October 1, 2013 - Auction Central News

Bangles bring regard to 888 Auctions Asian arts sale Oct. 10

RICHMOND HILL, Ontario – 888 Auctions will conduct its Fine Chinese Carvings and Asian Works of Art sale on Thursday, Oct 10, at 2 p.m. Eastern. The auction will feature fine jadeite bangles and pendants, jade, paintings, porcelain, jewelry, precious stones, metal ware and furniture. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.

888 Auctions’ sales in jadeite continue to be strong in the past months. Premium bangles reached record-breaking sale prices. Examples can be found on Lot 158 in the company’s January auction. A Chinese emerald green jadeite bangle that sold for $65,000 attributed to its fine quality and strong color, and lot 175 from the August Auction, an important emerald green jadeite bangle, was attained $55,000, which surpassed its high estimate of $8,000.

In this auction superb quality jadeite bangles can be found from Lot 124 to Lot 146. Highlighting the afternoon will be Lot 124, a fine translucent emerald green jadeite bangle, finely carved rich emerald green tone and very high translucency, with high estimate of $6,000 and lot 133, an important emerald green jadeite bangle of superb quality and emerald green tone, with high estimate of $8,000. Both lots are expected to exceed its high estimate.

Other quality pieces of jadeite can be found at:

– Lot 117, fine A grade emerald green jadeite pendant;

– Lot 147, Chinese emerald green jadeite dragon pendant;

– Lot 162, finely carved green jadeite Kwanyin carved pendant;

– Lot 168, fine emerald green jadeite pendant carved leaf;

– Lot 276, Chinese apple green jadeite pendant with 18K gold clasp.

Also in the spotlight is an important Chinese painting collection: Lot 32, a long landscape painting signed Wu Li and Huang Zhang, a collaborative painting of two great masters with high estimate of $4,000, and a rare painting on Lot 27, Wu Guan Zung signed painting with certificate, Chinese ink and watercolor painting on paper, signed Wu Guan Zung with red seal, dated 2000, accompanied with certificate issued by Rong Bo Auction, indicated the painting was purchased on July 12, 2011 with RMB $139,600. It has a high estimation of $25,000.

In addition, collectors will be pleased to find Lot 180, an exquisite white jade boulder with identification certificate, finely carved basket with citrus fruits and a pair of Fu mouse, accompanied with identification certificate from Gem Review Inc., commends the high estimate of $15,000. Delicate jade carvings are located on Lot 181, a Chinese fine white jade carved ruyi scepter, which has a high estimate of 7,000, and Lot 183, a large jade boulder of carved dragons on a wood stand, which has a high estimate of $1,200.

Last but not least, are two premium entries: Lot 333, a Chinese Famille Rose reticulated vase Qianlong MK, baluster-form, richly painted with peonies and sprigs between two scrolls of motifs and featuring reticulated carvings revealing blue and white interior and painted panels of carps, the bottom marked with six characters Qianlong reign mark, (high estimate $8,000) and Lot 480, a rare 19th century carved horn libation cup, richly carved with intricate designs of pine trees, pagodas and villages on the shaft, supported on awood stand (high estimate $12,000). Both entries are expected to take top-lot honors.

The auction is composed of 514 lots.

For details call the auctioneers at 905-763-7201 or email info@888auctions.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.

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Thousands flock to Neb. for vintage Chevy auction

Bob Esler of Bob's Garage in Westfield, Ind., with the four-door 1964 Bel Air station wagon he bought at the auction. It has only 326 miles on the odometer. Bob's Garage image.

PIERCE, Neb. (AP) – A handful of barely driven vintage Chevrolets fetched more than half a million dollars on Saturday at an auction that drew thousands of car buffs from around the world to a small northeast Nebraska town.

Bidders and gawkers crowded shoulder-to-shoulder for the auction in a muddy field just west of Pierce, a town of about 1,800. Spectators in helicopters and airplanes circled overhead as the lead auctioneer, Yvette VanDerBrink, inched down the auction line on a wooden platform hauled by a pickup.

Event organizers said an estimated 10,000 people traveled from as far as Norway and Brazil to see the sale in person Saturday.

The auction of more than 500 old cars and pickups was expected to continue on Sunday. Organizers said they hadn’t yet totaled the bids for the roughly 50 most high-profile, low-mileage classic cars and trucks, which were auctioned on Saturday. As of midday, six of the most valuable models had sold for a combined $545,000.

The collection belonged to Ray Lambrecht and his wife, Mildred, who ran a Chevrolet dealership in downtown Pierce for five decades before retiring in 1996. Unlike most dealers, Ray Lambrecht stashed many of his unsold cars in a warehouse, at his farm and other spots around town if they didn’t sell in the first year.

The first vehicle sold—a sky-blue 1958 Chevy Cameo pickup driven 1.3 miles—secured the largest bid at $140,000. Another bidder spent $97,500 on a red and white 1963 Impala with 11.4 miles on its odometer, the manufacturer’s plastic on the seat and a yellow typewritten window sticker displaying its original price: $3,255.

Lyle Buckhouse, a retired farmer from Hankerson, N.D., poked his head Saturday into a 1963 Chevy Corvair with 17.2 miles on the odometer. Moments later, the self-proclaimed “Corvair guy” was hunting eagerly for the bidder-registration tent.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Buckhouse said. “That’s why I came down here. You just don’t know what you’re going to see.”

Bob Esler, the owner of Bob’s Garage in Westfield, Ind., bought a four-door 1964 Bel Air station wagon for $30,000. The car had 326 miles.

“This is one of the cars that I had my eyes on,” Esler said, as he leaned against his new purchase. “I want to use it to haul all of my customers around.”

“How are you getting it back home?” a friend asked.

Esler shrugged. “I haven’t figured that out yet,” he said.

Preparations for the two-day auction began in June. VanDerBrink, the auctioneer, said she took calls from as far as Iceland, Singapore and Brazil before the event.

The two least-driven cars, a 1959 Bel Air and a 1960 Corvair Monza, had 1 mile on their odometers. The oldest vehicle with fewer than 20 miles dates to 1958; the newest is a 1980 Monza with 9 miles.

Some bidders used the auction to hunt for rare parts for their collector cars and trucks, while others came to watch the spectacle.

Ray Lambrecht opened the downtown dealership with his uncle in 1946, on the corner of Main Street and Nebraska Highway 13. The U.S. Army veteran quickly established himself as an unusual salesman: He gave his lowest price up front, without negotiation, and encouraged hagglers to try to find a better deal elsewhere.

The most valuable vehicles were stored for decades at a nearby warehouse, until a heavy snow collapsed the roof. Some were damaged, but many were saved and moved elsewhere. The models at the dealership were among the best preserved, even as the building gave way to bats and holes in the roof.

Ray and his wife, Mildred, retired in 1996. Ray, 95, and Mildred, 92, still live in Pierce, but their health has declined. They decided to sell the collection so others could enjoy the cars and pickups, said their daughter, Jeannie Stillwell, who lives in Florida.

AP-WF-09-28-13 2027GMT

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Gallery Report: October 2013

Victorian half tester bed, $24,780, Ahlers & Ogletree

A magnificent Victorian rosewood half tester bed attributed to Prudent Mallard sold for $24,780 at a Summer Estates Auction held Aug. 4 by Ahlers & Ogletree in Atlanta, Ga. Also, a Tiffany Studios ten-light lily lamp lit up the room for $21,240; an oil painting by Haddon “Sunny” Sundblom, titled 1914 Kentucky Derby and executed in 1963, went for $17,700; a 19th century bust of an Oriental beauty by French sculptor Henri Ple made $11,800; and an R.J. Horner banquet table with nine leaves hit $4,720. Prices include an 18 percent buyer’s premium.

Intempo skyscraper a symbol of Spain’s economic crisis

The 590-foot Intempo residential skyscraper nearing completion in Benidorm, Spain. Image by Pexelate. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

BENIDORM, Spain, (AFP) – Stretching into blue skies far above other towers crowding the Spanish resort of Benidorm, the Intempo skyscraper stands as a hard-to-miss beacon of excess from the days of Spain’s property bubble.

Floor numbers flash by on a blue screen as a new elevator soars up this 590-foot-tall giant on the skyline of Benidorm, a mass tourism resort on eastern Spain’s Mediterranean coast.

At the foot of the 54-floor building—touted as the highest residential skyscraper in Europe—a semi-Olympic swimming pool waits to be tiled before welcoming the 1,000 residents who developers hope to lure to its apartments.

The building’s twin towers are covered in copper-colored windows and joined at their summit by a vast inverted pyramid, its concrete facade still open to the elements.

Soon, the concrete floors and bare wires will be transformed into two 300-square-meter luxury duplex penthouse apartments, their glass walls overlooking several kilometres of beach on one side and hinterland on the other.

“You see, there is no reason for controversy: there are 11 elevators,” said Guillermo Campos, technical architect of the building’s property developer Olga Urbana, who is determined to rebuff newspaper articles saying the builders forgot one elevator shaft.

Campos rejected concerns by Greenpeace Spain and others about the environmental impact of concentrating so many people in a single building.

“Look at that clean water,” he said, pointing to a beach from the giddy heights of the Intempo.

Far below, Spanish, British, French and German tourists walked along the beach’s new promenade.

Some 35 percent of the building’s apartments have been sold, Campos said, a relatively small proportion with so little time before its scheduled delivery in early 2014.

Hoping for a property market recovery from mid-2014, Campos said he was counting on interest from Russian, Algerian and British buyers despite prices that appear lofty: from 350,000 euros ($473,000) for a studio to 3 million euros for a duplex.

A tough sell?

Launched in 2007 in the dying days of Spain’s property bubble, which imploded the following year with devastating economic consequences, the skyscraper’s construction has been hit by public disputes with the builders who are demanding a million euros ($1.3 million) in unpaid bills from the promoters.

The loan that financed construction was transferred last year to Spain’s “bad bank,” Sareb, set up to pool the financial industry’s toxic assets as part of a European Union-financed banking sector rescue for Spain.

Caixa Galicia, the bank that extended the original loan, has since been rescued by the state. As a result, it was obliged to discount the price of some assets and property loans on its books and move them to Sareb.

A spokeswoman for Sareb said the fact that it had taken over the Caixa Galicia loans did not mean their repayment was considered to be doubtful.

Nevertheless, the association of Intempo with Sareb, a symbol of the property market collapse, can only complicate the titanic task of selling 269 luxury apartments in a stagnant market.

Benidorm’s city hall shows little concern, however.

“It does not matter” if it takes a little longer to fill the building, said the city hall’s chief architect, Jose Luis Camarasa.

“Here, the city development has been following a plan conceived 50 years ago,” he said, arguing that this had allowed Benidorm to avoid the pitfalls of the property boom.

“What Benidorm built in 50 years—30,000 homes—some cities built in a single year,” he said.

A fishing village five decades ago, Benidorm today is a mass of skyscrapers, fast-food outlets, bars and nightclubs where tourists, mostly northern Europeans, come on cheap package holidays.

The first city development plan was drawn up in 1955, then modified in 1963 to scrap height limits on towers so as to “democratise tourism,” Camarasa said.

Prices “will probably have to come into line with the market”, Camarasa admitted. But for the property market in Spain’s eastern Valencia region, “Benidorm is the jewel in the crown,” he said.

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Belgian museum shows Red Star Line was lifeline to many

Red Star Lines poster by artist Henri Cassiers (1858-1944). Image coutesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Poster Auctions International.

ANTWERP, Belgium (AP) – In today’s world of cruise ship travel, it is easy to forget how life-changing boarding a steamer once was.

When young Sonia Pressman Fuentes stepped aboard the Westernland II ship in Antwerp with her family on April 20, 1934, it was the biggest leap she would ever take.

“It made it possible for me to be alive—very simple answer. Otherwise we would have been killed,” the Jewish feminist leader said, recalling her family’s flight from the Nazis.

“We would have been killed in Germany had we remained there. We would have been killed in Belgium had we remained there. And we would have been killed in Poland if we had been deported there,” she continued. “The Red Star Line saved all our lives.”

Pressman Fuentes was back at the original docks of this huge North Sea port for Friday’s ceremonial opening of the Red Star Line migration museum, which shows how millions of Europeans steamed across the ocean toward the United States and other parts of the Americas over the past two centuries.

It charts the migrations of everyone who traveled on the shipping line, from composer Irving Berlin to scientist Albert Einstein to Israeli politician Golda Meir. It is the story of countless people escaping poverty, seeking adventure, avoiding persecution or dodging certain death.

“What we are trying to achieve with the museum is to bring back all the stories of lives that were changed here,” said museum project coordinator Luc Verheyen.

Over two million passengers sailed from Europe to America between 1873 and 1934 on the Red Star Line. Antwerp was popular because it already was a massive port and it had a well-established Jewish community.

In 1893, a five-year-old Israel Isidore Baline was among the émigrés, part of a family fleeing increasing anti-Semitic violence in Russia. Baline became Irving Berlin after the family entered the United States and settled in New York’s Lower East side. His classics like God Bless America and White Christmas made him famous in his new country and around the world.

Now, one of Berlin’s pianos stands in the museum, on extended loan from the family. His daughter and two granddaughters were on hand for the opening.

“Coming to this museum is like completing a circle. To think my father left from this building, and here we are in it!” his daughter Linda Emmet said.

“It wasn’t an easy voyage,” she added. “The man in the upper bunk dropped his penknife onto my father’s forehead. It left a scar for the rest of his life.”

No lasting damage was done to Berlin. A few decades later, his fame became such that the Red Star Line’s SS Belgenland was playing a Berlin foxtrot for its first and second class passengers.

Nobel Prize winner Einstein was another famous passenger. When he was on the Belgenland II in 1933, he learned that the Nazis had confiscated his possessions so he decided not return to Berlin. Instead, he used Red Star Line stationery to declare his resignation from the Prussian Academy for the Sciences.

The museum highlights the eternal struggle of migration, a lesson as true today as it was decades ago.

“We tend to forget how hard it is to emigrate,” said Caroline Emmet-Bourgois, Berlin’s granddaughter. “You are leaving behind your identity. You are going into the unknown. You are trying to give a future to your children and you are willing to lose what you already have to start anew.”

The museum opened to the public on Saturday.

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If You Go…

RED STAR LINE MUSEUM: Montevideostraat 3, Antwerp, Belgium, http://www.redstarline.be/en. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Adults, 8 euros; ages 12-26, 1 euro; age 65 and over, 6 euros, free for children under 12.

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AP Photo Editor Virginia Mayo and videojournalist Mark Carlson contributed to this story

AP-WF-09-30-13 1422GMT

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Smucker sponsors ‘Free Thusdays’ at Akron Art Museum

Akron Art Museum in Akron, Ohio. Image Threeblur0, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

AKRON, Ohio (AP) – An innovative art museum in northeast Ohio will offer free gallery admission on Thursdays to attract more fans to its collection.

The Free Thursday program starts this week at the Akron Art Museum. Normal adult admission is $7.

The museum says the Free Thursday programming sponsored by the J.M. Smucker Co. jelly maker based in Orrville, Ohio, is meant to make art relevant to audiences of all ages.

The first Free Thursday will include morning yoga for preschoolers and an evening documentary film about on a retired New York postal worker and his librarian wife who collected thousands of art works.

Herb and Dorothy Vogel are donating 2,500 works from their collection, with items going to one museum in each state. Fifty were allocated to the Akron museum.

AP-WF-09-29-13 2004GMT

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Photography hall of fame, museum move to St. Louis

Early cameras, like this stereo wet plate camera, will be displayed at the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Auction Team Breker.

ST. LOUIS (AP) – A museum honoring photographers is preparing for its grand opening in St. Louis after making its move from Oklahoma.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum officially opens Friday night in Grand Center with its first exhibition, titled “The Past, Present & Future of Nature Photography.”

The Hall of Fame was established in 1965, but it didn’t have its first physical home until 1977 in Santa Barbara, Calif. It moved to a science building in Oklahoma City, Okla., in 1983, but a decision to limit its exhibits to scientific displays prompted officials to relocate it to Missouri.

The new museum also includes an extensive collection of historic photographic equipment that is displayed in cases along walls and in the center of the room.

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com

AP-WF-09-30-13 0903GMT

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