Finders Keepers with Casa Gusto

FINDERS KEEPERS | ART & CULTURE | CABANA MAGAZINE

Cristin Briger, co-founder of Palm Beach-based design and antiques business, Casa Gusto, shares two extraordinary finds: a piece of history from Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt and a painting that prompted travels around the world.

INTERVIEW BY MILA WOLPERT | ART & CULTURE | 19 JULY 2024

Casa Gusto Gallery, West Palm Beach © Charles Peed 

Cristin Briger and her two sons, Charles Peed and Augie Briger, are a trio of design visionaries and founders of Casa Gusto in West Palm Beach. Casa Gusto’s expansive 4,000-square-foot gallery space is composed of beautifully-curated vignettes of 17th, 18th, and 19th-century furniture, mixed with Gusto’s own in-house designs of furniture, objects and accessories. The pieces are occasionally placed elegantly in front of Gusto’s own bespoke papier-mâché interior paneling.

My Greatest Find: 18th-Century Engraving by André Dutertre

“My greatest find is a group of 18th-century engravings with Egyptian temple frames by André Dutertre, one of the 300 savants that Napoleon took to Egypt. Dutertre and others recorded findings on the expedition, reporting on monuments and relics like the pyramids. I have 12 Dutertre engravings in my possession now with this temple frame with the hieroglyphic design on it, which I imagine is mid-century French, perhaps from the 1920s - or possibly done for an exhibition of the “Institut d’Égypte” in the 1820s.

"My late husband most likely found four of these in the 80s in Paris. They all hang in my house in Mexico where my children have grown up with them. They’re wonderfully academic between the way they’re framed and, of course, the subject matter - they’re like a great novel, you get lost in them.

My Greatest Find: André Dutertre Engravings with a Temple Frame hanging in the Casa Gusto Gallery, Palm Beach © Charles Peed 

"I have never in all my life seen anything like them, and I thought the Dutertre engravings with the temple frames were the only ones on the planet. Last year, while on an online auction in the US, I was shocked to see one exist outside of my little world - I couldn’t believe it. I spent five hours on this auction because there ended up being eight engravings in total. All the lots went sky high and I thought, ‘I don’t care what they cost. I really have to have them.’ And so we got them.

"We find it fascinating to imagine the context of what was happening globally when the engravings were made - that they date from around 1798, and were converted into engravings from 1809 to 1828, after the French and American Revolutions, and after Napoleon took off for Egypt. I love the fact that when Napoleon and his expeditioners voyaged there, they discovered the Rosetta Stone and started modern Egyptology. I never thought there’d be anything like it again, but there it was. I always believe that pieces come around that you really wish for and feel passionately about.”

The piece I’ll keep forever: Johann Zoffany Painting

"The story goes that my late husband and I were living in Mexico City, and in the early 2000s Mexico did not have a lot of antiques. People had grown so tired of the antiques in locals’ houses. The market just wasn’t big there - it never was - but when you did find things, it was kind of remarkable. My husband and I were walking around Colonial Roma, and we were crazy - we bought a lot, like beavers building dams.

"We found ourselves in an antique dealer’s dilapidated Beaux-Arts house, and the man had a lot of random items we were not interested in, but once I walked downstairs, and noticed this painting. I looked at the painting and went over to get my husband. When we came back to inspect it together, we saw the metal plate read: ‘Johann Zoffany, RA 1723-1810’ with the subject, ‘Lunardi, The Balloonist.’

"After getting a price, we went home and got a call from the dealer. He said: 'Before I bring it over, I want you to know there’s all these stickers and things on the back.' I said, 'Bring it over!' He was relieved to sell it because a woman had given it to him on consignment, which is how I know much of its provenance. The artwork was previously owned by one of John Singer Sargent’s dignified subjects, Lord Ribblesdale. When in the Lord’s collection, it was exhibited at the Royal Academy. The painting also hung at the Crane Estate at Castle Hill, the awe-inspiring Massachusetts home of American plumbing magnate, Richard T. Crane, Jr.

The Piece I’ll Keep Forever: Johann Zoffany Portrait of Balloonist Lunardi © Charles Peed

"The subject is an Italian balloonist who was trying to make money by flying around France and London, where he took off from the Royal Artillery Company. There’s a small detail of a family painted on the hill, which is supposed to depict King George III, Queen Charlotte, and their two children watching the flight. In Zoffany spirit, he depicted an animal—a dog—wearing a collar inscribed with the name 'Lunardi.’

"When we left Mexico, we took the painting with us to Boston, and somebody saw it and insisted, ‘you have to meet Malcolm Rogers,’ the Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and an Englishman. That led us on a path. I became an Overseer at the Museum, and we developed a relationship with the Castle Hill Crane Estate. When my son Augie was about 14, we went to the Royal Artillery Company for lunch, which ended up being an unforgettable time. This painting opened up so much for us. This series of events embodies our philosophy at Casa Gusto: to ask, when looking at an object, what its origin is, who made it, for whom it was made, and who previously owned it. We enjoy getting involved with things, and it’s certainly rubbed off on my two children."