Ralph Gardner Jr. checks out restored Imperial Japanese Navy binoculars and other ‘sporting antiques’ at Nicholas Brawer, a shop on East 72nd Street
If you fear that finding the perfect birthday present for your favorite plutocrat poses an insurmountable challenge, you haven’t visited Nicholas Brawer, a shop on East 72nd Street that specializes in “sporting antiques.”
The inventory in Mr. Brawer’s eponymous shop includes gleamingly restored Imperial Japanese Navy 20 power x 120mm long-range binoculars that sell for $60,000.
“See those crates back there,” Mr. Brawer told me on a visit to the store last week. “I have 45 sets of binoculars waiting to be shipped. They’re functional sculpture. I’ve sprinkled them in penthouses all around the East Side.”
For those who want to spy on their neighbors in style, but don’t feel they quite need Japanese wartime optics, there are equally handsome Cold War-era 25 power long-range naval observation binoculars that can be had for $24,000 to $30,000.
But then, of course, the question arises: If I got him the world’s most powerful binoculars last year, what can I do to top myself this year?
For your consideration: a 1962 English Martin-Baker Aircraft Co. ejection seat. It flew in aircraft such as the Avro Vulcan strategic nuclear bomber and it’s got “Dr. Strangelove” written all over it.
Though my recollection is that Slim Pickens never got to experience the ride provided by its 80-feet-a-second ejection gun, the pop safely placing the pilot 90 feet above the aircraft. Mr. Pickens’s character, “Major T.J. ‘King’ Kong,” preferred to ride an H-Bomb to oblivion.
The device retails for $30,000.
“It’s actually adjustable,” explained Mr. Brawer, who said that when a Martin-Baker representative visited the store the merchant boasted, “We’ve done more to market your product.”
To which the gentleman responded, “But the Upper East Side isn’t exactly our market.”
ENLARGEMr. Brawer, who started his career in Sotheby’s American Paintings Department, discovered his true passion in British military campaign furniture. These were objects such as chairs, desks and chests that provided officers something of the comforts of home as they undertook the thankless task of maintaining the empire.
The store also sells personal lance heads for pig-sticking, a sport with which I was heretofore unfamiliar. As its name suggests, it involved hunting wild boar, typically on horseback using a specialized spear.
“It’s the equivalent of traveling with your squash racket,” Mr. Brawer said of the $2,000 weapon.
It should be noted that the store sells more practical wares. They include some of the loveliest antique sterling silver flasks I’ve ever seen. Ranging in price from $1,150 to $3,000, they remain beyond my drinking budget.
During my visit a crate arrived that caused considerable excitement, at least on Mr. Brawer’s part. Since he wasn’t able immediately to get it open, I was forced to take his word that it contained “the rarest of the rare—an original Japanese army tripod” for binoculars. Its scarcity apparently has to do with the fact that when victorious Allied soldiers were collecting souvenirs they typically left behind the tripods, which weighed close to 200 pounds.
One of Mr. Brawer’s prizes, already on display and dated January 1945, was a beautifully restored cradle or tripod from a Japanese I-400-class submarine, the largest submarine of World War II. The deck-mounted binoculars it held were so durable that Mr. Brawer said they were designed to withstand 300-foot dives and depth charges.
Mr. Brawer, who plans to equip the tripod with a pair of rare binoculars from the I-400 class, had a customer in mind for the six-figure novelty: “Somebody who is building a yacht and has a home on San Francisco Bay.”
The equipment isn’t intended for the vessel, but to admire the boat from his home.
Unfortunately, we have no equivalent opportunities to park our yachts below our windows in New York City. Unless, perhaps, you’ve just purchased one of those hundred-million-dollar condos rising along 57th Street and consider Central Park, spread before you, a sort of dream ship.
“Business is booming,” reported Mr. Brawer, who encouraged me to gaze through a pair of mounted Japanese binoculars at the Chase bank across 72nd Street.
I can testify that the optics were stunning, the experience a voyeur’s dream. Though Mr. Brawer said the “Rear Window” thrill isn’t what compels his customers to spend big bucks on looking glasses.
“They joke about it,” he said, “but usually they’re so high up, there’s no window across the way. They tend to look at the park or the George Washington Bridge. You can, on the 44th floor, be looking down to Central Park and see the smile on somebody’s face.”