The first time I ever saw one of these large lidded tea boxes by the famous Dutch graphic designer Jacob Jongert was probably at MoMA, but where the design really caught me, was at a collector's home in Los Angeles. She was using it as a side table basically; I loved that repurposing, and set out to find one. When I did finally find one, it wasn’t at a design auction or a high-end shop in Amsterdam, but at an antique mall in rural North Carolina! I did a double take as I nearly tripped over it in a booth full of "Country Chic" doodads. Once I gave it a better look, I was initially bummed when I saw that the top had been punctured with at least 25 pencil diameter sized holes. Then I read the florally written description that was attached to it on a tag and my disappointment turned to delight at the absurd turn of events in this famous modernist object's life: it had last been used as a container for rattlesnakes for a Pentecostal minister who was, you got it, a snake handler! This tickled me, and I shipped it back to New York and sold it to the talented young interior designer Ryan Lawson, who is also originally from the South, as I am. He appreciated it just as much as I did. After I sold that one, I had the idea to find another one and encase in it a plexiglass box, like art collectors do with Andy Warhol Brillo boxes, and make that “City Chic” side table I had originally been inspired by in California. I never got around to it, but you certainly can. I wouldn’t recommend keeping poisonous snakes in it, but apparently it does a pretty good job at that as well!
If asked to select one word to describe Patrick, I would resist and pick two. The first would be curiosity — a fundamental essential, to stimulate inquiry and rigour in all things, both great and small, of any era or region, type or surface. Even the most fleeting survey of this selection for sale is a celebration of innovation and of inspiration — an unerring eye for the unusually exceptional, or perhaps the exceptionally unusual. The chances are, that these are indeed discoveries that you have not yet realised that you needed to make.
Mentor, would be my second word. If artefacts and objects articulate visual, cultural and historic language, then the fluency of skillful mentorship — to guide, nurture, describe and explain — releases the eloquence of murmuring histories. In this capacity Patrick is that most earnest and sincere of excellent narrators. If ever I had friends, clients or colleagues visiting New York looking for unusual inspiration, there was always the certainty that Patrick’s venues would offer them a glimpse of the hitherto unseen or the unusually seductive, always with the reassurance of the most fascinating story waiting to be told.
Mentorship and curiosity, when balanced in equal measure, reveal the precious alchemy of a curator. And it is the duty of the mature curator to discern and detect, to cultivate change, and from there to pioneer, and to share. Innovation is never static, and the Present is already the Future. Fresh dialogs evolve, energies to be nurtured, opportunities to be guided. Renewed and re-orientated, Patrick’s decision to exchange his bricks-and-mortar Tribeca gallery for a new interactive Brooklyn space aligns him towards a new inquisitive future as supportive benefactor, interlocutor and mentor to a fresh yield of talented creators — those established and those rising — and the quest for discovery rejuvenates.
— Simon Andrews
andrewsartadvisory.com
Auction Results Jacob Jongert
