| 2007 Annual Index |
Nellie J. Ptaszek, 76, died January 3, 2007, at Columbia Memorial Hospital in the care of Community Hospice of Columbia-Greene. Margaret “Peg” Brockway Ofslager died in Hartford, Conn., on April 22, 2007, after more than 50 years as a well-known antiques dealer. With deep regret, Tina Bruno, president of Flamingo Promotions, announces that the May installment of the Sturbridge Book & Ephemera Fair has been cancelled due to a death in the family.
Antique Associates At West Townsend (AAAWT) recently offered a private, single-owner collection titled the “Heart and Crown Collection,” an accumulation of more than 30 pieces of early American furniture. The cornerstone of the collection was an elegantly styled Heart and Crown great chair originating in Fairfield County, Conn., between 1740 and 1770.
The Philadelphia Antiques Show will move to the Cruise Terminal at Pier 1 at Philadelphia’s Navy Yard in 2008. The fair’s 56 exhibitors were informed of the decision just prior to the HUP show’s closing on April 17, 2007, at the 33rd Street Armory in Philadelphia. Active bidding was once again registered at Guyette and Schmidt’s recent decoy auction, April 26 and 27, with shorebirds again eliciting strong prices and claiming top honors. Leading the way was a rare Hudsonian curlew by Long Island carver William Bowman. Heritage Auction Galleries’ auction of Vintage Movie Posters, held March 30 and 31, set a new world record with final prices realized exceeding $2 million for 1,133 lots offered. The star of the show was a Black Cat one sheet that attained $286,800.
Spirited bidding at Swann Galleries’ March 22 auction of printed and manuscript Americana yielded record prices for rare Mormon works, the Bible of the Revolution and an historic Judaic pamphlet.
Four bronzes by Eugene Lanceray, the prodigiously talented Russian sculptor, painter, illustrator and maker of mosaics, commanded top money at the Grand View auction March 24.
Frank Gaglio’s 23rd Street Armory Antiques Show as usual, looked fine with a nice mix of folk art, furniture, fabrics and ceramics. Saturday was the strongest gate, and Sunday’s attendance caused a total gate slightly below last year’s count.
Despite heavy rains, buyers poured through the doors. When the Philadelphia Antiques Show closed April 17, after a five-day run, many of the show’s 56 exhibitors reported good or exceptional sales.
Barry Cohen and Jim Burk organize the Navy Pier show, the largest of Antiques Week in Philadelphia’s three shows. Known for American country furniture and folk art, the 60-plus exhibitor fair boasts some of the biggest names in the business.
The Appraisers Association of America (AAA) conducted its annual luncheon and awards presentation on April 24, honoring an icon in the world of antiques publishing and scholarship, as well as trusted advisor, Wendell Garrett. On Madison Avenue, between 78th and 79th Streets, the sidewalk erupts in a panoply of black and white terrazzo. A field of horizontal rectangles gives way to undulating crescents that in turn make way for a sunburst. The Alexander Calder-designed sidewalk outside the building occupied by James Graham & Sons is as much a billboard for the gallery it fronts as it is pure art. What began in 1857 as Samuel Graham’s modest furniture shop on lower Third Avenue evolved into a thriving decorative arts business. With each subsequent generation adding its own personal flair and expertise to the eclectic mix of offerings, the phrase “I found it at Graham’s” became the buzz among affluent New Yorkers and serious collectors from across the country. It is a buzz still heard today, although somewhat more amplified this spring season, as the gallery prepares to present the inimitable exhibition “James Graham & Sons: A Century and a Half in the Art Business,” which will be on display through June 29. Even in today’s enlightened times, if you ask someone to name some painters from the Italian renaissance and baroque periods, you are likely to get answers such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo or Caravaggio. All, of course, highly distinguished artists — and all men. With a groundbreaking exhibition, currently on view through July 15, the National Museum of Women in the Arts emphatically expands the list of outstanding artists of that era by spotlighting highly accomplished women painters who were both professionally and commercially successful. “Italian Women Artists from Renaissance to Baroque,” the first comprehensive survey of paintings, drawings and prints by female artists of early modern Italy, includes 60 works by 15 major women artists, highlighted by paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana and Artemesia Gentileschi.
Richard E. Kramer & Associates has named Pat Garthoeffner associate director of the Heart of Country Antiques Show. The 2008 fair will open Thursday evening, February 14, for three days at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.
Show manager Marilyn C. Gould has cancelled the Wilton Outdoor Antiques Marketplace, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, June 23 and 24, in the meadow north of the Wilton High School. The 130-dealer fair was a benefit for Wilton Kiwanis projects. Linda Turner has announced that she has cancelled her Riverside Antiques Show in August. In a letter to her dealers she expressed regret in having to make the decision, but explained that the proceeds from putting on a show in the location she has used for the past four years was not enough to justify the high costs incurred. The Wilton Historical Society’s current exhibit, “Made In Connecticut: Toys For American Kids,” on view at the Wilton Heritage Museum until July 15, is designed to entertain the collector and to educate those interested in what American kids played with before plastics and electronics.
Planning and running a first-time show is always fraught with difficulties, but Vivien Cord and Ed McClure, Cord Shows Ltd, overcame all these obstacles to run what was, in the general consensus, “a great first-time show.”
A $50 yard sale find was well rewarded at MV Auctions’ March 24, sale when two partial prototype gramophones, one with a horn, one without, made by the Berliner Co. of Philadelphia sold for $24,725.
Fine art brought robust prices and the smalls were stellar, although there was not one category that dominated Thomaston Place Auction Galleries’ March 31–April 1 auction, and auctioneer Kaja Veilleux could not be more pleased.
Trinity International Auctions posted an impressive gross tally of just over $1 million for its April 21 art auction.
On May 1, Doyle New York held an auction of American furniture where a Johannes Spitler decorated chest attracted intense interest from prominent dealers and collectors. The chest sold, after some fierce competitive bidding, for $288,000. As the Elephant’s Trunk Country Flea Market opened for the season early on April 22, transactions were taking place at a fast and furious pace. Edward Hopper, the great chronicler of the rootlessness and anonymity of modern life, is one of the most enduringly popular and important American painters of the Twentieth Century. With an unerring eye and ample skill, he explored the psyche and surroundings of his fellow citizens in works that have become icons of American art. Hopper’s depictions of the mundane in urban, rural and seacoast settings — restaurants and diners, gas stations, hotel rooms and lobbies, house exteriors, domestic interiors, office scenes, empty streets and lighthouses — captured universal moments of beauty, loneliness and introspection. “Edward Hopper,” organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, features approximately 100 paintings, watercolors and prints dating primarily from 1925 to 1950. It will be on view in Boston through August 19.
From the radiance of sparkling cut glass to the subtle plays of light emanating from an early aqua blown glass bowl with applied lily pad decoration, The Westchester Glass Show once again proved to be a favorite watering hole for those looking to quench their glass collecting thirst.
Renowned curator, collector, art historian and professor of American art John Wilmerding revealed at a May 4 reception and dinner in honor of his retirement that he is the previously anonymous donor of a major gift of Pop Art to the Princeton University Art Museum.
Measured by the pound, the Antique Garden Furniture Show at the New York Botanical Garden outweighs every other antiques event in the city. The event boasted a record crowd for the preview, promoter Catherine Sweeney-Singer said.
The Wilton Historical Society Antiques Show, slimmed down to a single day but as stylish and good looking as ever, presented its spring edition on April 29 with nearly 80 dealers set up in the Wilton High School Field House.
From May 18 to November 25, the Corning Museum of Glass presents the story of the crystalline botanical specimens known as the Glass Flowers of Harvard that are both scientific marvels and drop dead beautiful works of art.
“Dreams on Canvas: Surrealism in Europe and America” opens at Nassau County Museum of Art (NCMA) Saturday, May 26, and continues on view through August 12.
Dazzling Central Asian textiles from the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century will be on display in a new exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA). Sixty dynamic and intricately patterned embroideries from the nomadic and rural peoples living along the fabled Silk Road will be on view June 2–August 26.
Pook & Pook's auction of 850-plus lots from the Donald Shelley collection achieved $9,765,454, a house record. Pook sold the couple’s fraktur collection in 2004 for $899,460.
A Gloucester Harbor oil on canvas scene by Carl W. Peters was dispatched easily at a recent Blackwood/March sale when it fetched $10,350, leading a solid offering of Cape Ann art.
Record prices were routinely established at a popular decoy event in late April, Guyette and Schmidt’s auction of rare waterfowl decoys at the Pheasant Run Resort, commonly known as St Charles, which was the subject of round-after-round of spirited bidding.
As dealers for the past several decades, Melinda and Laszlo Zongor dedicated themselves to their specialty, antique American woven coverlets. They organized exhibitions, wrote catalogs and engaged in ongoing research. The Zongors recently renounced the for-profit world to devote themselves to a longtime dream, establishing the first independent, year-round institution exclusively devoted to the collection, display and study of American woven coverlets. Visitors got their first glimpse of the National Museum of The American Coverlet last spring, when an interim gallery opened in the 1859 Common School, a 30,000-square-foot, two-story red-brick building with an attached one-story annex in Bedford. The museum, which now encompasses the building’s first floor, will formally open on Memorial Day weekend, May 26 and 27.
Martin Greenstein of The Last Detail Antiques Show, Inc, brought more than 50 dealers together at Byram Hills High School, April 21–22 for a weekend antiques event to benefit North Castle Historical Association.
Treadway/Toomey’s recent Twentieth Century sale featured three sessions of more than 1,100 lots and was a record setter.
Dutch masterpieces will meet their matches at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute during “Dutch Dialogues,” on view June 3–September 3.
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park has organized a major museum presentation of works by sculptor Sophie Ryder, from June 8 through September 3.
It was a definite case of March Madness at Carlsen Gallery’s March 25 sale where prices were all over the lot and a French Impressionistic bistro scene by Italian artist Giuseppe de Nittis sold for $65,550.
Sotheby’s April 19 sale of A Private Collection Volume II: Important French Furniture and Decorations Inspired by Eighteenth Century Models realized $11,530,500. A new record for Nineteenth Century furniture at auction was set when the Hertford Jewel Cabinet by John Webb attained $3,176,000.
Clarion Events hosted 400 dealers at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Center (NEC), April 12–15, for the first of its thrice-yearly exhibitions and sales. Called Antiques for Everyone, it is billed as the largest, fully vetted show in Europe, with selections of antiques ranging from the earliest Roman settlements in Great Britain through Victorian and Edwardian periods.
Meg Wendy, casting a wider net to further augment the range and quality of the Spring International Art and Antiques Show, this year succeeded in hauling in a top-flight group of European exhibitors. The show, now in its fifth year, assembled 45 dealers from England, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada and the United States to the Park Avenue Armory over a five-day period from April 27 to May 1.
The Hyde Collection presents the first major exhibition in a quarter century to explore Luminism in Nineteenth Century American landscape paintings. “Luminist Horizons: The Art and Collection of James A. Suydam” will be on view June 3–September 16.
They were an unlikely artistic trio: Pop Art icon Andy Warhol, realist Jamie Wyeth and graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. But in the 1970s and 1980s, Warhol collaborated with the two young artists from opposite poles of the art world in ways that augmented their reputations and reenergized the older man’s work. “Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat,” on view at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, through August 26, traces how Warhol (1928-1987), an established art megastar, invited first Wyeth (b. 1946) and later Basquiat (1960-1988) to paint at the “Factory,” his New York studio. This interesting and thought-provoking exhibition, comprising more than 80 paintings, works on paper and artifacts, documents the unusual interrelationships among Warhol, Wyeth and Basquiat that constituted a unique chapter in America’s art history.
Tod Overdorf, a longtime antiques dealer and collector, died peacefully at his home on May 10 after a long illness. Born in 1931 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., he graduated from Rider University and then served in the army.
Mary Scheier, an internationally known ceramic artist noted for her superbly thrown pottery vessels, died May 14, at age 99. Hirschl & Adler Modern has announced the death of artist Nancy Lawton on May 5, in Albany, N.Y.; she was 57 years old. Drawings were her milieu, with her medium of choice being graphite, and beginning in 1985, silverpoint. Clients and customers of auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s have recently entered into the final year in which to redeem certificates that were awarded as part of a 2003 class action settlement relating to alleged price-fixing by the firms for non-Internet auction services in the United States.
The daffodils and white tents that pop up along Route 20 here in early May mark not only the start of spring, but also the first of the year’s three Brimfield Antiques Markets. This stretch of highway in the seasonally famous hamlet saw the annual pilgrimage by thousands of treasure hunters for a weeklong series of shows running from May 8 to 13.
Nan Gurley’s Americana at Sturbridge fills the exhibition hall of the Sturbridge Host Hotel and Conference Center as the only indoor show held during Brimfield week. A one-day show that ran Thursday, May 10, this event had crowds come for the early American country design furniture and early household accessories. Neal Auction Company’s April 14–15, spring estates auction witnessed considerable success. With presale estimate of $1.5/2.2 million, the 917 lots sold attained $2.6 million.
The cream of the crop at Skinner’s April 14, Asian arts sale was represented by two objects that each sold for $64,625.
Six months of planning and work paid off when Shannon’s twice-a-year auction of fine American and European paintings, drawings and sculpture on April 26, achieved $3.6 million.
Three of the New Britain Museum of American Art’s (NBMAA) most important Hudson River School paintings have returned to the NBMAA’s Henry and Sharon Martin Hudson River School Gallery in antique replica frames that accentuate the beauty and legacy of the works of art.
Visitors to Historic Deerfield can now see more than two dozen objects recently acquired for the museum’s collection in the exhibition, “What’s New? Recent Acquisitions at Historic Deerfield,” on view in the museum’s Flynt Center of Early New England Life through August 12.
The top “lot” at Doyle New York’s 45th anniversary celebration on May 17 was the observation deck 70 floors above Rockefeller Center. Winterthur Museum & Country Estate announces the death of John A. H. Sweeney, curator emeritus. Sweeney died May 17 in Wilmington, at the age of 77.
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