The top lot of Saturday’s session was Kumi Sugai’s oil on canvas “Chaine Du Bleu,” 1963, signed, that outperformed its $3/5,000 estimate to bring $26,000.

BY ANDREA VALLUZZO

PHOTOS COURTESY STAIR GALLERIES

HUDSON, N.Y. — Stair Galleries’ June 5–6 weekend auction kicked off with jewelry and antiques from the Helen Frankenthaler estate and ended with Modern and contemporary art.

“Overall we were very pleased. We had a lot of bidding activity that was evenly spread between the Internet, the phone and the room, which is how we like to see it,” said Lisa Thomas, Stair Galleries’ fine arts department director.

Among the offerings from the renowned artist’s estate, choice pieces of jewelry brought some of the highest prices of the session Friday. Standouts included a Fabergé silver-gilt, enamel and diamond buckle, converted to a brooch, by Michael Perchin, St Petersburg, that attained $9,500 and a 14K yellow gold and agate necklace with carved applied decoration that made $7,500.

Another jewelry standout from the Frankenthaler estate was the Tiffany & Co. 18K yellow gold and black jade bangle bracelet at $7,750.

Well-known designer names were part of Frankenthaler’s collection, led by a Tiffany & Co. 18K yellow gold and black jade bangle bracelet going out at $7,750, a Cartier 18K yellow gold and diamond bracelet at $5,500, a Tiffany & Co. 18K yellow gold necklace for $5,500 and a pair of Buccellati 18K yellow gold and diamond earclips that sold for $5,000.

Saturday’s session turned to art, and the star lot of the session was Kumi Sugai’s oil on canvas “Chaine Du Bleu,” 1963, signed, that outperformed its $3/5,000 estimate to bring $26,000. This work and several other standouts in the sale came out of the Holland Roberts Melson Jr estate in New York. “It did better than estimate, we had so much interest. It was a beautiful painting, bright blue and black,” Thomas said.

“On Saturday, we had a couple of nice, smaller collections that had very interesting, fresh-to-the-market Modern and contemporary materials. What was interesting about all the things that did really well was they were all very fresh to the market,” she added.

Also performing well among paintings were Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Portrait Of René Ricard” that made $16,000, two untitled works by Alberto Magnelli that fetched $12,000 and $11,000, Tadashi Sato’s “Composition #13” for $11,000 and Tadasuke Kuwayama’s (b 1935) “ T-30” at $10,000.

Rounding out the auction was George Brecht’s work “Le Mat” at $10,000.

For additional information, www.stairgalleries.com or 518-751-1000.

Read article and see more images inside June 26, 2015 E-edition