Dale Chihuly, (American, b. 1941), ‘Untitled (Seaform Series),’ 1983, hand blown glass, 6 1/4 x 10 x 9 1/2 inches (object). Estimate: $3,000-$5,000. PHILADELPHIA – Fuller’s Fine Art Auctions will host a sale composed of 182 lots of a wide variety of paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, art glass and a tapestry on Saturday, May 21.
Real-time online bidding is available through LiveAuctioneers.com beginning at noon the day of the auction.
Highlights include paintings by Benito Quinquela Martin, Rincon de la Boca, ($15,000-$20,000); Claude Vénard, Le Sacré Coeur, Paris, ($4,000-$6,000); Morris Blackburn, untitled – beach/dock scene ($1,000-$1,500); and James Longacre Wood, untitled – floral still life ($1,000-$1,500); a large group of prints including Joan Miró, Le Dandy, ($6,000-$8,000); Andy Warhol, Flash – November 22, 1963, ($4,000-$6,000); Robert Indiana’s Hope ($3,000-$5,000), and Art ($600-$900); Claes Oldenburg Proposal for a Colossal Monument … ($1,000-$1,500); a 1959 photograph by Paul Caponigro, West Hartford Connecticut – Rock Wall ($800-$1,200); a large group of works on paper including Dox Thrash, Theatrical Illustration ($600-$800); and many others.
Excellent examples of contemporary glass including three glass vases by William Morris, estimated at ($6,000-$8,000), ($3,000-$5,000) and ($1,000-$1,500) respectively; and Dale Chihuly’s Untitled Seaform Series ($3,000-$5,000). A tapestry after the famous Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, who was once married to Max Ernst ($8,000-$12,000), will also be offered in addition to a sculpture by Val Bertoia and a bronze sculpture after August Rodin, Man with a Broken Nose ($300-$500).
Previews of the sale will be at Fuller’s West Mount Airy location on Saturday, May 14, through Friday, May 20, noon until 5 p.m. daily. A reception will be held Thursday, May 19, 5 to 8 p.m.
Doors open on Saturday, May 21, at 9 a.m.
Fuller’s will accept telephone line requests and absentee bids until noon on Friday, May 20.
For details visit Fuller’s website at www.FullersLLC.com or phone 215-991-0100.
Graceland, the Memphis home of Elvis Presley, is unaffected by the Mississippi River flooding. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – The Mississippi crept toward the highest level ever in the river city, flooding pockets of low-lying neighborhoods and forcing hundreds from their homes, though the water was not threatening the music heartland’s most recognizable landmarks, from Graceland to Beale Street.
As residents waited for the river to reach its peak as early as Monday night – several inches short of the record mark set in 1937 – those downstream in Mississippi and Louisiana evacuated prisoners and diverted water from the river in an attempt to stave off catastrophic flooding in a region prone to such disasters.
In Memphis, emergency officials warned the river was still dangerous and unpredictable, but they were confident the levees would hold and there were no plans for more evacuations. Sandbags were put up in front of the 32-story tall Pyramid Arena, but the former home of college and professional basketball teams was believed to be safe. Also out of the way were Stax Records, which launched the careers of Otis Redding and the Staple Singers, and Sun Studio, which helped make Elvis the king of rock ’n’ roll.
Sun Studio still does some recording, but Stax is now a museum and tourist attraction. Graceland, which is several miles south of downtown, was also spared.
“I want to say this: Graceland is safe. And we would charge hell with a water pistol to keep it that way and I’d be willing to lead the charge,” said Bob Nations Jr., director of the Shelby County Emergency Management Agency.
Authorities spent the weekend knocking on doors to tell a couple hundred more people that they should abandon their homes before they are swamped by waters. More than 300 people were staying in shelters, and officials said they had stepped up patrols in evacuated areas to prevent looting.
Aurelio Flores, 36, his pregnant wife and their three children have been living at a shelter for 11 days. His mobile home had about four feet of water when he last visited the trailer park Wednesday.
“I imagine that my trailer, if it’s not covered, it’s close,” said Flores, an out-of-work construction worker. “If I think about it too much, and get angry about it, it will mean the end of me.”
He was one of 175 people staying in a gymnasium at the Hope Presbyterian Church in east Shelby County. He said morale was good at the shelter, mostly because there were friends and neighbors staying there, too.
“The main thing is that all left that trailer park with our lives,” Flores said. “God will help us find a new place to live.”
Forecasters said it looks like the river was starting to level out and could crest at or near 48 feet, just shy of the 48.7-foot mark set in 1937. Forecasters had previously predicted the crest would come as late as Wednesday. On the horizon, however, rain was forecast for later in the week, which could bring the danger of flash flooding.
Kevin Kane, president and chief executive of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he believed the media had overblown the flooding.
“The country thinks were in lifeboats and we are underwater,” Kane said. “For visitors, its business as usual.”
While some evacuated, others came as spectators. At Beale Street, the famous thoroughfare known for blues music, people gawked and snapped photos as water pooled at the end of the road. Floodwaters were about a half-mile from the Beale Street’s world-famous nightspots, which are on higher ground.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Graceland, the Memphis home of Elvis Presley, is unaffected by the Mississippi River flooding. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.[/caption]
Willie Mosconi autographed this publicity photograph of himself. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers Archive and The Written Word Autographs.
PHILADELPHIA — When illness forced billiards great Willie Mosconi into a nursing home toward the end of his life, his equipment sponsor donated a pool table to the Cherry Hill, N.J., facility.
Mosconi refused to play the game he had dominated for much of the 20th century. Finally, he agreed to play just once to quiet his grandchildren.
“He hadn’t played in years. He ran 15 balls in. He said, ‘That’s it,'” son Bill Mosconi recalled of his father, who died in 1993 at age 80.
With the death last year of Mosconi’s widow, the family is selling his beloved pool cue, a personal pool table and other memorabilia at a weekend auction in Chicago.
The auction house handling the sale believes Mosconi’s famed “Balabushka” cue could bring $100,000. The stick, with mother-of-pearl inlays, gets its name from the Russian-born craftsman George Balabushka, considered by some the Stradivarius of cuemakers.
Mosconi used several Balabushkas during a career capped by 15 straight world championships from 1941 to 1957 and his record 526 straight shots at a two-day exhibition in Ohio in 1954. Several will remain with the family. But the one being sold was a favorite, as evidenced by the blue chalk residue and light scuff marks.
Mosconi grew up in a large family in South Philadelphia, where his father, a boxer, ran a first-floor pool hall that doubled as a hangout for boxers. Mosconi’s father hoped his son would someday join a cousin’s vaudeville act. Instead, the pint-sized pool prodigy was competing against the sport’s heavyweights by age 6.
While still a youngster in the early 1920s, he was being paid $75 or $100 for appearances around town.
“The City of Philadelphia stepped in and said, ‘You can’t do this. You’re not even allowed in a pool room,” the son said.
Mosconi went on to spend his lifetime in pool halls, criss-crossing the country much of the year for exhibits and matches. A devoted family man, he hated both the pool-hall lifestyle and the constant travel. But his drive to win – and to support his family – kept him out there.
“I think it was a very lonely life, even though he was a tough character. He was devoted to his wife, and certainly to his kids. I think that’s why he did it,” Bill Mosconi said. “(He would say), the only way you could make a living is if you’re a champion. You can’t lose.”
Mosconi earned $10,000 to $15,000 a year in the 1930s, and 10 times that by the 1960s.
And by the late 1970s and 1980s, television had come calling. He appeared in televised grudge matches against his rival, Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone Jr. Brash ABC sports anchor Howard Cosell announced some of the showdowns between the tuxedoed men.
Bill Mosconi, 69, of Philadelphia, attributes his father’s success to his fierce competitiveness, stellar vision and soft stroke.
“He could make the cue ball stop on a dime,” the younger Mosconi said Monday, standing beside a mural of his dapper father on a somewhat neglected stretch of South Street in Philadelphia. The mural shows Mosconi playing with the black pool player Edward “Chick” Davis.
Mosconi, at the height of his power, at least once refused to play unless black players could compete beside him, his son said. Though he concedes that he heard that story – and many others – second-hand. His father did not spend much time talking about himself.
“I never heard him brag. But he was so unbelievably competitive, that if somebody said he could beat him, he had to beat him. He couldn’t let that go by,” the son said.
Mosconi, who also had two daughters, ran a pool hall in North Philadelphia, but raised his children in the New Jersey suburbs and stressed education at home. His son became an accountant and his grandson a doctor.
After suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Mosconi died at home in Haddon Heights, N.J. His wife, Flora, died in March 2010.
The family is keeping several of his pool cues and tables, but no longer has room for all of them.
Proceeds from the cue and pool table being sold will go to the individual descendants who own them. But the son hopes to make enough from the other items – from event posters to portraits to billiards paraphernalia – to fund something in his father’s name in Philadelphia, perhaps linked to education.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Willie Mosconi autographed this publicity photograph of himself. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers Archive and The Written Word Autographs.
With 800 dealers and 20 acres of antiques from which to choose, few visitors go home empty handed. Image courtesy of Long Beach Outdoor Antique & Collectible Market.
LONG BEACH, Calif. – The largest antiques and collectibles flea market in Southern California and will be held on Sunday, May 15 at Long Beach Veterans Stadium. Over 800 dealers from all parts of the country will present a myriad of items, from the unique to the decidedly chic.
Established in 1982, the Long Beach Flea Market was voted “best flea market” in Los Angeles by L.A. Magazine, the “best antique market” by O.C. Weekly, and “the best flea market in the U. S.” by Good Housekeeping Magazine. Additionally, the event has been featured on ABC TV The View” and the Oprah Winfrey Show .
Among the many categories to be found at the market are: architectural items, shabby chic, metro, modern and retro, dining room sets, china, posters, fine art, pottery, oak, rattan, mahogany, Mission style and pine furniture, antique toys, country store collectibles, china cabinets, kitchen collectibles, dinnerware, silver, textiles, and much more.
Admission is $5.00 (6:30am – 2pm), and children under 12 are free. Early bird admission is $10 (from 5:30am – 6:30am). Parking is free with plenty of food and beverages on site. The Long Beach Antique Market is held the 3rd Sunday monthly.
To get to Veterans Stadium take the 405 Freeway to the Lakewood Blvd (North exit) and turn right on Lakewood Blvd. Stay on Lakewood for 1 mile and turn right at Conant St. for one block.
Log on to www.LongBeachAntiqueMarket.com for discount coupons, maps, photos and the schedule of events.
For further information contact Donald Moger by calling 323-655-5703.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
With 800 dealers and 20 acres of antiques from which to choose, few visitors go home empty handed. Image courtesy of Long Beach Outdoor Antique & Collectible Market.
Punch and Judy cast-iron mechanical bank, circa-1884, Shepard Hardware, large letters, mint and bright, formerly in the collections of Larry Feld and Bill Bertoia. Estimate $15,000-$20,000. RSL Auction Co. image.
TIMONIUM, Md. – Neighborhood banks are paying a miserly rate of interest these days, but on the other side of the coin, antique mechanical and still banks are attracting a higher rate of interest than ever before. Their next test will come on Saturday, June 4, when RSL Auction Co. presents a 499-lot selection of fine banks, together with a smaller grouping of antique toys, at Richard Opfer’s gallery in suburban Baltimore. Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.com.
The auction’s centerpiece is the John Jirkofsky collection. A longtime Midwestern collector, Jirkofsky is a member of both the MBCA and SBCCA, a reflection of his penchant for both mechanical and still banks.
Jirkofsky bought most of his banks from local sellers. He and his good friend Bill Robinson, another well-known collector who specializes in still banks, frequented countless markets and shows in the Midwest in search of new acquisitions. Their persistence paid off, and both collectors turned up cast-iron, lead and spelter rarities in the unlikeliest of places.
The June 4 sale featuring the Jirkofsky collection will open with 177 still banks, with 27 German spelter (lead) banks taking the lead. The highest estimates have been assigned to the bank depicting a young black boy with a bouquet of flowers, $5,000-$7,000; and a bright, near-mint example of a bear on hind legs with top hat, $1,800-$2,200.
Ray Haradin, one of RSL’s principals [together with Steven and Leon Weiss], said spelter banks are “on a roll. They continue to increase in popularity and are probably the hottest of all bank fields right now. They were manufactured between 1890 and 1935, and they’re colorful and very finely detailed – qualities that appeal to collectors. They have the same general appearance as Vienna bronzes, which are perennial favorites.”
The lineup of stills continues with transportation – most notably a boxed 1928 Buick flat-top Yellow Cab, $4,000-$6,000; and a small assortment of silver lead banks. Made a bit later than spelter banks but probably by the same factories, silver lead banks are basically white metal forms that have been plated with silver.
Among the many beautiful figural and architectural stills are a multicolor City Bank with chimney, $6,000-$8,000; and a very unusual variation of the Ironmaster’s House. Its door is affixed with a large combination lock. Estimate: $2,500-$3,500.
Mechanicals comprise 207 of the sale’s lots, with one of the top pieces being a Punch and Judy bank, ex Larry Feld collection, in absolutely mint condition. “It’s probably the finest known example,” said Haradin. The bank was chosen for the auction catalog’s cover and is estimated at $15,000-$20,000.
Another outstanding entry is the near-mint 1888 Kyser & Rex Butting Buffalo with yellow highlights on the base and vinework on the tree. It could fetch $25,000-$30,000.
One of the finest known examples of the Uncle Remus mechanical bank will be auctioned. It has passed through RSL’s doors before, as part of the Rodrigue collection sold in 2007. With crossover appeal to collectors of black Americana, it is expected to realize $25,000-$35,000.
While not primarily known for auctioning automotive toys, RSL will be selling a superb, early vehicle on June 4: a circa-1904 Bing rear-entrance tonneau. In near-mint condition with a dressed driver, the 8¼ inch-long motoring gem will be offered with a presale estimate of $12,000-$16,000.
Additionally, the toy section will feature a small grouping of Lehmann and Martin European clockwork toys, American tin toys including horse-drawn wagons and trolleys; and 55 lots of cast-iron horse-drawn toys. Within the latter grouping are many fire toys, a fleet of surreys and wagons mainly by Wilkins and Pratt & Letchworth.
A clockwork Stump Speaker toy, which depicts a young carpetbagger on a stump. When wound up, the character pounds a table with his umbrella. The toy could finish in the $9,000-$12,000 range.
Chosen for the sale’s closing lot, a cast-iron mechanical bank commemorating the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair is one of only a handful known in a multicolor motif of greens and blues. “I’d say 99% of these banks are gold with silver highlights. Only about five of the type we are offering are known to exist,” said Haradin. “It’s a beautiful example and was a flea market find. It’s estimated at $14,000 to $18,000.” The bank depicts Christopher Columbus sitting on a rock, with the Santa Maria at one side and an Indian chasing a buffalo on the other side. When activated, Columbus raises his hand and an Indian pops out of a log with a peace pipe.
Haradin said he is especially pleased that there will be so many nice banks on hand to offer to both mechanical and still bank aficionados. “There’s so much excitement for banks at auctions these days, we’re glad we’re able to fill both those niches in this sale. I would say that, overall, there are 30 to 35 genuinely exceptional examples in this collection.”
Like previous RSL auction events, the June 4 sale will be an ideal venue in which to socialize. Complimentary hot dogs and beverages will be served to all who attend.
“Auctions have become the marketplace for banks, and it’s where collectors come to learn, meet with fellow collectors and buy,” said Haradin. “New collectors, in particular, should make an effort to join us. Networking with other, more-knowledgeable individuals is the best way to build a collection and avoid making mistakes. On the other hand, our auctions also draw the advanced collectors, who aren’t able to buy anything at shows. Auctions are, without question, the best place where collectors at any level can go and stand a very good chance of returning home with a prized piece.”
The sale will begin at 11 a.m., with a preview on Thursday, June 2 commencing at 12 noon; Friday, June 3 from 10-7; and Saturday prior to the sale from 8-11 a.m.
For additional information, call Ray Haradin at 412-343-8733, Leon Weiss at 917-991-7352, or Steven Weiss at 212-729-0011. E-mail raytoys@aol.com or geminitoys@earthlink.net.
ELLE magazine will commission the photographer selected for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition to shoot a feature story for the magazine. Fair use of low-resolution image of the cover of Elle magazine’s French edition, 10-21-2001.
LONDON – The National Portrait Gallery has announced the call for entries for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011, a major international photographic award. Entry forms are now available and the closing date for entries is July 7, 2011.
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 is open to all photographers over the age of 18 and provides an important platform for portrait photographers including gifted amateurs, students and professionals of all ages. Those who wish to enter may visit www.npg.org.uk/photoprize and complete the online application form.
Around 60 photographers will be selected for the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and the winner of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 will receive £12,000. The exhibition will run at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from Nov. 10, 2011 until Feb. 12, 2012.
For the third year running ELLE magazine will commission a photographer selected for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition to shoot a feature story for the magazine. Clare Shilland won the second ELLE Commission in 2010 for her portrait Merel.
Last year the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize attracted nearly 6,000 entries and was won by David Chancellor, for his portrait Huntress with Buck. Prizes were also awarded to Panayiotis Lamprou, Jeffrey Stockbridge and Abbie Trayler-Smith.
Tim Eyles, Managing Partner of Taylor Wessing says: “We are delighted to continue our sponsorship of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize and we look forward to further strengthening our relationship with the National Portrait Gallery. As a multi-jurisdictional law firm we are proud to support an international competition that reflects our own firm-wide commitment to developing talent and supporting the arts, and which provides such pleasure and inspiration to those who take part and visit the exhibition. We hope that amateur and professional photographers internationally will be inspired to submit their entries to make this year’s competition the best yet.”
The first prize winner receives £12,000 (approx. $19,640). In addition the judges, at their discretion, will award one or more cash prizes to the shortlisted photographers.
ELLE magazine will choose one photographer selected for the exhibition to shoot a feature story. They will pay standard commissioning rates and expenses to the photographer chosen. ELLE is the world’s biggest-selling fashion magazine with 39 editions worldwide. The British edition of ELLE sells 195,455 copies a month (ABC January-December 2009).
Mariano Andreu (Spanish, 1888-1976), still life, 1956, 14 1/2 inches x 16 3/4 inches, signed and dated, estimate $4,000-$6,000. Image courtesy of Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers. SHERMAN OAKS, Calif. – Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers Inc. will present a fine art auction Saturday, May 14, that features an eclectic variety of paintings, prints, sculpture, photography, objects of art and decorative arts. LiveAuctioneers will provide Internet live bidding at the 300-lot auction, which begins at noon Pacific.
There are two lots of fine early 20th century porcelain by the highly collected Franz Arthur Bischoff including a Belleek teapot and creamer/sugar set and a Limoges dish, all of which are signed.
There is a large original painting by renowned Mexican artist Leonardo Nierman and artworks by local California artists including a painting by Carlos Almaraz and a monoprint by Charles Arnoldi. There is a strong collection of 19th/ 20th century French sculpture by artists including Antonin-Claire Forestier. Also represented are artists Willem De Kooning, Sam Francis, Neil Leifer and many more.
Previews are May 12 and 13, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., at 14931 Califa St., Building A, Sherman Oaks, CA 91411.
For details visit Clark’s website at www.estateauctionservice.com or phone 818-783-3052. Clark’s e-mail address is gallery@pacbell.net.
Image courtesy of Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers.Image courtesy of Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers.Image courtesy of Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers.Image courtesy of Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers.Image courtesy of Clark’s Fine Art & Auctioneers.
Willa Cather House on the southwest corner of 3rd Avenue and Cedar Street in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Built around 1878, it was the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer’s home from 1884 to 1890 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. May 31, 2010 photo by Ammodramus.
RED CLOUD, Neb. (AP) – When Guide Rock’s International Order of Odd Fellows Opera House opened in 1905, it was indicative of the optimism spreading across Nebraska at that time.
“Guide Rock built their opera house in 1905, when the town had 419 people, and they built an opera house that had 400 seats in it,” said Jay Yost, president emeritus of the Willa Cather Foundation board of governors. “To me that was the height of optimism, because it’s not as if you’re going to get the same 400 people in town for four performances, so they thought the town would get much bigger. It just showed you what people thought would happen with their towns.”
That opera house in Guide Rock is just one of 63 from across Nebraska represented by the Yost/Leak collection of postcards and memorabilia displayed in the Red Cloud Opera House. The total collection includes more than 200 opera houses. The collection will return to the Red Cloud Opera House Aug. 15 and remain in the gallery until Sept. 10.
Yost, who grew up in Red Cloud, now is a New York City banker. He discussed the collection and the opera houses in “Social Networking 1890: Nebraska Opera Houses in their Heyday,” a presentation he made as part of the 56th annual Willa Cather Spring Conference.
“Now we have Twitter and Facebook and all those ways for people to connect,” he said during an interview.
“Back in the 1890s and 1910s, one of the major ways people were able to connect with other people was getting together at the opera house. That was for community plays or weddings or dances as well as performances by traveling troops or musical companies or opera companies. Things like that.”
Stephany Thompson, director of foundation programming, said the Yost/Leak collection provides a local context to the overall theme of the annual Willa Cather conference.
“I think it brings a sense of what the state of Nebraska’s history of popular culture was,” she said. “I think many of the topics discussed in the conference will be of an international theme. The fact that we have a collection of Nebraska postcards really brings it to back to this state, to this area.”
Yost began collecting artifacts relating to pre-World War I performance spaces in Nebraska and Kansas around 2000.
“I got on the Cather Board in the late ’90s,” he said. “We were in the process of raising money to do this restoration (of the Red Cloud Opera House), and eBay was just coming out then. I thought it would be cool to start collecting opera house memorabilia thinking someday we would want to do something like this.”
“The Yost/Leak collection includes more than just postcards. In the Opera House gallery now there are souvenirs such as spoons from the Arapahoe Opera House.
“Again, it shows you how important the thing was when they were doing commemorative souvenirs of these places, because it was one of the places in town that somebody would want to remember,” Yost said. He said at one time there were 513 documented opera houses in Nebraska. A study in the late 1980s showed only about 25 percent of those opera houses remained by then and only about 25 percent of those hadn’t been significantly damaged.
“For me it’s just sad that so many small towns don’t have a place to come together now,” Yost said. “You might have a community hall, but there’s really no soul to it. You can’t put on a performance, or we have had the prom dinner here the last couple of years, so people are recreating those memories three generations down the road.”
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Information from: Hastings Tribune, http://www.hastingstribune.com
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-05-09-11 0505GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Willa Cather House on the southwest corner of 3rd Avenue and Cedar Street in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Built around 1878, it was the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer’s home from 1884 to 1890 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. May 31, 2010 photo by Ammodramus.
Copyrighted and trademarked corporate logo for Skype Limited. NEW YORK (AP) – Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it has agreed to buy the popular Internet telephone service Skype SA for $8.5 billion in the biggest deal in the software maker’s 36-year history.
Buying Skype gives Microsoft access to a user base of about 170 million people who log in to Skype every month, using the Internet and Skype usernames as a complement to the traditional phone network and its phone numbers.
Microsoft said it will marry Skype’s functions to its Xbox game console, Outlook email program and Windows smartphones. All of these platforms already have other options for Internet calling, but the addition of Skype users would expand their reach, making them more useful.
Microsoft said it will continue to support Skype on other software platforms.
The sellers include eBay Inc. and private equity firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz.
Skype users made 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls last year. Most of that usage is free computer-to-computer calls, which has made it difficult for the service to make money since entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis started the company in 2003. An average of about 8.8 million customers per month, or just over 5 percent of the user base, pay to use Skype to call out to the regular phone network.
The vast majority of paying Skype users is in Europe, where high country-to-country rates for traditional phone calls make Skype more popular than in the U.S., where state-to-state calling is cheap.
Skype lost $7 million on revenue of $860 million last year, according to papers that the company has filed since announcing its intentions last summer to launch an initial public offering of stock. The IPO was later put on hold. Skype’s long-term debt, net of cash, was $543,883 at the end of 2010.
The Skype takeover tops Microsoft’s biggest previous acquisition – a $6 billion purchase of the online ad service aQuantive in 2007.
Microsoft said Skype will become a new business division headed by Skype CEO Tony Bates, who will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
Although it makes billions from its computer software, Microsoft has been accustomed to losing money on the Internet in a mostly futile attempt to catch up to Google Inc. in the lucrative online search market. Microsoft got so desperate that it made a $47.5 billion bid to buy Yahoo Inc. three years ago, but withdrew the offer after Yahoo balked. Yahoo is now worth about half of what Microsoft offered.
Microsoft can well afford to buy Skype: on March 31, it had a cash hoard of $50.2 billion.
Microsoft would be Skype’s second large-company owner. EBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion in 2005, but its attempt to unite the phone service with its online shopping bazaar never worked out. It wound up selling a 70 percent stake in Skype to a group of investors led by private equity firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz for $2 billion 18 months ago.
Besides eBay, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, Skype’s other major shareholders are Joltid and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CLARENCE, New York (AP) – A 250-year-old Chinese vase owned by a suburban Buffalo couple for decades has sold at auction for more than $1.5 million.
The Buffalo News reports that Tang Tao, a Chinese antiques dealer from Shanghai, outbid a British dealer for the vase, known as a Chinese moon flask. The large, bulbous porcelain vase dates to China’s Qinlong dynasty, between 1736 and 1795.
Tao was among several bidders at Saturday’s auction held at Antique World in Clarence, outside Buffalo. Several others entered bids over the phone from Hong Kong, London and the United States.
The vase was owned by a Clarence couple for at least 50 years. It was recently brought to Antique World’s owner, who didn’t know the vase’s value until the auction notice was posted online and received global interest.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
