collecting.
“There’s a lot of pleasure [to collecting]. It’s the treasure hunt; it’s the education; it’s the people you meet. I’ve of course had friends now for 30 or 40 years that I have bought things through,” he says, “but what’s really important, besides owning and reading about it and meeting people through it, is the love of the collecting itself, because you are saving it for the next owner. That’s how museums were created: They were basically repositories for what people owned, cared about, and kept for the next collector or generation. As it gets passed on down, it survives.”
Frankoma
Suzy Bacino and Michael Eisenbeis’ vibe is pure, old-school Americana cool. Fans of their bands, Whiskey Morning and Fine to Drive, can hear it in their music. What they might not know is the extent to which that vibe extends to the pair’s Southampton home, where glazed ceramic glints from walls, lines bookcases, and fills the niches that once held steam radiators.
The couple are collectors of Frankoma pottery, created in a studio founded by University of Oklahoma professor of ceramics John Frank in 1933. Made entirely from locally excavated Oklahoma clay, the ceramics are still being produced today on a smaller scale. The works in Bacino and Eisenbeis’ home date mostly to 1930–1970, when Frank operated the business.
“My grandmother and her husband had collected this stuff,” says Bacino, “and my aunt, when she was cleaning out their house, she said, ‘Oh, you love cowboy boots. I saved you this [miniature Frankoma boot],’ and I was, like, ‘Oh, it’s so cute!’ I’m, like, looking at it, going, ‘Oh, Frankoma—what is that?’ So I took a few random ones, not really knowing, and then we started seeing it everywhere… So we would go to antique malls, and we’re, like, ‘Okay, the first person to spot something Frankoma wins.’”
“We had this whole thing, right?” adds Eisenbeis. “The first person who finds a piece of Frankoma, just learning how to identify it—and then we just started buying it.”
Their home offers the ideal mix of ample wall space and quirky architectural details that provide a perfect backdrop for the pottery. One radiator niche, located in the entryway, is just the right size for canteens glazed in a dozen different shades. Another spot, in the dining room, is lined with scores of those tiny cowboy boots. Built-ins in the kitchen feature glass doors, the better to show off the dishware for daily use, all in Prairie Green, a color unique to Frankoma. Bacino and Eisenbeis document their finds and their unique displays on Instagram as @frankomaniac, a page that has connected them with other collectors across the country. Of all the Instagram accounts they’ve started, between personal and band pages, the one dedicated to Frankoma, they say, is easily their most popular.
“We don’t know anyone else who collects pottery other than the collectors we’ve met that are around the country, who we really just know from being online. It’s kind of different, but it’s been so fun. And it’s really meaningful to us,” says Bacino. “We love it, and it’s just been something so fun that we’ve done together, totally together.”
Outsider Art
Inside a quiet home in West St. Louis County, John Foster has created a shrine to folk and outsider art. His living room, office, and bedrooms host a kind of seek-and-find game: Which items were purchased from New York art galleries, and which were found at roadside flea markets? The truth is, the origins don’t much matter: For Foster, the stories behind the pieces are what’s most appealing.
“I love to live with my art,” says the 70-year-old retired graphic designer. “I’m not one of those people that has a lot in storage; I want to be around it. You see things go up to the ceiling, salon style, because I like to look at it, and I like to think about it…I just like to be around it everywhere I am.”
Intention and accident hold equal weight in the displays around his home. In a corner near a guest bedroom, a piece of painstakingly programmed early digital op-art hangs in a frame, produced by a computer that wouldn’t fit in the average-size modern house. In the hall between the front door and the kitchen, a painting of Abraham Lincoln is made more valuable by damage it sustained. “Something happened to it over the years, and it crackled and cracked in just the right places,” Foster says. “Had it not crackled like this, maybe by being too close to heat or a fireplace or something, I wouldn’t have liked it as much.” The same can be said of a stone head mounted alongside a river rock. Time and water had their way with each, making for a unique conversation piece.
Other pieces, though still nontraditional, were produced through more traditional means, but by artists who never encountered the constraints of a classical arts education. A large orange-and-red painting interspersed with letters and numerals dominates a corner of the living room. The painter, Sam Gant, created his works at the National Institute of Art and Disabilities in California’s Bay Area, and was mostly unable to communicate, but still, he painted. Like many of the works in Foster’s home, it exudes an aura of energy and creativity. Being in the room with it, you feel as if you could soak up just a little of that radical freedom. “He just painted and painted freely,” Foster says. “I’ve had this painting a long time, and he’s since passed, but I can say that if I had done something that free and honest and forthright ever in my life, I would have felt very good about it.”
THERE’S AN ART TO COLLECTING
Bryan Laughlin, executive director at Selkirk Auctioneers & Appraisers, says that developing a passion is key to starting a collection. “What’s shocking to me is that people don’t understand what they love,” he says. “You have to educate yourself and find out what inspires, what moves, and what draws you as an individual.”
From there, Laughlin recommends taking charge of your chosen collectible, whether it’s antique glass or classic convertibles, understanding where and how to source it, asking questions, and doing research. St. Louis can be a good place to buy, because market values don’t match those of larger, international cities. “There’s going to be some things you can find here that are Asian arts, for example, that you will not be able to ever purchase in Shanghai or Beijing or London,” he says. Auctions, museums, estate sales, and antique malls are good places to visit to train your eye and define your tastes. Luckily, all are easily accessible in the area.
Armed with a small budget and a somewhat dusty art history degree, I recently took some of Laughlin’s advice and bid on a few pieces at Selkirk’s “Creative Interiors” auction, focused on the decorative arts.
As he suggested, I browsed the catalog ahead of time to get an idea of what I found both historically and aesthetically interesting. After setting a budget and watching the early bids come in, I entered one bid on a Carrara marble bust before watching it promptly sail past my price range. (Congratulations to whomever paid the $475 to take her home!) Then, I logged on for the live auction.
A painted tile that caught my eye sold for $10 more than my max bid while I was busy looking at the details of another piece. Some advice from a spurned rookie: Don’t take your eyes off the numbers. When a beautiful etching by German artist Max Brüning came up, I was ready. After a minute or so of anticipation, a confetti graphic on my phone’s screen confirmed that the woman in the red head scarf would be coming home with me. It’s almost too easy.
Seriously, if you’re bidding online, be careful with that “increase bid” button. They aren’t kidding about the thrill of the chase.
