The Best Gifts for Gilded Age Watchers, According to a Gilded Age Watcher
I remember when the biggest plotline on The Gilded Age — starring Cynthia Nixon as Ada Brook, Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell, and George Spector as George Russell — was whether Christine Baranski (rather, Agnes van Rhijn) would cross Fifth Avenue to the Russells’ house. But it’s about a lot more than that three seasons in: There are based-on-real-life figures, like Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, J.P. Morgan, and T. Thomas Fortune, and soap-opera tropes, like a death by horse-drawn carriage and marriages of convenience. It’s the only show in television history that’s made me a tiny bit sympathetic to a robber baron. I can’t get enough of the thinly veiled references to the great American dynasties (the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Morgans), the reproductions of House of Worth couture, or Nathan Lane’s accent.
To be clear, as Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk says, “The Gilded Age is really about the experience of it. It is bad, and yet … few things are more enjoyable to watch right now?” So for The Gilded Age watcher in your life, I, a Gilded Age watcher, rounded up the best gifts for Gilded Age watchers. This includes everything from a plush that resembles Ada’s Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Pumpkin, to a Limoges box of the Metropolitan Opera House. I haven’t thought about the Gilded Age this much since my eighth-grade American-history class! Obviously, slight spoilers ahead.
(For more gift inspiration, here’s our guide to every gift guide we’ve written this year.)
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Each is based on the grove of oak trees at Blenheim, home of the Churchills and socialite Consuelo Vanderbilt (a dollar princess who married the ninth duke of Marlborough, as Gladys Russell did the fictional fifth duke of Buckingham).
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Maybe Lady Spaniel and Ada’s Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Pumpkin, are related. (Baranski answered “no comment” when Vulture asked her what it’s like to work with the dog).
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Can’t you see Bertha having a lampshade like these on her nightstand, while reading a newspaper and throwing a breakfast tray of pastries? (Hat tip to our writer Erin Schwartz for sending the links to me).
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Head of the Four Hundred (the New York Times published the official list in 1892) was Caroline Schermerhorn Astor. Her son — who died aboard the Titanic, as you may remember from Titanic — founded the St. Regis. A scent featured in every St. Regis hotel, Caroline’s Four Hundred has a note of American Beauty roses (Mrs. Astor’s favorite).
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The Mummy Dearest podcast claims to have made the original Railroad Daddy T-shirt, but the Wanted Maud Beaton T-shirt “tells people you’re nothing more than a con artist with a gorgeous face.”
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In The Gilded Age’s timeline, John Singer Sargent unveils a portrait of Gladys before the announcement of her engagement (on the third episode of season three). This year, coincidentally, there was a Met exhibition on Sargent and his controversial Portrait of Madame X (who’s Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, wife of a shipping magnate).
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No costume embodies Bertha Russell quite like the one she wore at the charity bazaar on the arm of her husband. (Perhaps Lady Curzon’s Peacock dress was on The Gilded Age costume designer’s mood board.) This reminds me of it; the peacock feathers are inspired by a Favrile vase Louis Comfort Tiffany made.
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Without the sheer determination of Bertha in the Opera War, we wouldn’t have the Met (or the Met Opera Shop). Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème premiered there in 1900 (it’s the most frequently staged production in the history of the Met). Here’s a chapeau modeled after the regiment of French soldiers in the opera’s third act.
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For people-watching audience members at a showing of The Magic Flute or just Upper East Side moms on Park Avenue.
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The Metropolitan Opera House as a collectible Limoges box (which originally held thimbles, locks of hair, and snuff).
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Give credit to Emily Warren Roebling for the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Its opening was celebrated on the seventh episode of the second season (the same episode that has the death of Reverend Luke and the swindling of “mustachioed failson” Oscar van Rhijn.)
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Available at the online store of the Preservation Society of Newport County (whose properties include the Breakers, the Elms, Marble House, Rosecliff, and Bannister’s Wharf) is a blueberry jam drawn from recipes in these mansions’ kitchens.
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In 1909, Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont (the real-life Bertha Russell) hosted a suffrage gathering at Marble House. At the open house, refreshments were served in china with the “Votes for Women” motto.
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George Russell gets by with a little help from J.P. Morgan (a Bill Camp cameo) — “by” meaning shares of the Illinois Central Railroad with a handshake (only to be betrayed by Clay, the secretary he fired) on the sixth episode of season three. The financier’s private library became a museum: the Morgan Library & Museum, or the Morgan, for short. This bookmark features “the Morgan’s campus-like complex of buildings.”
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To quote Real Housewives star Sonja Morgan, “You don’t touch the Morgan letters!” She didn’t say anything about the bookshelves of Morgan’s study in the West Room, though.
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The Horological Society of New York is the United States’ first watchmaking guild, founded in 1866 by German émigrés. It’s where footman Jack Trotter (affectionately known as “Clock Twink”) goes with his new invention. He later sells his patent for about $9.5 million in 2025 dollars. I can imagine this pocket square printed with the dial of a clock in HSNY’s Jost Bürgi Research Library inside his suit.
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I’m very jealous of everyone who went to a screening of The Gilded Ageat the newly reopened Frick (once the residence of industrialist Henry Clay Frick). But I’d happily settle for a snow globe depicting the magnolia tree blossoms in the museum’s garden!
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This is the book that cast Ward McAllister (played by Nathan Lane) out of Old New York.
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The show’s prop master, Michael Jortner, and food stylist, Colin Flynn, told Vulture’s Jackson McHenry they referenced this cookbook from a chef at Delmonico’s for scenes of the Russells’ meals. It’s where Larry Russell lies about going to his fiancée, Marian, (only for her to find out about his stay at Haymarket, a house of ill repute). Scandalous.
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Inexplicably, Oscar Wilde meets Oscar van Rhijn and John Adams (not that one) on the third episode of season two. Wilde’s in town for the opening of his first play, Vera; or, The Nihilists. It was no The Importance of Being Earnest, apparently.
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‘Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City’ by Carla L. Peterson
Schwartz mentions that Black Gotham was a reference for Fellowes when writing Peggy Scott and her family. It’s partly an account of the author’s own ancestors.
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To like The Gilded Age is to like Edith Wharton. After all, it was from Wharton’s family that the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” came from.
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Think of how helpful this would’ve been for nouveau richeNew Yorkers like the Russells.
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