How antique items become heirlooms
Kentucky’s Museum Bees are creating a buzz around the world of luxury art
There is a lot of buzz going around about an Anchorage, Kentucky, art studio and the Museum Bees collection being hatched there weekly.
Each Wednesday, artist and owner Trace Mayer releases a new round of his artwork called Museum Bees, which sends customers swarming Instagram to be first in line to snap up their favorites.
Celebrated in Garden & Gun’s 14th annual Made in the South Awards, Mayer and his Museum Bees collection is recognized as the winner in the Crafts category for the Decorative Wall Hangings in the December/January issue.
“There are no hard and fast rules for any of it,” Mayer told the Courier Journal. “It just seems to be the creative formula that I enjoy.”
Luxurious, whimsical, and one-of-akind, over the past 12 years Mayer has created thousands (and thousands) of captivating and collectible art pieces made from recycled antique frames from the 1800s and what seems to be an endless assortment of ornamental golden bees, ducks, rabbits and dogs, plus Milagros, sea shells, costume jewelry, watch faces, pieces of old cuckoo clocks and curiosities.
And at $65 per piece, each Museum Bee is a little piece of affordable gilded luxury.
“A lot of people don’t want a big huge piece of art, they want a little piece of luxury,” the artist said. “They want a little taste of the cake rather than eating the entire bakery.”
Inside Trace Mayer’s Museum Bees studio in Kentucky
Mayer works out of a comfortable two-story studio filled with natural light located at the end of a gravel drive.
The space works as a gallery and studio with hundreds of Museum Bees hung from the walls, displayed on tables, and waiting on shelves for the perfect buyer.
Just beyond the displays, Mayer and his co-worker, Garrett Stansbury, get busy as they cut, sand, glue and wax the frames or hunt for the perfect object to become the focal point for each Museum Bee.
All the while, a big fluffy studio dog named Potter wanders among the customers who browse the containers filled with a hodgepodge of curiosities.
“Essentially this is a recycling project where we take 150-year-old antique frames, cut them down, and give them a new life as a tiny piece of luxury,” the artist explained.
“New shoes are fine. Broken in, they are without equal. There is no substitute for the beauty earned and polished in time.”
How the idea for Museum Bees was hatched
Before moving his business to Anchorage, Mayer dealt with antiques and regularly resized antique frames to hold antique paintings. He writes about the beauty of these antique frames from the 1860s and 70s in his book “Museum Bees.”
“Patterns on patterns, wild colors, detailed carvings, and ornamental textures.” writes Mayer. “The frames are specific to their time. They reflect the fashion and culture of the era.”
A dozen years ago, Mayer took the leftover pieces from an ornate 200year-old frame, rebuilt it in a much smaller size, and added a gold Napolean Bee in the middle.
“The bee in the center had an unexpected effect,” he writes. “It grounded the composition and let the frame become the focus.”
From bees, Mayer expanded his hunt for castings of dragonflies, butterflies and frogs. He added to the collection with vintage brooches, belt buckles and women’s compacts.
Nearly anything small enough to fit on his frames is game – as long as it tickles his fancy.
“It’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’ll find inside.” Mayer said. “We’re also creating Museum Bees using charred bourbon barrels as the frame, oyster shells, and wood printing blocks from India.”