In this excerpt from the introduction to More By Eye Than By Measure—The Maritime Life and Art of John Prior Gardner, Sandra discusses how she moved from the antiques business to writing:

Before turning to writing, I’d spent twenty years in the antiques business, dealing in American furniture and related objects. I dealt in shape, line, proportion, and color. I have an eye; not an artist’s eye, but the next best thing. I also have an ability to discern quality, even if I know nothing about the subject. That gift was a big help in finding objects of merit in unlikely places during my antiquing years. Finding treasures was fun, but more fun, to me, was researching my discoveries.

I stopped dealing in antiques in 1983 because I hated the business end of things, but I still loved the objects and the research, and thought I’d write about decorative arts.

Because of that love, I attended Bowdoin College in 1984, where I took courses in advanced composition and in museum studies, among others, thinking I might do some freelance museum curatorial work.

Sandra discusses the origins of her book More By Eye Than By Measure—The Maritime Life and Art of John Prior Gardner:

My manuscript started as a New Yorker-type profile, but I found John and his stories so fascinating, the profile grew to a full biography. I curated a retrospective exhibition of John’s drawings and ship models at the Maine Maritime Museum in the 1990s. At that time I had photos of a number of his ship models made with the idea of publishing a book in mind.