Jenkins Management, show producers, attracted great crowds to the Farmington Antiques and Design Weekend, June 13–14.. Company spokesman Jon Jenkins said the visitor total on Saturday was the highest in the last five years for this 200-dealer, twice-yearly event.
Going, Gone Auction Gallery’s debut Modern auction on June 9 found favor with buyers who played it “safe,” investing in the big names.
The 75th anniversary of the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair that took place June 11–17 was the fair’s swan song at the venerable hotel but show managers have dropped strong hints that a new fair would take its place.
In the villages and towns tucked in along the coastal inlets and waterways of colonial and early Nineteenth Century southeastern Massachusetts, craftsmen toiled making furniture and other household goods. Artisans in these communities, dependent on and surrounded by the sea and linked by the abundant rivers crisscrossing the nearly 1,800 square miles of the area, drew on their own ingenuity, the styles and techniques observed in the next village, as well as the cities of Boston and Newport, New York, Philadelphia and even London. A compelling range of idiosyncratic furniture styles resulted. “Harbor and Home: Furniture of Southeastern Massachusetts, 1710–1815,” on view at the Nantucket Historical Association Whaling Museum (NHA) through November 2, is a scholarly survey of the furniture traditions that emanated from the five counties of Plymouth, Bristol, Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket, Mass. Further, it is a study of the workers in those traditions, their patrons and the prevailing commerce and customs in the early maritime and seafaring communities.
In the end it was inside a cavernous but nondescript moving and storage warehouse that collectors and dealers got to see another side of Charles G. Martignette Jr, co-author of The Great American Pin-up, considered to be the bible of this quintessentially American illustration genre.
Rare medieval manuscript illuminations, last exhibited in 1975, are showcased in an installation, “Heaven on Earth: Manuscript Illuminations from the National Gallery of Art,” on view through August 2.
The National Museum of American Illustration is hosting “Norman Rockwell: American Imagist,” open to the public through August 30. This is the first Norman Rockwell exhibition ever to be shown in Rhode Island.
Pearl Golden, known as “Pepper” most of her life, died April 11. A patron of the arts, her passion and knowledge of antiques led her to a fascinating second career as an antiques dealer, known for her participation in numerous antiques shows. Sotheby’s sales of Impressionist and Modern art on May 5 and 6 totaled $84.4 million. with the evening auction led by Piet Mondrian’s “Composition in Black and White, with Double Lines,” bringing $9,266,500, well above its high estimate of $5 million.
Two Mary Cassatt works were the big surprises of the day at South Bay Auctions’ June 20 sale, which mostly comprised the Cynthia Phipps estate, according to auctioneer Jean Paul Napoli.
Modern design retains its popularity, as evidenced by a 1,400-lot auction conducted by Uniques & Antiques on June 16.
On June 27 and 28, the buildings and grounds of Middlebrook School hosted a two-day showcase of show promoter Marilyn Gould’s familiar mix — country and period formal American and European antique furniture, folk art, fine art, ceramics, jewelry, antique prints and maps and more.
In the middle of East 11th Street right off Broadway sits the mysterious shop front of Metro Antiques. Shop owner Maurice Margules, one of the colorful neighborhood's antiques dealers, has specialized in Jacobean oak and early furniture for nearly 50 years. Morgan MacWhinnie assembled 88 exhibiting dealers of early Americana, Victoriana and Mid-Century antiques and décor for the Bridgehampton Historical Society’s annual spring show June 20–21.
In a packed salesroom recently, bidders drove Christie’s postwar and contemporary art evening sale total to $93,734,500, led by strong results for the Betty Freeman collection and five new world auction records.
Desirable American furniture from a Connecticut estate brought leading dealers to the quiet, little town of Medway for the 25th anniversary sale at Coyle’s Auction Gallery that featured old family ties and fine fresh Americana from the New Haven estate of longtime collectors.
The third edition of the annual June Festival of Antiques proved to be the best show to date, according to promoter Steve Lipman.
“Wow” is one word James L. Jackson, president and chief executive officer of Jackson’s International, used to describe the bidding action at his June 23 and 24 auction that saw a new record price paid at auction established and produced sales of $1.2 million.
Just under 40 dealers were on hand for the 12th annual Litchfield County Antiques Show, June 27 and 28. A pleasing event, merchandise was diversified with items spanning several centuries ranging from Seventeenth Century Oriental porcelains to a more recent watercolor by recently deceased Andrew Wyeth.
“Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820–2009” at the National Academy examines the critical role the human figure has played in America’s art for the past 189 years.
Lillian Dolores Horn Boyd, a respected antiques dealer, who with her husband Irvin curated her love of the antiques they collected over the years into a business known as Meetinghouse Antiques, died on July 4 after a long illness. “The Rohlfs style is something new and it belongs in a class by itself. Try your best and you cannot place it in association with anything else,” exuded magazine author Will Clemens in 1900 in regards to the unique furnishings designed and executed by Charles Rohlfs during the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Unmistakable in style and form, they are truly as individual as the man who created them. Rohlfs regarded himself an American original and, in fact, he was, thereby making it hard to place him into any one descriptive category, something akin to fitting the proverbial square peg into the round hole. “American Originals: The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs,” the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the furniture maker, recently began its five-venue national tour at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wis., and is currently on view there through August 23. It brings together more than 45 examples from Rohlfs’ rich body of works.
A John Singer Sargent portrait of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, painted in 1890, has returned to The Breakers, the former Vanderbilt summer cottage in Newport, R.I.
A trio of lots tied for top honors at Sloans & Kenyon’s three-day estate catalog auction, somewhat to the surprise of Stephanie Kenyon, co-owner.
The Canton, Conn., Police Department is investigating a reported larceny from the multidealer shop, Antiques on the Farmington, involving a jade ring. The Bruce Museum is presenting the exhibition “The Mouse House: Art from the Collection of Olga Hirshhorn,” opening Saturday, July 25, and on view through Sunday, October 18.
The Burlington House commodes are the only known surviving pieces of furniture from the early history of Burlington House in Piccadilly. Long presumed lost, the elegant demilune commodes will be on public view in the Saloon, one of the Royal Academy’s John Madejski Fine Rooms, July 27 to December 31.
Veteran show promoter Nan Gurley was hired three years ago to produce Castle in the Clouds' antiques show. This year's show on June 28 featured her core group of dealers who scout out fresh, never-before-seen antiques for each of the shows they do for her.
The preening pintail drake and the “snakey-neck” nesting Canada goose, two exceptional decoys carved by Elmer Crowell for one of his most discerning patrons, brought solid prices when auctioned on Wednesday, July 15.
In 1969, around the time Andy Warhol removed a soup can from its shelf and elevated it to an icon of Pop culture, a young artist named Gary T. Erbe was also beginning to see everyday objects as disembodied from their environment. In Erbe’s hand, common items, such as the sponge that became the money-sucking sponge on a silver platter in “Staff of Life” (1970), were freed from gravitational restraint and levitated in mid-air on canvas. In evolving his technique, the self-trained artist added layers of interest far beyond anything Pop could allow. Erbe juxtaposed realistically rendered objects with no obvious relationship to one another to tell a story. Forty years on, Erbe’s paintings hang in private and museum collections across the nation. Most of his work is sold before it is painted. Erbe’s work is being featured in two concurrently running New York City exhibits. “Gary Erbe: Forty Year Retrospective” is on view at Salmagundi through August 7. Steuben’s “Baseball At Steuben,” presented by Going Going Gone Sports, runs through August 8.
Jenkins Shows hosted its latest edition of the Springfield Antiques Show & Flea Market June 26–28 at Clark County Fairgrounds, featuring more than 1,000 exhibiting dealers.
“If we had something, we had a stack of them,” commented auctioneer Peter Imler of Stanton Auction about his auction on June 23. “We had well over 100 pieces of period furniture, 25 case pieces, a dozen candlestands, period chests…,” he said, and the list went on and on.
Fifty years in hot pursuit of antiques and he manifests no signs of slowing down. Carl W. Stinson has chased antiques now for half a century and every new day is as fine as the first.
The Philadelphia Police Department is investigating the reported theft from a home of a Royal Doulton vase and an oil painting.
Elinor McIntyre Gordon, a noted authority on Chinese Export porcelain, died July 22 after suffering a stroke while vacationing on Cape Cod. She was 91. Forty-one dealers took part in The Antiques in the Garden show, sponsored by Maine Antiques Dealers Association, 18 of them new, The show closed Saturday, July 11.
The work of Great Barrington artist Arthur Yanoff is on view through September 6 in the Berkshire Museum’s Berkshirebase Gallery as a direct complement to the ongoing exhibition, “Color and Form: The Language of Abstract Art.”
The Antiques in the Church Yard show at Stevens Memorial United Methodist Church covered the grounds with exhibiting antiques and collectibles dealers who were greeted by more than 2,500 visitors on Independence Day, July 4.
Two of the founders of the Taos Art Colony and Taos Society of Artists, Eanger Irving Couse (1866–1936) and Joseph Henry Sharp (1859-1953), shared many things in common. Both were from the Midwest, each had studied in Europe and brought to New Mexico the academic painting tradition they had independently experienced in Paris. By 1909, the two artists had bonded in Taos, becoming next-door neighbors near the Plaza on Kit Carson Road, their studios separated by a massive adobe wall. They remained friends and colleagues for the rest of their careers. The Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, N.M., is presenting two revelatory exhibitions, “Kindred Spirits and the Adobe Connection: E.I. Couse and J.H. Sharp” and “A Painter and his Camera: Model Studies by E.I. Couse,” both on view through October 18. The first show features paintings by both artists, along with artifacts depicted in Couse paintings and relevant sketchbooks and photographs. The second exhibition, drawn from around 10,000 photographs in the Couse family archives, showcases about 20 camera studies Couse undertook in preparing for easel paintings.
While the finest examples in each category brought predictably high prices, it was the reawakening of the middle range that spurred the most discussion at Dan Morphy Auctions’ recent $1.3 million sale.
Doyle New York’s auction on June 3 showcased fine and decorative arts reflecting the opulence of the Belle Epoque.
Elinor McIntyre Gordon, a noted authority on Chinese Export porcelain, died July 22, after suffering a stroke while vacationing on Cape Cod. She was 91.
An impressive variety of Asian works of art were in demand at Michaan’s June 8 biannual auction of fine Asian works of art. According to the auctioneer, the strength of the market combined with quality, provenance and condition to contribute the success of the sale.
One of Bucks County, Penn.'s most accomplished painters, Robert Alexander Darrah Miller is on view in “An Independent Spirit: The Art and Life of R.A.D. Miller,” at the Michener Art Museum, August 15 to January 3.
The Mint Museum of Art has acquired an early Nineteenth Century portrait by John Singleton Copley. “St Cecilia, a Portrait (Mrs Richard Crowninshield Derby),” 1803, is the first painting by Copley to enter the Mint’s collection.
Robert “Bob” Hamilton Glass, 75, passed on July 26 in Estoro, Fla., after a long illness. He was a longtime auctioneer and was active in the National Auctioneers Association for 30 years.
The Olympia Art and Antiques Fair in London, a fixture on the International art and antiques scene for 36 years, has seen various identities over its run of three and a half decades. The highlight of The Cobbs’ July 11 auction was not early American but an early Egyptian sarcophagus portrait that provoked a competition among nine phone bidders, ending only when it went to one for $143,750.
The Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection includes works assembled by the couple in Frankfurt, Germany, between 1905 and 1925, the most creative years of German Expressionism. The Virginia Museum of the Fine Arts recently announced its acquisition of a major part of the collection.
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