Inquiring Minds: Antiques Dealer Tim Lee

TIM LEE is something of a Renaissance guy — he’s an art photographer and sculptor, and has a longtime party design business. But most people here in Springs (East Hampton), N.Y. know him as an antiques dealer with a great eye. He’s often set up at local fairs and shows with vintage industrial wares.

His loft-like house is like a prop shop, full of projects-in-progress. Recently I interviewed Tim about his wide-ranging creative endeavors for my weekly column on the website Curbed Hamptons.

Tim has his own WordPress blog spotlighting his wares and his artwork (such as the sculptures above, meticulously composed of clamshells); you can find Tim’s blog right here.

To read my Curbed Hamptons interview with Tim about how he does all he does, go here.

Photos: (1) Cara Greenberg, (2 & 3) Tim Lee

Inquiring Minds: Long Island’s Modernist Architecture

MORE THAN A DECADE of research — and a whole lot of driving — went into the newly published Long Island Modernism 1930-1980 (W.W. Norton), a scholarly survey of L.I.’s visionary 20th century architecture disguised as a lush coffee table book. For my weekly column on the website Curbed Hamptons, I spoke with author Caroline Zaleski about how what she initially thought would be a “pamphlet and a short list” became a major tome, with a master list of 501 buildings, 25 essays, and more than 300 archival photos. Yes, there’s more to Long Island architecture than suburban sprawl.

Go here to read the whole illuminating interview.

Inquiring Minds: Southampton’s Gin Lane ‘Cottages’

FOR TODAY’S CURBED HAMPTONS COLUMN, I interviewed Sally Spanburgh, local historian and author of a new book, The Southampton Cottages of Gin Lane (History Press). She’s also a blogger, and the book is an outgrowth of her 4-year-old blog about the historic architecture of Southampton (Long Island, N.Y.)

Gin Lane (aka Dune Road) is a three-mile long oceanfront strip on which 19 original cottages remain. The joke, to me, is that these so-called ‘cottages’ are actually sprawling mansions with untold square footage and numbers of bedrooms. They were built in the 1870s through 1920s, not by the “upper echelon” (they were in Newport) but by bankers, lawyers, doctors, judges, stockbrokers, and so on.

Love their evocative names: Nightbrink, Sandymount (shown in the postcard, top), Happy Go Lucky. Click here to read the whole post.

Inquiring Minds: Stand Up Paddleboard Yoga

WHAT CAN I SAY? It’s summer in the Hamptons, and stand-up paddleboard yoga (SUP Yoga, in the parlance) is the subject of my latest column for the website Curbed Hamptons. Even though sports, or any physical activity outside of yard sales and gardening, is outside my normal purview, I can’t resist adding a link to it here.

Inquiring Minds: Swimming Pool Fashion and Function

“INQUIRING MINDS,” MY NEW INTERVIEW COLUMN for the real-estate website Curbed Hamptons, made its debut today. The subject is swimming pools, latest trends in.

Slated for weeks to come: interviews with locals in the vanguard of their fields on such topics as the upcoming East Hampton Antiques Show, the craze for stand-up paddleboard yoga, and the communal organic farm known as EECO.

To read the inaugural column, click right here.