Necrology
Peter Stanley Brams '68
Mar. 8, 1946-Jul. 1, 2023
Responding to a question on his admission application to Hamilton in 1964, Peter Brams '68 indicated that among his hobbies, in addition to coin collecting, debating, and reading books about history and current affairs, he was interested in art and architecture. Those passions would become both the foundation of his professional life and his lifelong dedication as a collector.
Peter died on July 1, 2023, at his home in Jackson Heights, in Queens, N.Y. Born on March 8, 1946, in Concord, N.H., he came to Hamilton from Concord Senior High School. On the Hill, he majored in art history and was a member of Gryphon fraternity. On one occasion Peter also played a minor part in the Charlatans’ production of Georg Büchner’s play Woyzeck. In a revue staged by Peter Kingsley ’68, he appeared as the Statue of Liberty, with an inverted, quart-sized Coca-Cola bottle serving as his torch.
Upon graduating, Peter moved to Brooklyn Heights and explored various types of employment: working for a stock broker, fundraising for the United Jewish Appeal and New York University Medical Center, and working at a real estate firm. In 1969, he relocated to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, sharing an apartment with three Hamilton alumni, before later returning to Brooklyn Heights.
It was in this period that he laid the foundation for his subsequent career as a jewelry designer. An acquaintance was making knockoffs of jewelry created by leading designers. Peter used such pieces as models for his own designs, sending his prototypes to a company in Mexico where they were manufactured and sent back to him, so that he could approach dealers who might be persuaded to include his work in their inventories.
His interactions with jewelry companies led to his meeting Abraham Rosenberg who worked for one such firm. In 1979, they formed their own: Peter Brams Designs, Ltd. While Abe handled marketing and sales, Peter continued to design.
The partnership lasted for almost 20 years, during the course of which the business grew significantly, having successfully weathered an economic crisis in 1980 that threatened to put it out of business. That year the price of gold ballooned to $800 an ounce. Had they not quickly changed manufacturing specifications, prices of individual pieces of Peter’s designs might have reached as much as $1,200, prohibitively expensive in that day’s market. Peter and Abe shifted the manufacturing process from casting individual pieces to using die striking, which brought the price of finished pieces down to around $250, a level the market could readily bear. By 1990, the company had grown to employ 150 people, and seven years later, Peter and Abe sold the company to Jacmel, a firm located in midtown Manhattan. Abe moved on in 1999, but Peter continued to design until retiring in 2003.
While he was having great success in creating jewelry, Peter was also focused on collecting art, and he chose an unusual approach. As Steve Powers, co-owner of an art gallery in lower Manhattan, observed: “He didn’t follow fashion and wasn’t swayed by what others were buying. He bought with an open mind, a discerning eye, and an adventurous heart.” Beginning around 1980, Peter began collecting contemporary art, including works by Americans Jean-Michel Basquiat and Phillipe Taaffe as well as Milan Kunc, who is Czech. Later, his collection included works by William Edmondson, William Hawkins, and Sam Doyle. In this period, he consulted with Diego Cortez, one of the major figures in the New York art scene, whose exhibition of contemporary New York artists in 1981 included Basquiat’s work, thus bringing that artist to the attention of collectors of contemporary art.
But Peter remained his own man. He did not collect art with a view toward profiting from a subsequent sale, but rather to surround himself with works that appealed to him aesthetically, in a variety of media, from painting and prints to sculpture. By then he was living in a condominium in Guttenberg, N.J., overlooking the Hudson River and Manhattan, and Peter’s home was his personal art gallery.
He willingly lent some of his works when moved to do so. During the period from Dec. 12, 1986, to Jan. 28, 1987, 28 pieces by seven artists from Peter’s collection were exhibited at the Emerson Gallery at Hamilton, located in the former James Library. In 2002, he also lent a small abstract drawing by Arthur Dove to the gallery for an exhibit of works collected by Hamilton alumni.
The exhibition catalog included a personal statement by each lender. Peter’s was concise but revealing: “I love to collect. I’ve always loved to collect. … Each collection becomes a work in progress. … The search, the decisions, the editing, the tweaking are as close as I will ever come to satisfying my creative tendencies. A quiet evening spent moving objects around and discovering new dimensions of old friends is my perfect pleasure. I guess that is why I collect, and why I will always collect.”
By the end of the 1980s, Peter changed course and began to acquire American folk art — termed “Outsider Art” — by self-taught individuals who did not regard themselves as part of a lineage of artists and who largely kept to themselves, not seeking public attention. Creators of both types of art did not cultivate wide recognition and, in the case of the folk artists, were largely anonymous. Peter was drawn to these works out of personal interest, and his collection continued to grow. Prior to moving to Jackson Heights in 2001, his Guttenberg condo was reported to be so overwhelmed by art that there was space for only two chairs: one for Peter, the other for a visitor. Before making the move to Queens, he sold his collection.
His impulse to collect was by no means diminished in this period, but the focus of his collecting shifted again, to works, initially carvings, created by indigenous Woodland people who resided in what is now the Northeastern United States before the arrival of European settlers. In 2012, he sold this collection as well, prompted in part by the first of several heart-related health crises. One reason for the sale was that he did not wish to burden his relatives with the task of disposing of his collection after his death. Nevertheless, he was ever the collector and subsequently began to purchase certain works by “Outsiders” and American folk artists that had eluded his grasp in the 1990s.
Sadly, Peter’s heart problems worsened, and in 2018 he suffered another heart attack that required surgery to replace a heart valve. He never fully recovered.
Throughout his adult life, Peter spoke fondly of the College and served it in a number of ways. He was a generous supporter of the Emerson Gallery as well as the College as a whole, making numerous generous gifts during the Campaign for the ’90s. Peter also served on the committee on the visual arts, major gifts committee, and the Alumni Council, in addition to lending art works to the College from time to time.
Peter S. Brams is survived by his mother and his niece.
