TA S T E STYLE S A V A N N A H
Collective Memory A superb local collection centers on Lowcountry treasures By NICOLE BLACKWOOD Photography by RICHARD LEO JOHNSON
AS AN ART HISTORIAN, I have spent several decades pondering what drives people to amass things, often of no practical use. My work has given me the opportunity to contemplate the question in the midst of world-renowned collections — from Sir John Soane’s neoclassical home in London to Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Venetian-inspired palazzo in Boston, and from this vantage point I came to admire the expansive, encyclopedic collection of John and Ginger Duncan here in Savannah. After browsing the Duncans’ antique print, map and bookshop that inhabits the ground floor of their home on Monterey Square, I was invited upstairs. Little did I know I was about to enter a world within a world, a collection that rivals some of the most interesting assemblages I’ve encountered. A lifetime’s worth of collecting occupies their four-story home, built in 1869. The front parlor is hung in a 19th-century French Salon style, with paintings positioned floor to ceiling, while
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