Leigh Keno: an Elegant Highboy

Leigh Keno: A Hamilton Original

You know him as a peripatetic TV host and one half of a matched-set of enthused antique furniture appraisers.

I first knew him as a hyper, wired sort of guy in the class a year ahead of me at Hamilton College.  A local-area kid from Herkimer, one exit over on the NY Thruway, Leigh was a pretty good drummer who sat behind the kit for Robbie and the Nylons, a new wave band on campus that occasionally shared rehearsal space with the band I was in, Rogue.

Queen Anne, c. 1760

Leigh and I also took a couple of the same courses in Art History from notorious department head Rand Carter, although Leigh must have really been paying attention.  He and brother Leslie (Williams '79) have parlayed their love for the "breakfront," the "high-boy," and all things "clawfoot" into a multivariate avocation - not only as an appraiser, collector, gallery-owner, philanthropist and all-around personality, but most recently as impresario with Keno Auctions.

Come to find out that Leigh's quite involved with the antique and collectible car market, personally as a race-car collector & driver, and ceremonially as a judge at the annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance charity event.  And in 2005, he wrested a National Humanities Medal from the hands of President George W. Bush.

In college I had a '74 Chevy Nova 350-SS. No match for Leigh's 1938 Jaguar SS 100 . . .

Though I didn't know Leigh well, from our paths-crossings I can attest that what you see is what you get - he's really that nutty, animated and passionate about the 18th century furniture that your great-great-grandfather, in his youth, thought was long in the tooth.

Will Leigh Keno be our last link to the Golden Age of the American empire, now in such wretched decline?