Boston's Golden Maxim

With the aid of a Russian-born tenor, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has acquired a million-dollar gift in the form of a collection of its own choosing. The museum, already the possessor of one of the best public collections of early American arts and crafts, has for six years been helping Patron Maxim Karolik pick up the best American antiques in the 13 original colonies.

Not very successful as a tenor, furrow-browed, gesticulating Vocalist Karolik 13 years ago married Martha Codman, a member of one of Boston's best families, whose personal fortune was estimated at five million. Installed in a marble mansion in Newport, Karolik, inspired by the workmanship displayed in his wife's inherited family relics, decided to make early American antiques his hobby. Badly needing advice, he made a deal with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: they should guide and direct him in making purchases, he would present the completed collection to the museum.

Never had any of Boston's own sons so delighted her museum. Armed with Mrs. Karolik's introductions to some of the oldest families, the museum's Decorative Arts Curator Edwin James Hipkiss and Collector Karolik knocked on doors from New Hampshire to Georgia, rooted out many an old desk, clock, silver tankard, portrait. While Curator Hipkiss pointed out good and bad features, Collector Karolik asked questions, absorbed information. To old New England and Philadelphia matrons, startled at the idea of selling American antiquity to a man with a Russian accent, they explained that every piece would go to the Boston Museum. Says Donor Karolik: "About the things that happened collecting you could write a vaudeville."

For last fortnight's opening 350 pieces had been brought together, studied, documented and installed in a new wing built jointly by Karolik and the museum. Massachusetts' Governor Leverett Saltonstall headed a long list of Back Bay notables who gathered to gaze and admire. But Maxim Karolik was not there. He had slipped out a back door as the distinguished guests walked in the front entrance. "I consider it iss correct, it iss even chic that the Karoliks should not go to the opening," he explained. "It iss better that the collection should shine by its own glory."

Connoisseurs looked approvingly at tankards functionally designed in 1700 by Silversmiths David Jesse and John Coney, clucked with admiration over Gilbert Stuart and John Singleton Copley portraits. Loudest praise was brought forth by the results of Donor Karolik's greatest hobby, 18th-Century furniture. Some experts from New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and New England pronounced it second only to the huge (148 rooms) private collection of Wilmington's Henry F. du Pont. Each of the 125 exhibits showed the care in selection which Karolik had considered so necessary.

Collectors were green-eyed when they saw the only known piece of furniture to carry the label of Newport Cabinetmaker Edmund Townsend, the only known carved chair to carry the famous name of its maker Benjamin Randolph; they consoled themselves by saying the collection had cost too much, that Karolik had been taken in on prices even though he had top-notch material. Scholars were excited to find as many as a dozen pieces ascribed to the lesser-known Boston maker John Seymour, whose Satiny finishes and tricky inlay patterns made his furniture more elegant than that of most contemporaries.

But Collector Karolik's greatest satisfaction came not with the opening of the new wing, but three days later when his chief rival, No. 1 U.S. Antique Collector Henry du Pont, tripped up to Boston to look over the work of the upstart. "For his opinion I wass waiting," said Karolik. "He wass bowled ofer."

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