The unusual interior configuration makes this mid-18th-century Queen Anne walnut secretary bookcase unusual. It has a $8,500-$10,000 estimate. Image courtesy of Wiederseim Associates Inc.
GLENMOORE, Pa. – With a star-studded lineup of Americana and more – from a Boston Queen Anne secretary to a collection of Staffordshire figures – Wiederseim Associates Inc. will conduct their Spring Antique Auction on May 8. LiveAuctioneers will provide Internet live bidding. The 593-lot auction will begin at 9 a.m. Eastern at Griffith Hall, Ludwigs Corner Firehouse.
The Queen Anne walnut secretary bookcase, circa 1740, should sell in the early afternoon. This rare example features an interior fitted with pigeonholes and document drawers – in the upper section. Contained in the lower section behind a slant lid are more pigeonholes and drawered compartments over four graduated drawers. Standing on straight bracket feet, the secretary bookcase is 78 1/2 inches high by 36 inches wide by 22 1/4 inches deep. It has a conservative $8,500-$10,000 estimate.
“It’s a beautiful piece,” said Ted Weiderseim. “It was purchased recently for $30,000. I don’t know if it will bring that again but it should do well.
Another fine period piece is a Pennsylvania Queen Anne mahogany dish-top candlestand, circa 1780, with a birdcage support, ball turned shaft and snake feet. It is expected to bring $4,500-$5,000.
Wiederseim said that another highlight will be the collection of Staffordshire figures from the estate of Leonard E.B. Andrews of Malvern, Pa. Andrews, a writer-publisher who died Jan. 2, 2009, made news when he bought 240 previously unknown Andrew Wyeth works depicting a mysterious woman known as Helga, and later sold them for a big profit. Wiederseim said that Andrews bought the Staffordshire figures years ago from a Philadelphia collector.
Included will be nearly a dozen pairs of Staffordshire spaniels. One rare pair is red and white and has arched bases. The pair is estimated at $2,000-$2,500.
Estate jewelry will be another highlight of the sale, said Wiederseim. “There are 14- and 18-karat gold necklaces, bracelets and earrings that should do well,” he said. Included are several pieces by jewelry designer David Yurman. A ladies’ Piaget Polo wristwatch with pavé diamonds consisting of 26 single cut diamonds and an 18K gold case and bracelet carries a $5,000-$7,000 estimate.
Four paintings by Chester Springs, Pa., artist Albert Van Nesse Greene (1887-1971) will be sold including a large oil on board picturing the Brooklyn Bridge in winter.
“His paintings are doing very well now,” said Wiedersim, noting that Greene, a veteran of World War I, is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
For details about the auction, phone 610-827-1910.
Preliminary bidding has been active on this coin silver ewer produced by Wood & Hughes of New York. The 16 1/2-inch-high ewer has a $700-$1,000 estimate. Image courtesy of Wiederseim Associates Inc. Bidding is expected to reach $4,500-$5,000 for this Pennsylvania Queen Anne mahogany dish-top candlestand, which features a birdcage support, ball turned shaft and snake feet. Image courtesy of Wiederseim Associates Inc. The artist signed her name in gilt on this reverse-painted watercolor painting of a basket of fruit and a dove with a floral border. Mounted in an ornate gilt frame, the early watercolor measures 25 inches by 24 inches overall and has a $4,500-$5,000 estimate. Image courtesy of Wiederseim Associates Inc. The impact of baseball on American culture is evident in these Heubach porcelain figures, which stand 13 inches high. The pair has a $1,500-$2,000. Image courtesy of Wiederseim Associates Inc. Best in show – these dogs represent nearly a dozen pairs of Staffordshire spaniels that are in the auction. These are 9 1/2 inches high by 8 inches wide. Image courtesy of Wiederseim Associates Inc.
A 1789 map of Delaware shows the vicinity of Avery’s Rest, somewhere between Cape Henlopen and Rehoboth Bay to the south. Image courtesy of Malter Galleries Inc. and LiveAuctioneers archive. REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) – In the earliest decades of Colonial settlement in Delaware, coastal Sussex County was the frontier – an isolated place where living was far from easy.
But for John and Sarah Avery, it wasn’t without some comforts.
It is likely, archaeologists believe, that the couple lived in a house near Rehoboth Bay and that the house had plaster walls.
What’s known of the Averys and their home place – Avery’s Rest – has come alive thanks to a detailed search of public records and a dig at a property just west of Rehoboth Beach.
Artifacts and a detailed story of Avery’s Rest will be on display beginning Saturday at the Rehoboth Beach Museum. The display will mark Archaeology Month in Delaware by showcasing more than four years of searching and digging and countless volunteer hours by members of the Sussex County chapter of the Archaeology Society of Delaware.
Avery’s Rest is one of the earliest settlements in Delaware – a place where real and lasting settlement came later than in nearby states, said Craig Lukezic, a state archaeologist.
It was nestled between Dutch and English settlements. And it even became a pawn among the English gentry who controlled land grants as they sought to control land ownership in the region, Lukezic said.
For all the work of state and volunteer archaeologists, the diggers still haven’t located the Avery house’s foundation. But the archaeologists did discover two wells and a cellar – probably of some type of storage building.
John Avery was one of Delaware’s early settlers, a sea captain, a possible raider of the Dutch settlement at Lewes and eventually a justice of the peace and judge.
He was also a landowner. When he died, he owned more than 900 acres around Rehoboth Bay.
The Avery’s Rest site, just west of Rehoboth Beach and near the upper end of Rehoboth Bay, is significant because it is an early settlement. The property was slated for development, and the owners gave state officials time to search the property for signs of the early settlers.
The project also set the stage for a cooperative effort between the state’s small group of professional archaeologists and volunteers with the archaeological society.
John Bransch, president of the Sussex Chapter of the Archaeological Society of Delaware, estimated that over the last four years – a period that included both digging on the site and conservation of the artifacts that were recovered – the group has logged more than 15,000 volunteer hours.
The work started slowly, until the team located two wells and began to find artifacts that pieced together the story of life at Avery’s Rest, he said.
While the area was remote and isolated, there was water access and local people would have used the water as a highway to travel, trade and visit, Lukezic said.
Local legend has it that Avery was a pirate – the Plymouth, England-born model for Daniel Defoe’s legendary hero in Life, Adventures and Pyracies of the Famous Captain Singleton. That John Avery pillaged and plundered in the Caribbean and along the coasts of Spain, Africa and Madagascar.
But it turns out, Lukezic said, that the dates for Rehoboth’s John Avery don’t match those of the buccaneer – whose life of piracy is believed to have begun in 1691.
Rehoboth’s John Avery was likely a successful and profitable landowner by more legal methods.
One thing the archaeologists found were lots of pig and cattle bones. The theory is that Avery may have been supplying other local residents with meat.
Former state director of historical and cultural affairs Daniel R. Griffith discovered the site in 1977, when state officials were doing survey work around Delaware’s Inland Bays. In 1978, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Griffith said at the time of its discovery that state archaeologists – fearing development would destroy any record of its historic sites – wanted an inventory of what was there.
Avery’s Rest, Griffith said, was in a tilled farm field. Soil stains at the site helped identify it as an early settlement.
The plaster that was found is unique, because typically at that time most homes would have been built entirely of wood, Lukezic said.
Among the artifacts they found were part of a horse bridle, a buckle, a pistol ball, flint – possibly from a pistol or a fire starter – and a knife, a fork and bits of pottery. They’ve also found bottles and many pieces of bones and other fragments.
State officials are keeping the site’s location a secret to avoid problems with artifact hunters.
The site is linked to one brief period in Delaware’s history of early European settlement – 1680 to 1720. Within that 40-year time frame, historians know that European settlers shifted from a life of scant possessions to an explosion in commerce sometime around 1700.
Then, “around 1720, this place was abandoned, for whatever reason,” Lukezic said.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Jill Biden helped dedicate colorful street art in downtown Washington, D.C. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. WASHINGTON (AP) – Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, is giving her blessing to new, colorful sculptures lining a once dreary part of Washington’s New York Avenue.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts dedicated the sculptures Wednesday. The pieces by French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle include women in colorful bathing suits and one depicting basketball star Michael Jordan.
Biden says the project brings art and diversity into the street. She says Washington’s museum scene has defined her first year living in the city.
The sculpture project stretches from 13th Street toward Mount Vernon Square. It will feature changing installations, all by women artists.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton says “working stiffs” deserve outdoor sculptures downtown and not just on the National Mall.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were photographed by artist Leo Matiz circa 1945. This gelatin silver print will be offered by RoGallery.com in the gallery’s Latin American Sale on May 26. Image courtesy RoGallery.com and LiveAuctioneers archive. BERLIN (AP) – A new retrospective of Frida Kahlo’s work uses photographs of the Mexican artist combined with examples of her writings and sketches to portray a complete picture of the painter as a person.
The exhibition, which opens Friday at the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum in Berlin and runs through Aug. 9, includes more than 150 drawings and paintings all drawn from major Mexican and several private art collections in Mexico and the United States.
It includes the plaster corset that Kahlo painted and works from the last year of her life.
The paintings are enhanced by dozens of photographs – some well-known portraits from famous photographers, others from her family’s private collection. They are curated by Kahlo’s great-niece, Cristina Kahlo.
“If you see the photographs and you see the paintings, you have a whole idea about Frida’s life and work,” she said. “With the documents, you can understand much more the paintings.”
Born July 6, 1907, Kahlo had polio as a child and was crippled in a bus crash when she was 18. While bedridden, she started painting.
Kahlo underwent seven operations on her spine from 1950 to 1951. During that time, she developed a very close relationship with her doctor, writing in her diary that he “saved my life.”
As a gift of thanks, she painted Self-portrait with Dr. Farill, for him, showing herself sitting in a wheelchair, her palette in her lap and a portrait of the doctor resting on an easel behind her.
A photograph from the same year shows Kahlo together with her doctor in front of the portrait.
“It’s like seeing a double image. That’s something very interesting, to see the photographs, how a photographer makes an interpretation of the painting and the subject at the same time,” Cristina Kahlo said.
Kahlo died in 1954 at the age of 47 and only began to gain iconic status in the late 1970s.
She is best-known for her many self-portraits that she used to deal with the accident, her tumultuous marriage to muralist Diego Rivera and her inability to have children.
Her self-portrait, The Broken Column, depicts the artist’s spine as a crumbling Greek column held together by buckled straps and nails.
“I think it shows everything of Frida Kahlo: her broken body, the surrealism, the dry landscape that looks like a moon landscape, which depicts her inability to have children,” said Carlos-Phillip Olmedo, who loaned paintings to the museum for the exhibit.
“And then she’s crying, but the drops are not really coming out, they are kind of floating, which shows the strength she had.”
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
