INTERVIEW WITH AMYAS NAEGELE—TRIBAL ART DEALER, RESTORER, AND BASE-MAKER IN NEW YORK CITY
By (c) David Norden . Published November 18, 2009 Web Archive of African-Arts.info
NOTE: This is an intervie
w about Amyas Naegele
Photo #1: Baule figure
Q: How and when did you get started in the field of African art?
A: I grew up in Manhattan, a few blocks from the American Museum of Natural History, where I spent a lot of time as a child. I fell in love with nature and wildlife there and spent hours gazing at the African exhibits. My parents were artists, so I was always surrounded by paintings. I also lived across the hall from the preeminent pre-Columbian and antiquities dealer, Edward Merrin. I was close to his family, so I was often in his apartment, playing with his sons. Sometimes we helped out at the gallery, unpacking these ancient masks and figurines from crates. They used real popcorn back then as packing. Later, after I graduated from college, I traveled around the world and lived for several years in Africa, in what at the time were very out-of-the-way places. When I returned to New York, all of these influences helped me decide that I wanted to pursue a career working with ethnographic art.
Q: Did you begin buying and selling right away? Or were you designing custom mounts and restoring objects first?
A: The first thing I ever did was make a base for a Greek kylix. A week or so before, I had discussed the idea of making bases with Sam Merrin at a Giants game. I was invited down to the gallery and Sam handed me the bronze bowl and asked me to see what I could do. I made the base out of Plexiglas, which was very popular at the time. Both Sam and Ed Merrin liked what I did. They offered some constructive criticism and were kind enough to give me a few more things to work on. Within a few months, I was mounting several figurines, bowls, and masks every week. I added Spencer Throckmorton, Michael Ward, and Maureen Zarember to my client list. I met the collectors Nobel Endicott, Werner Muensterberger, and Marc Ginzberg, and I made connections with African traders, great ones like Ibrahim Kao, who were then bringing outstanding pieces into the country. It wasn’t long before I realized that I was passionate about tribal art, and I started meeting more and more collectors and dealers in that field. People would bring me objects to mount and also to restore.
Q: Can you share some of your secrets, the tricks of the trade? How do you decide how to design a base?
A: For me, it’s mostly intuitive. I’ve always liked the immediacy of working with my hands and with different materials, whether I was sculpting in clay in art school, building a bookcase in my carpenter days, or making a fire at a campsite in the bush. I never make sketches and drawings although I have some clients who provide their own diagrams because they want something very specific. I don’t mind following instructions, but if something doesn’t look right to me I share my opinion. For example, I can rout a small reveal, or step, into the top edge of a wooden base, but I try to dissuade people from using this classical European concept, which entraps dust and provides little more than a distraction.
Q: What inspires you to use wood instead of metal or vice versa?
A: That’s usually up to the client. Personally, I prefer natural materials. When I started out, Plexiglas and black metal bases dominated the market. I found them cold and often inappropriate, so I lobbied for hardwoods, which I think work well with tribal art. The varieties of lumber I settled on are hard, stable, and take stains well. Wood can be left natural or stained black or brown and finished satin or glossy. For larger pieces, as well as those that stand on the floor, steel is still the best as it offers the weight and strength such objects require. Steel can be left raw, painted black, or brushed and lacquered. I also work in brass. It is a pricier but beautiful material that can be polished and patinated to a dark brown, black, or gray. The options are virtually limitless. And, of course, some mounts have no base at all, such as a wall mount.
Q: I noticed that you have all sorts of things in your shop that are mounted as if they are art, but which are neither masks nor figures. Can anything be mounted?
A: Just about. I mount found objects for artists and decorative plates for decorators. I learned from Merton Simpson how a horizontal mount for a Zulu tray could transform a utilitarian object into a work of art. Some objects I mounted for him in the 1990s sold for surprising sums in major auctions and the bases were a big part of their success. The bottom line is that any object will benefit from a tasteful, sensitively constructed mount, which secures it at an optimal height, pitch, and orientation. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes clients have definite ideas about how they want the base to look and at other times they’ll rely on my expertise.
Q: What was the trickiest object you’ve ever had to put on a base?
A: Probably the toughest objects to mount successfully are Dinka corsets.
Photo #2: Dinka corset
I’ve mounted several over the years and they are always a challenge. They take their form from their wearer, off the body they are a heap of strung beads and wire stays. And since they are as much about negative space as about color and line, any armature needs to be discreet and minimal, creating a human form while remaining essentially invisible. To add to the challenge, you can’t take meaningful measures from a heap of beads, but you must be able to put the corset, with all its varied diameters, on and off the armature with ease. It’s enough to drive you mad.
Q: Let’s talk about restoration. What sort of repair work do you typically do?
A: We offer a full range of in-house restoration services. Sometimes when an object comes to me for mounting, the owner will indicate something that is broken, perhaps a lost ear on a mask or a comb with a broken tine. Or I may notice some damage to an object while I’m working on it. The very nature of African art (masks that dancers had on while performing, utilitarian objects that were eaten from, worn, or sat on day after day) practically guarantees a certain amount of wear and tear.
Photo #3: Eket shrine puppet head, 19th century
Q: Is it ever better not to restore a piece and to leave it imperfect, as it were?
A: Some objects attain a certain magic from being fragmentary. The Venus de Milo springs to mind. Others have suffered so much loss that replacing the missing part or parts threatens to render the piece as something not entirely old and authentic.
Photo #4: Makonde body mask
Q: You sometimes hear crazy stories about restorers using stuff like toothpaste for repairs. Is that true?
A: Toothpaste can be useful in restoration as a fine abrasive, but not for repairs. I’m beginning to suspect that it is you who are crazy, not the stories you claim to have heard.
Q: What was the hardest object you’ve ever had to restore?
A: There’s no limit to the difficulty of a restoration. A shattered Nok head that arrives as a sack of rubble is likely to remain a sack of rubble.
Q: We’ve talked about your base-making and your work as a restorer. What about buying and selling African art? What distinguishes you as a dealer?
A: Because the vast majority of objects that I base are singular and unsuitable for generic mounts, I spend a great deal of time looking at objects, I mean really studying them closely, to determine how to best mount them. No matter what their field (American paintings, Art Deco furniture, Anatolian bronzes) all dealers take hours, days, years to develop their visual acuity. That’s how any dealer gets a good eye. But my edge, if I have one at all, is my experience having handled tens of thousands of objects. Add to that my intimacy with the African continent (its materials, smells, and cultures), my knowledge as a restorer of what constitutes a patina and my natural skepticism, my knowledge of science and reliance on the scientific method, and you have someone who understands authenticity rather profoundly. I hesitate to bang my own drum, but I know a real drum from a fake as well as anyone.