An archival shot of a dealer’s booth at the prestigious NHADA New Hampshire Antiques Show, showing the general type of merchandise Michael Whittemore sells, including Americana and weathervanes. Note: This image is for illustrative purposes only; the merchandise shown here is not from the actual heist. Photo by Catherine Saunders-Watson.
ORANGEBURG, S.C. – It has happened all too many times in the past – an antiques dealer traveling to a show hundreds of miles away spends the night in a hotel en route to their destination and awakens to find their vehicle and merchandise have been stolen. This time the victim is Michael Whittemore, an Americana dealer from Punta Gorda, Florida, who was headed north to the 56th Annual New Hampshire Antiques Show in Manchester, New Hampshire.
On the night of July 29th, Whittemore stayed at the Country Inn & Suites in Orangeburg, S.C., parking his Ford van and 16ft covered cargo trailer on the premises. Whittemore took pains to ensure the trailer’s contents were secured, but when he walked out into the parking lot on the morning of July 30th, he discovered his vehicle and trailerful of antiques were gone.
According to published reports, the value of Whittemore’s goods was somewhere in the vicinity of $300,000-$400,000. The contents consisted of folk art, New England furniture, paintings, architectural garden antiques and valuable weathervanes.
The stolen vehicle is a 2010 E-350 white Ford Club Wagon van. Based on hotel surveillance video, the thieves hot-wired the van and simply drove off with it, trailer in tow.
Whittemore told a reporter from WLTX-TV in Columbia, S.C., that the vehicle is not of primary importance to him. “All I want back is the stuff, vans are replaceable, trailers are replaceable, but these things are one of a kind,” he said.
Anyone with information regarding the theft is asked to contact the Orangeburg Sheriff’s Department by calling tollfree 1-888-CRIMESC (274-6372).
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
An archival shot of a dealer’s booth at the prestigious NHADA New Hampshire Antiques Show, showing the general type of merchandise Michael Whittemore sells, including Americana and weathervanes. Note: This image is for illustrative purposes only; the merchandise shown here is not from the actual heist. Photo by Catherine Saunders-Watson.
The redesign of LiveAuctioneers’ website creates a richly visual environment in which to browse and bid online. Photo: LiveAuctioneers
NEW YORK (LAPRS) – LiveAuctioneers, a Manhattan-based company that provides Internet live bidding services to more than 1,800 auction houses worldwide, entered its second decade of operation in Q1 2013 with a substantial increase in both international auction-house clients and new users outside the United States. During the second quarter, the firm unveiled a stylish redesign of its website that CEO Julian R. Ellison described as “smart and modern – right in step with our technology.”
The website’s new theme is spare and generously visual, with a homepage that offers visitors the option of viewing upcoming auctions in a grid-like format with four auctions displayed per horizontal line, or in the traditional LiveAuctioneers style that features one auction with five relevant highlight images per horizontal line. According to Ellison, this is just one example of the many changes LiveAuctioneers has implemented recently in direct response to feedback received from auctioneers and bidders.
“Our website redesign continues to evolve. We want to make LiveAuctioneers not only a place where bidders can enjoy browsing online catalogs and bidding live via the Internet but also a destination for useful information presented as they prefer to view it. That’s why we’ve placed such an emphasis on listening to input from those who rely on our services – the bidders and the auction houses,” Ellison said.
All bidder activities are now aggregated on a freshly designed bidder dashboard. At that location, a logged-in LiveAuctioneers user can check their inbox, view all saved items from future sales, manage their profile and auction alerts; and monitor approvals to bid online in upcoming auctions. They can also contact an auction house to pay for a recent auction purchase and even estimate shipping costs. Another valuable dashboard tool connects to an archive of past online purchases that the user can view chronologically with a single mouse click. The auction-purchase archive provides a valuable record of when the user made each of their purchases, for how much, and from which auction house.
LiveAuctioneers’ second quarter of 2013 was a period marked by significant growth in mobile and tablet use. As compared to Q2 2012, there was a 49.89% increase in mobile visits to LiveAuctioneers.com, while visits through tablets jumped more than 64%. The average mobile visitor remained on the site 6.49% longer than in the comparable quarter of 2012.
Statistics indicated steady growth in many other key areas during Q2. Page views were up 6.98% as compared to Q2 2012, rising from 77,240,751 to 82,631,295. The number of overall visits to the site grew by 2.68% to 8,991,156; and the number of unique visitors rose 1.40% to 4,836,332. The average time spent on the site per visit increased nearly 10% over the comparable quarter of 2012.
“As these figures show, LiveAuctioneers has maintained a solid pattern of growth that has not wavered since the company was launched more than 10 years ago. We’re expecting a very busy fall and winter auction season, which should bring with it a surge of new-bidder sign-ups,” said Ellison.
To contact LiveAuctioneers, email info@liveauctioneers.com.
Online: www.LiveAuctioneers.com
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ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
The redesign of LiveAuctioneers’ website creates a richly visual environment in which to browse and bid online. Photo: LiveAuctioneers
All bidder activity is aggregated within the newly designed dashboard, where users can check their inbox, view saved items from future sales, manage their profile and auction alerts; and perform many other useful auction-related functions. Photo: LiveAuctioneers
Aaron Turner’s untitled oil painting depicting Grand Rapids, Michigan, as it looked in 1836 when he was a 13-year-old boy. Image courtesy of Grand Rapids Public Museum.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) – Grand Rapids Public Museum has acquired a 19th century painting offering a look at the city at the time of its founding.
It’s also a view of a hill that no longer exists, as seen from an island that’s only a memory today.
Though it was painted in the 1880s, artist Aaron Turner was an early pioneer who already was a teenager here when the village of Grand Rapids was organized in 1838.
The untitled oil painting, well preserved, now is on display at the museum in its Newcomers Exhibition.
“This painting, of great significance to the history of Grand Rapids, is essential to have in the collection of the Grand Rapids Public Museum,” Tom Dilley, chair of the museum’s collections committee, told The Grand Rapids Press. “We are fortunate to have such an early depiction of the city decades prior to the advent of photography.”
The ideated painting of two small cabins on the east bank of the Grand River, overlooking a narrow channel of water with a canoe on the bank, several trees on shore, and Prospect Hill in the distance, offers a view of what today is the heart of downtown Grand Rapids at the time of Turner’s arrival around 1836 when he was 13 years old.
It’s a view looking east from Island No. 1, one of two small islands in the Grand River that no longer exist.
Island No. 1, now occupied by the JW Marriott Hotel and its surroundings, began near the foot of Pearl Street. Turner’s landscape is a view of what today includes Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, McKay Tower and Rosa Parks Circle, as seen from the island.
Pioneer Charles Belknap, who arrived in Grand Rapids in 1854 as a boy, recalled years later that Island No. 1 mostly was a meadow, and cows would wade across the river to feed on its grass. Winds from the west would blow through wild plum and crabapple trees on the islands and carry the fruity scent into the village.
Prospect Hill, some 200 feet beyond the original east bank of the Grand River, began its steep climb at Monroe Center and continued north beyond Lyon Street, peaking some 60 to 70 feet above the water level.
Over time, Pearl and Lyon streets and Ottawa Avenue were cut through the wooded ridge of clay and gravel, and the excavated material was used to fill in the channels between Island Nos. 1 and 2 and the east bank.
By the 1890s, both islands and Prospect Hill had disappeared forever.
Privately owned for over 100 years, the painting was given last year to the Grand Rapids Public Museum by the estate of Harold Garter.
Turner later became a newspaper editor and Grand Rapids’ first city clerk. He designed the City of Grand Rapids Seal that still is in use today.
The colorful landscape is signed in the lower left corner “Renrut” or “Turner” reversed.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Aaron Turner’s untitled oil painting depicting Grand Rapids, Michigan, as it looked in 1836 when he was a 13-year-old boy. Image courtesy of Grand Rapids Public Museum.Cityscape view of downtown Grand Rapids as it looks today. Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Indianapolis police responding to a dispute between roommates thought they might have a much bigger case when an officer recognized what looked like a painting by Henri Matisse.
The painting had a label saying it was from the Cincinnati Art Museum.
But Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Lt. Chris Bailey says authorities learned the painting wasn’t the original when they called the museum and were told the painting by the French artist was hanging where it belongs.
Bailey says officers still believe the artwork spotted in an apartment Thursday might be stolen, although not an original. He says one of the roommates reported they had been given the painting by a man now in prison.
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Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Antiques and art from the estate of Duke tobacco heiress Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans. Image courtesy of Brunk Auctions.
DURHAM, N.C. (AP) – Antiques, art and other items owned by the late heiress to the Duke tobacco fortune are going up for sale.
The Herald-Sun of Durham reports the items from the family of Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans will be auctioned on Aug., 25.
Brunk Auctions spokesman Aaron Edwards said the family has kept several sentimental items, but would like the remainder to go to what he termed “good homes.”
According to Brunk Auctions, items to be auctioned include paintings by artists such as the American painter Thomas Anshutz, 18th and 19th century Chinese porcelains and jades, French antique furnishings and an inlaid art case Steinway grand piano. The items come from homes members of the Duke family lived in over the course of more than a century, according to a news release from the auction house.
The list features items from the mid-19th century-era Duke Homestead; a townhouse at 1009 Fifth Ave., N.Y., that was built in 1901; a former Durham home remembered as “Four Acres” on West Chapel Hill Street, and the residences known as “Pinecrest” and “Les Terrasses” in Durham’s Forest Hills neighborhood.
Edwards said Les Terrasses was Semans’ home from the late 1940s until she died. He also said it’s where her seven children grew up next door to their grandmother, Mary Duke Biddle, who lived at Pinecrest until her death in 1960.
Edwards said the company is still researching and cataloguing the items, so a pre-auction estimate of their total value is not yet available. Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.com.
Semans was the great-granddaughter of Washington Duke, a Confederate soldier who returned home after the Civil War and planted a crop of tobacco. With his sons, Duke helped build the worldwide popularity of cigarettes. He also endowed a small Methodist college that would become Duke University.
Semans was a patron of the arts and charities, as well as a crusader for equal rights for women.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
Antiques and art from the estate of Duke tobacco heiress Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans. Image courtesy of Brunk Auctions.Antiques and art from the estate of Duke tobacco heiress Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans. Image courtesy of Brunk Auctions.
