
YORK, PENN. — On June 23, Hake’s Auctions closed its Anti-Slavery To Civil Rights auction, which featured 302 lots spanning categories from political buttons to broadsides and fine art to utilitarian pieces, among other selections. Rising well past its $10/20,000 estimate to reach the sale-high price of $95,592, including buyer’s premium, was a 12-by-9-inch Parian statuette by Antebellum African-American sculptor Eugene Warburg (1825-1859). Based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), the statuette depicted Uncle Tiff rocking the white child he cares for. The circa 1856 Copeland, Staffordshire, figure was made as part of a commission of works relating to Stowe’s novels by the Duchess of Sutherland, who was an abolitionist, and came from the political collection of Rex and Patti Stark. Further results from the auction will be featured in an upcoming edition.