Ruggiero & Associates Online Auction Oct. 27 - Nov. 11 on iGavel.com

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Presented by Ruggiero & Associates

Takes place between 10/27/2009 and 11/11/2009

At Ruggiero & Associates , iGavel.com

Our Fall Online Auction Oct. 27 - Nov. 11 on iGavel.com

Our Fall Auction, starting October 27th on iGavel, is pretty exciting. Our sales typically include " good stuff ' , but this sale includes " great stuff! " Highlighting the auction is property from the Elizabeth Cramer Family of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Palm Beach, Florida. It includes a wonderful group of 18th and 19th century French and Continental furniture and decorative acces- sories, many of which are signed examples.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cramer ' s collection was assembled by several members of her family over generations. Her husband, George B. Cramer Sr., was descended through his mother from the distinguished Tinkham, Holden, Bennett, and Warren families of colo- nial Massachusetts, who were engaged in shipping, banking, and early real estate development. His uncle, Congressman George Holden Tinkham of Boston, served from 1915 to 1943, being returned to office thirteen times. Long a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he traveled the globe and collected astutely and avidly. Tinkham left his collection to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, with the family retaining favorite pieces.

G. B. Cramer ' s father was Stuart W. Cramer Sr. of Cramerton, Charlotte, and Thomasville, North Carolina. The Cramers, intermarrying with the Thomas family, founded well known Furniture Factories in Thomasville, as well as helping establish the early NC railway system, and the first women's college in the state. Stuart W. Cramer designed numerous Cotton Textile Mills across the South, building for himself Cramer-ton Mills in Cramerton, NC. He also held dozens of patents including those for early systems of Air Conditioning, was a founding shareholder in Duke Power, and served in the Coolidge Administration.

S. W. Cramer's large home on Morehead St. in Charlotte was built in 1902, and was decorated by Tiffany Studios. Louis C. Tiffany was a personal friend of Mr. Cramer's, and he visited NC several times during construction of the nine bedroom house, which had a ballroom with four Tiffany Favrile leaded glass windows representing the seasons, a conservatory, and a music room with a large pipe organ.

George Cramer was an official with the War Dept. at the Pentagon prior to the entry of the US into WW2, and he personally briefed President Roosevelt on Intelligence matters on a regular basis. After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt sent Mr. Cramer to England, to serve as Intelligence Liaison to Winston Churchill and to the Royal Air Force ministry. He became well acquainted with Mr. Churchill and visited his home, Chartwell, several times. During the War in England, Elizabeth Cramer was personal assistant to Lord Selbourne, head of the Special Operations Executive, which oversaw many of the clandestine British Intelligence operations in occupied Europe.

George and Elizabeth Cramer met in London in 1943 at the home of a mutual friend, and were immediately attracted to one another. Both had extremely high security clearance, so only after each had firmly established that the other was indeed safe to court , did they begin a wonderful relationship that would last 52 years.

After the War, Mr. Cramer was assigned to the American Embassy in Paris, from 1948 to 1953, where he headed the Textile division of the Marshall Plan. While in Paris, Mrs. Cramer collected many fine French 18th Century antiques, some bought directly from the families who had owned them since they were made. The couple brought these elegant things to their home in Charlotte in 1954

In 1961 the Cramers acquired Casa Ananda, a lovely 1924 oceanfront villa on 3.3 acres on Ocean Blvd. in Palm Beach, Florida, where they enjoyed entertaining friends for a quarter century. The Cramers continued to travel and to collect until Mr. Cramer's health failed in the 198o 's. Mr. Cramer died in 1995 and Mrs. Cramer in 2006.

Another wonderful group of property is the artwork from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Jordan of Atlanta, Georgia. Offering a diversion from an active political career, the Jordans pursued collecting art that they fell in love with. Included in the sale is an important Albert Herter oil on canvas, formerly in the Collection of Mrs. Pearl Chase of Santa Barbara, CA, a study for Herter' s "Greek Phi- losophers" mural. This group also includes Whistlers, French posters, and pastels by H. Claude Pissarro.

From an Aiken, South Carolina, Private Collection comes a very good group of four fox hunting paintings by Samuel Aiken (British, 1784-1825), as well as a collection of nine pastel works by Ohio artist Charles Salis Kaelin purchased from the artist during the early 1920 ' s.

Other paintings and artwork included are a group of watercolors, etchings, and lithographs by numerous European and American artists including Whistler, Van Leyden, F. Marc, Charles Meryon, Max Lieberman, A. Legras, A. Beardsley, F. von Bayros, Seymour Haden, Paul Helleau, W. Gropper, Chaim Gross, V. Vasarely, George Luks, John Sloan, and wonderful paintings by David Burliuk, Anthony Thieme, and a Western Pennsylvania landscape by Albert F. King.

There are wonderful decorative accessories including two important pairs of French ormolu candelabra, ormolu clocks, decorative bronzes and sculpture including a pair of Berrocal doves, and my sale favorite- a Tiffany Studios provided "Maiden in the Bulrushes" figural lamp from S.W. Cramer's 1902 home on Morehead Street in Charlotte.

Asian Art includes an 18th/19thC polychrome coromandel eight-panel screen, carved ivory, a magnificent 18th/19thC mother-of-pearl cabinet on frame, ceramics, and a fantastic Japanese bronze incense burner. Modern studio glass, a Roycroft ashtray and Heinz cigar box, with as- sorted silver, antique guns, and a bronze fender offer interesting smalls. On the more monumental sidethere is 20' banquet table and twenty , chairs from a Palm Beach Collection, an important Tiffany & Co. ormolu clock with pair of ormolu candelabra, and a large late 18th/early 19thC French handpainted wallpaper fragment on canvas, removed from the Cramer Charlotte home for the sale. To wrap it up for the family that has almost everything, we will also offer a 1987 Ford Country Squire station wagon with all the trimmings.

It's a truly great sale with great stuff. We hope you participate and enjoy it!