You may be wondering how this company got started, or why someone would make a business out of reproductions and decorative accessories. Mottahedeh is an evolution that began in the 1920’s with Mildred and Rafi Mottahedeh and continues today under the direction of Wendy and Grant Kvalheim, and Pamela Mondschein as part-owner.
Authenticity is our hallmark. We look it up.
When Grant and I moved to NY City where Grant started work at Morgan Bank on Wall Street, I went to visit with Mildred Mottahedeh who was a fond family friend with her offices and showroom at 225 Fifth Avenue on the edge of Madison Park. It was and is an impressive building. Rafi had passed away a couple of years earlier. Our association began with my grandparents. Mildred and Rafi were adherents of the Baha’i Faith, a world religion founded by Baha’u’llah, as were my grandparents, parents and I and my husband are as well. They worked on many projects together. They performed many philanthropic efforts globally and Mrs. Mottahedeh was the first Baha’i representative to the fledgling United Nations in 1945. .
She took it upon herself to look for a job on my behalf as she knew I had taken bronze casting classes and other art classes at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts a couple of years earlier. She picked up the phone and called her friend and associate, Joanne Lyman, who was the director of the reproduction department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were looking for someone to oversee reproductions in metals. Mottahedeh had a robust Indian handicraft Brass business that was about 25% of sales at the time. So I went for an interview, was not experienced enough for the job, (which I didn’t get) but did get to take a tour of the product development production areas that were then housed in the museum itself.
What a wonderful cornucopia of people, of materials, colors, iterations, and attention to detail! All this with the goal of being true to the original art. These finished pieces would be sold in the shops and contribute to the revenue stream to keep the museums healthy. Some things that they could not make, were outsourced, such as the wonderful porcelains that Mottahedeh made under license of the Met like Palace Blue and Tobacco Leaf dinnerware.
At the time we arrived in NY in 1979, reproduction of classic design and historic artworks was not that common in the world. Mildred, Rafi and their good friend and avid collector of antique porcelains, former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, developed the Nelson Rockefeller Collection of reproductions in the late 1970’s. It caused quite an uproar with the Antiques community. Nelson traveled the world and sent back to NY crates of rare finds that he thought would make great additions to his repro collection, paying a pretty penny (thousands of dollars) for the antique original. By the mid 1980’s this reproduction idea caught on. And by the 1990’s the U.S. was awash with reproductions of every medium you can think it. Some very good and some less so.
Reproductions were a later development in the Mottahedeh story; this is after Mildred and Rafi had been wholesale antiques dealers up until World War II ended access to global, especially European antiques. Antiques were put into hiding all over the world and the lawless invaders were confiscating anything of artistic value they could find. They were then hiding it. Transport was disrupted and factories were closed or destroyed. So Mottahedehs found a new way of interacting with the world to a lasting effect of excellence.
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Here is a link to a great movie on the subject called The Monuments Men. It sheds light of the lengths this band of art historians went to save the world ‘s most treasured art. It is an all- star cast, too but the one who is missing in this picture is Cate Blanchett whose character she played was the biggest hero of the Day.
Mildred and Rafi concentrated on those items with history and importance. First and foremost, the Mottahedehs were historians and worked primarily with museums and foundations, with whom they had great connections. They researched eras and designs and cared about authenticity.
But the salient point regarding my story is that I was thrilled and excited to learn of a new line of endeavor that I wanted to become part of. Knowing that more knowledge and skills were needed, I enrolled at Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, in order to study the technical aspects of working in many mediums. After 3 three years I received a degree in Sculpture, (yes, it is a field).
Classes included: Light color and Design, mold making, life drawing, sculptural life study, jewelry construction and casting, enameling, bronze casting, modeling and enlarging, clays and glazes, pottery, and art history. How to stuff it all into one’s mind, not knowing what would be needed. Upon finishing at Pratt, another opportunity for a job interview arose at the Met and again the job eluded me. I think it was my typing skills (they did have me take a typing test). Maybe I was too young.
The issue was this: that there are very few jobs in this line of work, and the people who make these kinds of things work in small companies and with limited production and reach, unless one is an industrial engineer.
One discovery during this art school exploration was that the subjects such as drawing and sculpting, etc. came easily to me though I didn’t consider myself an artist. My final one “man” show included a full-sized seated male nude that I sculpted from life, cast in plaster and patina’d as a bronze. I brought the Man, along with several other things. Without job prospects we decided it was time to go home and we concentrated on raising a family.
When our oldest was eight years old, we became aware that Mildred Mottahedeh, nearing 82 years old, was looking for a buyer for her company. While in school, I had taken on a number of projects that she had perhaps given me to see what I could do, such as drawings, mold making and casting candlesticks and a key chain produced in the thousands for orthopedic doctors. Through much back and forth and a great deal of trust, we tied the knot. My husband Grant, and friend Jeff, bought me a job (I like to say) with the confidence that I would grow into it and Mildred might have some confidence that their legacy would go on.
The arrangement was that she would stay on for five years. She came in every day from her apartment in at UN Plaza, carrying bags of the sumptuous lunches she served to the entire staff and the many guests who passed by, invited or spontaneously. She would teach as much as she knew. She loved to tell jokes and loved to feed a person, with a marvelous twinkle in her eye, gauging how much he/she liked it. She was the Great Ambassador.
She is also a legend. I didn’t really know Rafi as he passed away before we came on the scene. Mildred passed away in February 2000 at the age of ninety-one. She was such a big presence that people thought she was designing long after she was no longer with us. At that time, I have been at the helm of the company for eight years.
The many people who have worked for Mottahedeh over the years gave of their talents, their creativity and their expertise. Their connection goes far beyond a means of livelihood, but a love of history and beauty. I am very happy to see these develop every day.
