: - A visit by the upstate New York auction firm Carlsen Gallery to
a townhouse in Hardscrabble, N.Y., which was owned by a woman in
her 90s who was moving to a smaller dwelling, yielded many
incredible things that were collected by the family in the late
1880s.
Among the items consigned to Carlsen's annual Thanksgiving
Antique Auction, conducted November 29, was an extraordinarily
rare and important Aesthetic Movement cabinet made by Charles
Tisch, N.Y.
It turns out that the cabinet is identical to the example in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A buyer from California, who read about the cabinet, flew into
the Albany airport, rented a car, and drove the 45 minutes or so
to Freehold, where, according to Russ Carlsen, gallery owner, he
"spent about seven minutes looking at it and walking all around
it."
The buyer drove himself back to Albany airport, and then, acting
as agent for a private Sacramento, Calif., collector, bought it
on the phone for $92,812.
