FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) – Politicians know that a walk through a flea market is often a good place to pick up a few votes, but longtime Newton County poll worker Sue Brown found something else of value, a handful of ballots that has become part of an exhibit at the Clinton House Museum.
While at a flea market in Kingston, Brown recognized a pair of wooden boxes as old ballot boxes. Inside one were six marked ballots from Bill Clinton’s first run for public office, a 1974 congressional race. The other box contained several dozen ballot stubs. Brown left the boxes behind, but her daughter, Jennifer Price of Fayetteville, bought them for $35 as a birthday gift for her mother.
“They were dusty, like they had been there for a while,” Brown told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “It was quite a shock to open it and see it was a Bill Clinton election.” Continue reading
Bob Courtney had these large griffin sconces cast from the antique originals. Image courtesy Bob Courtney Auctions.MILLBURY, Mass – From an 11-foot-high painting of Jesus Christ to an 8-foot-tall Black Forest grandfather clock, it is apparent that Bob Courtney Auctions’ 2009 Spring Sale on Saturday, May 16, will be of monumental proportions. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
“Is it going to be a great auction?” said Bob Courtney rhetorically. “I don’t know yet. We’ll find out Saturday.”
The auctioneer is confident he has some fine and unique items to offer.
He will sell a huge oil on canvas painting by Jozef Maganck depicting Jesus with apostles Peter and John and surrounded by children. The painting was exhibited in Brussels in 1860 and had until recently been in a convent in Belgium.
“I was in Belgium, saw it and love it. So I bought it,” said Courtney.
Because the artist painted large works that were installed in institutions, few of his paintings have come on the market, said Courtney, who gives it a $30,000-$35,000 estimate.
A precisely carved eagle with its wings spread open tops the Black Forest grandfather clock, which Courtney hopes will do well. “It’s a rare clock, one of the best you’ll ever find,” he said.
Another grand item in the 574-lot auction will be a four-piece American Renaissance Revival walnut bedroom set, which Courtney describes as museum quality. The step well dresser includes original hardware, oversize mirror, and inset marble and side niches. There set also includes marble-top nightstand, washstand and outstanding bed with elaborate carvings.
A magnificently carved and extra-large sideboard in the auction is attributed to Venetian sculptor Valentino Panciera Besarel (1829-1902). Standing 91 inches high and 139 inches wide, the three-tiered walnut cabinet has a $20,000-30,000 estimate.
The 60-inch-high bronze griffin sconces offered in the sale are new reproductions, which Courtney had cast from the originals. “The originals sold for a half-million dollars in New York,” said Courtney. “I tell everyone these are new and they’re still interested in them.”
Also included in this sale will be Gothic, Victorian, Eastlake, Empire, Rococo, Aesthetic Movement, Arts & Crafts, Art Deco, Art Nouveau and antique oak furniture.
The auction will be held at Bob Courtney Auctions, 12 Providence St. (Route 122A) in Millbury. Previews are through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. For information phone 508-865-1009.
View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bid live via the Internet by logging on to www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bid absentee or live via the Internet as the sale is taking place by logging on to www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
Carved figures abound on this circa 1880 Italian sideboard attributed to Besarel. Image courtesy Bob Courtney Auctions.The Black Forest grandfather clock is 99 inches high and dates to the 1880s. Image courtesy Bob Courtney Auctions.Jozef Maganck’s painting of Jesus is titled ‘Let the Children Come to Me.’ Image courtesy Bob Courtney Auctions.Bob Courtney had these large griffin sconces cast from the antique originals. Image courtesy Bob Courtney Auctions.Victorian furniture doesn’t get any higher than this American Renaissance Revival four-piece bedroom set. Image courtesy Bob Courtney Auctions.
‘Dr. J. Frank Gardner’ once owned this unusual shaving mug decorated with a hand-painted skeleton. Image courtesy Cowan’s Auctions.CINCINNATI – “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.” Cowan’s auction of occupational shaving mugs May 16 sounds like an early 1900s jobs fair. After the record-setting sale of the Henry Tolman antique shaving mug collection in 2007, Cowan’s Auctions Inc. will sell another extensive collection of occupational shaving mugs May 16. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
William and Phyllis Gilmore of Lancaster, Ohio, are selling their collection, which will be offered in approximately 220 lots. Within the collection is a wide selection representing various trades, including medical, house painters, railroad workers and barbers. Highlights include an unusual doctor’s mug with full hand-painted skeleton and a steamship captain’s mug. Another scarce shaving mug pictures an early motorist behind the wheel of an open touring car on a city street. This German-made mug has a $800-$1,500 estimate. Five mugs depicting various hunting scenes comprise one of the many group lots.
The second half of the auction will include medical antiques and collectibles, much of them from a broad collection in Portage, Ohio. The collector’s tastes were wide ranging, from leech jars, to surgical kits, dental keys, apothecary jars, and mortars and pestles.
The collection is supplemented by additional consignments from a Cincinnati art institution. Some highlights include identified Ohio surgical kits, bleeders, leech jars and other medical rarities. A number of scientific instruments and collectibles will also be represented, including a grouping of microscopes, pleximeters and other electrical devices. The collection consists of more than 250 individual and group lots.
The auction will be conducted at Cowan’s gallery at 6270 Este Ave. in Cincinnati, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern.
View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bid absentee or live via the Internet as the sale is taking place by logging on to www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bid absentee or live via the Internet as the sale is taking place by logging on to www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
This fine blown glass jar was made to hold leaches. Possibly English, the 7 1/4-inch jar has a $1,000-$1,500 estimate. Image courtesy Cowan’s Auctions.Molded of white earthenware, this Phrenology head was made in England in the second half of the 19th century. It stands about 11 3/8 inches high. Image courtesy Cowan’s Auctions.Safety razors hastened the demise of the old-fashioned barbershop shave. This advertising clock. This advertising clock has a $1,000-$1,500 estimate. Image courtesy Cowan’s Auctions.The captain of a ship once owned this shaving mug, which pictures an ocean-going side-wheel sail steamboat. It carries an $800-$1,000 estimate. Image courtesy Cowan’s Auctions.
With the turn of the screw the Spanish mouth pear expands in the prisoner’s mouth. Image courtesy Guernsey’s.
NEW YORK (AP) – For sale soon: a variety of torture devices from the 16th century, including “shame masks” to enforce silence, a 14-foot table-like rack to stretch the victim’s body, and a “tongue tearer” to punish blasphemers and heretics. Even an executioner’s sword.
Guernsey’s auction house in New York plans to auction the privately owned collection, with proceeds to go to Amnesty International and other organizations committed to preventing torture in today’s world, said Guernsey’s president, Arlan Ettinger. “That is clearly the seller’s intent,” he said.
Ettinger described the items Wednesday as possibly the world’s most extensive collection of historical torture devices – some 252 items – plus rare books, documents and other related artifacts.
He declined to identify the owner, beyond saying it is a family living in the northeastern U.S., within three hours of New York. No date has been set for the auction.
Of German origin and acquired in the late 19th century by England’s earl of Shrewsbury, the torture collection has been in private American hands since last publicly shown in 1893 in New York and at the Chicago World’s Fair. Its owner for many years after that was Arne Coward, a Norwegian-born survivor of the Holocaust. His descendants are the present owners, Ettinger said.
On Nov. 26, 1893, an article in The New York Times described what was then a 1,300-item collection, noting that “thousands of people have gazed upon these terrible relics of a semi-barbarous age,” all of which “have been in actual use.”
The 252 devices include iron masks, boots, thumbscrews, foot squeezers, ropes, leg irons, chains, rings, manacles and “witch-catchers.”
Notably absent is what the Times in 1893 called the “justly-celebrated iron maiden,” a coffin-like case with deadly spikes on the inside. Ettinger said the fate of the iron maiden and other items is unknown, but they may have been lost in a fire that destroyed many buildings at the end of the Chicago world’s fair.
The diabolical devices are a unique, but not unlikely, offering by the Manhattan-based auctioneer, noted for its sales of the offbeat.
Guernsey’s auctioned off Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball in 1998 for a record $3 million, and it plans what Ettinger says will be the world’s first tennis auction at this year’s U.S. Open in New York, selling an array of sport-related items from antique rackets to trophies and historic contracts. “So it’s not all painful,” he said.
Ettinger said there was no way to tell what the torture collection is worth or how much it may fetch at auction. In the 1970s, he said, an obscure magazine “read only by historians” estimated its value at $3 million – about the same as Mark McGwire’s home run ball.
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-CS-05-06-09 1754EDT
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Often heated over a fire, the iron spider was used to slowly rip flesh from the victim. Image courtesy Guernsey’s.This Spanish collar of wrought iron is a relic of the Inquisition. Image courtesy Guernsey’s.
A one-sheet poster for the 1931 horror classic Frankenstein sold for $180,000 in April. Image courtesy Profiles in History and LiveAuctioneers.com Archive.
MADISON, N.J. (AP) – While many lose sleep over each twist and turn of today’s economy, New Jersey collector Ralph DeLuca has found a hedge against the recession in the memorabilia of Hollywood’s past.
A former private investment consultant, DeLuca hardly batted an eye when he bought a vintage poster from the 1932 cult movie Freaks at auction in March for more than $100,000. The poster had cost $10 in the early 1970s.
A few minutes later he outbid competitors for a rare poster of the original Dracula from 1931, owned by actor Nicolas Cage, snapping it up for more than $300,000.
“It’s just a matter of what your passion is,” DeLuca said. “I don’t have bad vices. I don’t gamble. I don’t drink. This is like enforced savings for me. People tell me, ‘You could sell some of your stuff and buy a Bentley,’ but to me a car is a depreciating asset.”
Icons of American pop culture adorn DeLuca’s still-being-furnished town house: Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (signed by the director); the Marx Brothers in garish caricature in Duck Soup; Charlie Chaplin in City Lights; Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.
All the posters date back to the movies’ original release, and give the room the feel of an old theater lobby.
DeLuca’s first purchase was in the early 1990s, a poster for Mel Brooks’ The Producers. He figures he now owns tens of thousands of archival pieces, including rare photographs, original movie scripts and concert posters, for a collection worth upward of $10 million.
Far fewer posters were printed in Hollywood’s early years, he said, and often they were leased to the theaters and were not intended for public collecting in the same way as baseball cards or comic books. Consequently, finding posters can take years, even with the coming of online auction sites.
DeLuca has bought posters from people who saved them for decades without realizing their worth; one seller used them for insulation.
Grey Smith, director of vintage movie posters at Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, said the subculture of collectors who specialize in movie poster art has managed to keep prices steady even during the economic downturn.
“When you get to the much rarer pieces such as the Freaks insert, there doesn’t seem to be any decline,” said Smith, who conducted the March auction. “Many collectors realize that when something comes up that is a rarity, they have to jump or else they may never have an opportunity again.”
DeLuca concedes the hobby isn’t recession-proof and is subject to the vagaries of any collectors’ market. He notes, for example, that interest in Western movie collectibles has fallen off in recent years.
Still, he feels vindicated when he recalls his decision to cash out of the market before it collapsed and focus on collecting.
“All my friends said I was nuts, but I’d rather have this,” he said, gesturing toward the posters. “It’s tangible, it’s here, it’s rare. You buy a share of stock and you own one-millionth of one percent of some company that has 50 vice presidents they don’t need. It’s not worth it. I own a hundred percent of these, and they’re not making any more of them.”
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
