Back-to-back successes for Auction Gallery of the Palm Beaches
Sept. 27, 2006
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – For the second sale in a row Brian Kogan, owner of Auction Gallery of the Palm Beaches, managed to assemble an inventory that produced some eye-opening prices, some chuckles and some quizzical looks. The early summer sale was a night of major surprises and Kogan followed up by gathering 375 lots from three local counties and the Palm Beaches to provide a memorable late summer sale on August 21. Approximately 125 registered bidders were in the room and 300+ bidders registered to participate online through LiveAuctioneers.com. Another 100 people phoned in their bids.
The sale started on a upward note with the first lot, a KPM porcelain oval dish with hand-painted floral border. The 10 1/3in wide dish had an underglaze scepter mark as well as the KPM stamp. In overall very good condition with some very minor wear to gilding, it generated 30 bids between floor and online bidders. Estimated at $250-$350, the dish sold via LiveAuctioneers for $1,680 including the buyer’s premium. A few lots later, the biggest surprise of the night crept across the block. It was an antique American hand-painted glass plaque with Wave Crest-like sailboats. Mounted in a brass frame, the plaque was approximately 10in in diameter, and in the frame it measured 12½in wide. The unmarked plaque was estimated to sell for a modest $40 to $60, but it quickly ignited an online bidding war, closing online with a winning bid of $2,640.
But the real porcelain star of the sale was yet to come. A Royal Vienna porcelain plaque with a provenance from the American Embassy in Havana was signed by Wagner and featured attractive maidens within an elaborate gilt border on the 13in diameter circular plaque. It was enclosed in a 21¼in painted gold frame. Titled Entflohen with an underpainted Royal Vienna mark on back, the plaque also had an impressed KPM and scepter mark. Estimated at $10,000-$15,000, the porcelain plaque sold on the phone to a collector in California for $23,000.
Not all the interest was focused on European porcelain, however. A pair of Oriental lots did well. A 77in high large Chinese carved and gilded shrine with altar deities and multiple removable figures sold to a bidder in Hong Kong for $4,600. A Chinese Zhou Dynasty bronze musical bell cast with numerous incised and embossed decorations on the surface had surmounted dragons on the sides. Mounted on a modern wooden plinth, this bell from China’s longest-lasting dynasty sold in the room for $1,495.
Silver was a favorite in this sale. A set of six Georg Jensen early hammered silver sherbets, marked on base with the early oval Georg Jensen mark and Copenhagen in an oval circle with GJ mark, 3¾ in high, sold above estimate at $4,025; and a Tiffany & Co. sterling silver 57-piece flatware service in the Bamboo pattern surpassed its estimate at $3,450.
For information on future sales at Auction Gallery of the Palm Beaches, log on to www.liveauctioneers.com.
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