When Silvio Pinto, the chef extraordinaire and owner of the Sogni Dorati restaurant, was a kid in school, he was fascinated by ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt.
”I feel after that, history ended. I was bored,” says Pinto, an intense man with an agile, questing mind.
”I can`t stand being bored,” adds Pinto, who keeps up the excitement today by creating his own small but special empire at home and in his restaurant (the name means ”golden dreams”), collecting objects that recall that classical period.
”Egyptian-Greco-Roman cultures have haunted civilization until today,”
he says, pointing to the persistence of the design motifs that have come to be called ”classical.” In recent years, Neoclassical pieces, early 19th-Century furniture inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte`s dream of a ”new empire” to rival Rome, have gained a new appreciation. In turn, manufacturers have revived the look for the mass market.
The contents of Pinto`s own apartment nearly qualify as a one-man revival. The two-bedroom space of ordinary size is filled with massive pieces of furniture, columns and statuary that give it the feel of an opera set.
Pinto is drawn to American Empire furniture, made from 1800 to 1830. The style was a reflection of the English Regency and French Empire periods in Europe, which were themselves earlier revivals of Neoclassical design.
One of his prize pieces is a mahogany four-poster American Empire bed, found in 1978 though an Evanston antiques dealer. It dates from about 1830 and comes from Pennsylvania. ”Mahogany is the primary wood used in the whole
(American) Empire period,” Pinto explains. ”And there`s always that flame pattern in the grain, so there`s a certain `carving` without it being carved.”
In the Midwest, American Empire is not common and is virtually unrecognized. ”I don`t think people here are able to deal with it, because it`s so big,” Pinto says. ”Out East, the better Empire things sell well.”
Pinto particularly admires the work of Charles Honore Lannuier, a French- American artisan of the early 1800s whose pieces are now in the White House.
But Pinto, alas, can`t afford Lannuier. A Lannuier sofa advertised in Antiques magazine sold for $12,000, he says. ”I paid $300 to $400 for my pieces. But if you trace my stuff, I`m sure you`ll find a good artisan there.”
Pinto`s living room holds several Empire sofas and one recamier, a one-sided Grecian-style sofa. ”That`s timber in there,” exults Pinto, who prefers old to new because of the sturdy workmanship. ”They weigh a ton. They didn`t spare the lumber. You`ve got boards in there!”
Pinto also loves classic-themed busts and statuary. In the living room is one of his favorite statues, ”In Riva al Mare”(From the Shore to the Sea). ”She`s very pretty, really sweet,” Pinto said of the figure of the demure young woman. ”She looks like terra cotta, but she`s plaster.
”At first I thought it was terra cotta, too, but that`s paint. It is all relative: When it is dark, everyone thinks it is terra cotta, but I`m not trying to fool anyone. There is a real bronze like this, but a bronze that size I couldn`t afford.”
Pinto loves columns, too, and has pairs of them here and there in the apartment, supporting statues or as visual interest in themselves.
”I`m into dolphins,” Pinto adds, whether that ancient form is carved into furniture or blown into a lovely Venetian glass candlestick. He went through a ”dolphin phase,” acquiring one after another, including two prized Venetian vases from the `30s found at the Brokerage, a shop on Halsted Street. Since the dolphins have grown scarce, Pinto says, ”I`ve gotten heavily into Italian pottery,” dishes, vases, bowls, what-have-you.
”Some of my friends won`t buy anything if it is damaged,” Pinto says.
”But if it is old, there is bound to be wear on it,” and he`s not deterred.
On his dining room wall is a large Chinese gold-threaded tapestry from the 1860s of white cranes, found at DeFiglio Antiques.
Pinto fell in love with the $300 tapestry but couldn`t afford to pay for the extensive restoration it needed. To arrest its deterioration, he sandwiched the tapestry between sheets of clear acrylic, which cost him $100. ”I feel by the time it deteriorates, I`ll be dead, too.”
Though it`s bulging with objects, Pinto never considers his apartment
”done.”
”I think of my environment as a growing thing, and I add to it all these little brush strokes.”
It`s the same with his restaurant, at Erie and Wells streets. ”I didn`t want `instant restaurant.` I wanted to grow with it. I didn`t get this third bust (of Julius Caesar, to accompany Aristotle and Plato) until three years ago. I hate the idea that once a restaurant is done, you can`t accessorize.” Five years have passed since it opened, but there are still bare walls where ”I know I need something. I haven`t found the right thing yet,” he says.
Some of Pinto`s best finds can be viewed there. They include a splendid
(French) Second Empire 1880s wine cabinet, various gilded mirrors and massive paintings such as the reproduction of Raphael`s ”Madonna of the Chair.” Its ornate gilded frame is a copy of the original, Pinto says. Numerous pieces of sculpture include an alabaster column embellished with the carved face of Bacchus, the Greek and Roman god of wine and revelry.
Many people have commented on the European look these pieces give Sogni Dorati. ”We had no idea what the restaurant was going to look like, but I knew what I wanted to appoint it with,” Pinto says. ”I`ve treated it more or less like my apartment. I`d still like to put a couple more strokes in–new vases, terra cotta pieces.”
He got rid of some earlier strokes–Mission oak furnishings and some Victorian pieces. ”What I have now comes from `74, `75,” he adds. ”When everybody starts collecting they make a lot of mistakes.”
Monday through Saturday the restaurant takes his attention, but on Sundays Pinto haunts the Halsted Street antiques shops, where he has developed relationships with three or four dealers who know his tastes.
He also roams thrift and second-hand stores. ”You never should write off any shop because it is `junky,` ” he says. ”I bought a whole set of espresso cups in a cardboard box marked $14 in a thrift shop in Uptown.”
When he opened the box he found the exquisite Italian pottery espresso set that`s pictured on his dining room table. ”The owner threw in still another set of 60-year old Italian espresso cups,” he adds.
But for Pinto, the Elysian Fields of local collecting is the first-Sunday-of-the-month flea market at the Kane County Fairgrounds in St. Charles. ”Kane County is like a religion or an addiction to me.”
Often after a busy, late Saturday night at the restaurant, he will be picked up by friends at 5:30 a.m. and will sleep in the back seat of the car while they drive to St. Charles.
Having to do his collecting on a tight financial and time budget has made Pinto evolve a philosophy of collecting that`s nearly as creative as his cooking.
”My attitude is, Is it beautiful and affordable to me?” Pinto says. ”I never buy anything at first-retail. You wait for the third markdown. All this stuff I have here, if I paid the going prices, I`d be old and gray and I`d never have it.”
One example is the stylized bust of a Roman lady in his dining room. ”I bought it at Marshall Field`s. Years ago I saw it in the Fields Afar section, and they shlepped it all over the store. And then they had it on clearance and I couldn`t believe it. They just dropped the price down to nothing. They`d had it in the store six years.”
One danger in collecting is that publicity can cause an upward zoom in prices. On the floors in Pinto`s apartment are lovely Chinese Art Deco rugs in jeweled pastels. ”I was only paying in the low hundreds for them,” he says. A magazine article came out on them and ”all of a sudden they went up to $700 and $1,000.”
On such items, dealers can be stubborn about prices, he admits. One of the reasons he likes the Kane County flea market is he can barter.
”I go with a budget of $75 or $85, and for that I can come back with two shopping bags from Kane County,” he says. ”If it is $12, you still deal down.”
However, he cautions, ”there`s a fine line you have to tread. You can`t go buy the cheapest thing you can find and make that the criterion. If you buy from a dealer, you know he`s got overhead. If you like it, and it is reasonable, buy it.
”The major mistake I think people make is to buy things for investment,” Pinto concludes. ”But what if I get up one morning and I don`t like it? What about your lifestyle? Isn`t that an investment, too? I`d sell it.
”If your only motivation is investment, I think you ought to stay with contemporary `name` art and just wait for it to appreciate. If you like the old stuff, it should be because of the feeling you get: You like it around you. If you`re relaxed about something, you`re able to take it on its own merits.”
