Lot 51: Prince Twins Seven Seven (Nigeria, 1944-2011), ‘Conference of Noisy Birds,’ ink, watercolor and oil on wood, a sculptor’s painting on two carved and tiered layers of wood; Osogbo, 1978-1979, 4 x 8 feet. Estimate: $8,000-$12,000. Material Culture image. PHILA., Pa. – Material Culture brings an astonishing gathering of important folk and self-taught art to auction on Nov. 3 at 11 a.m. Eastern. Comprising over 700 lots, its sale, “Candles in the Light: International Folk and Self-Taught Art,” revels in the spirit and diversity of unique artistic vision around the globe. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding
A leader in self-taught art, Material Culture has once again compiled a stunning array of paintings and drawings in this burgeoning field, led by pieces by Purvis Young, Howard Finster, Justin McCarthy, Ellis Ruley, Prince Twins Seven-Seven, Victor Joseph Gatto, Thornton Dial, Jack Savitsky, Lee Godie, Anna Zemankova, Anne Grgich, and many others.
Self-taught sculpture includes work by S.L. Jones, and Nate Barrow, both also shown in two-dimensional artwork, and folk-art inspired artists R.A. Miller and David Butler. A truly global compendium of folk art at the sale is led by pieces from Haitian metalworker Georges Liautaud, Togolese folk artist Abagli Kossi, and Felippe Archuleta, an American folk artist from New Mexico.
A large assortment of Georgia folk pottery comes to the sale, including the work of Lanier Meaders, Chester Hewell, and others in the same families or tradition. Other substantial categories include a variety of Polish folk sculpture from the 1930s and ’40s, a gathering of Judaica folk art from various countries, African popular art movie posters, Indian Bihar folk painting, and a fine collection of Mexican retablos brought to auction by St. Joseph’s University.
On Friday, Nov. 1, Material Culture will host the “Party of the Year”—an extraordinary free evening of art, exhibitions, music, dance and refreshments, from 6 to 11 p.m.. A special lecture will take place the day before the sale, on Nov. 2 at 2 p.m. Joseph F. Chorpenning, the editorial director at St. Joseph’s University Press, will present an illustrated lecture focusing on the Mexican folk devotional retablos that are being offered for sale at the auction the following day. A reception will follow the lecture. All events—the exhibition, the party, and the lecture—are free and open to the public. Material Culture is located at 4700 Wissahickon Ave., Suite 101, Philadelphia, PA 19144.
Lot 51: Prince Twins Seven Seven (Nigeria, 1944-2011), ‘Conference of Noisy Birds,’ ink, watercolor and oil on wood, a sculptor’s painting on two carved and tiered layers of wood; Osogbo, 1978-1979, 4 x 8 feet. Estimate: $8,000-$12,000. Material Culture image.
Lot 4: Georges Liautaud (Haitian, 1889-1991) ‘Christ on Cross,’ circa 1960s, forged iron. Signed. Size: 36 x 22 x 7 inches. Estimate: $2,000-$4,000. Material Culture image.
Lot 5: Agbagli Kossi (1935-1991) Togo, untitled African sculpture, circa 1980s, painted wood. Size: 36 x 12 x 13 inches. Provenance: Purchased from Gert Chesi. Estimate: $3,000-$4,000. Material Culture image.
Lot 21: Felipe Benito Archuleta (1910-1991), ‘Bikini Lady and Child,’ (1974), carved and painted wood, signed and dated, 55 x 26 x 36 inches. An early, rare work by one of the major figures in Navajo folk art. Estimate: $12,000-$20,000. Material Culture image.
Lot 24: Thornton Dial (USA, b. 1928), ‘Listening to the Bird Sing,’ 1994, pastel, 25 x 19 inches. Estimate: $2,000-$4,000. Material Culture image.
Lot 62: Ellis Ruley (USA, 1882-1959), ‘Autum [sic] Leaves,’ oil on board, 28 x 22inches (board), 25 x 31 inches (frame). Estimate: $20,000-$30,000. Material Culture image.
Madonna nude photographs: unpublished shots from a modeling photoshoot taken by Herman Kulkens. Guccione Collection image. NEW YORK—The Guccione Collection will sell over 600 unique items in an online auction on Saturday, Nov. 9, beginning at noon Eastern. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
The auction begins the day after Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story is set to premiere on the Epix cable network. The film is directed by Barry Avrich and produced by financier Jeremy Frommer and producer Rick Schwartz (Machete, Black Swan). It won critical acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival and illustrates the scope of Guccione’s contributions to art, science and the First Amendment. Many of the unique items seen in the film are included in the auction. The staggering array of art and artifacts from the archive of the legendary magazine publishing magnate Bob Guccione features such unique items as original negatives of nude pop icon Madonna. The images are the first nudes ever taken of Madonna, infamously taken by Herman Kulkens in 1977 when she was 18 years old.
The auction includes vintage cheesecake and erotic photography from the 1950s (predating Guccione’s conception of the ground-breaking Penthouse magazine). The images were used in Bob Guccione’s 1950s pinup business known as the Gucci Girls. Two original oil paintings by Guccione will be auctioned. This is the first time original oils by Bob Guccione have been auctioned. Exhibitions alongside such greats as Lichtenstein and Hockney were among the few public viewings of the Guccione oils in the 1990s. The two oil paintings come from the total of 66 owned by the Guccione Collection. The only other verified surviving oil hangs at the Butler Institute, curated by Louis Zona. Included in the collection are oils and acrylics from numerous renowned artist and peers of Guccione, such as Hajime Sorayama, John Berkey and H.R. Giger as well as illustrative material and advertisements from the 1970s and 1980s.
“Taken as a whole, the items in the Guccione Collection constitute an erotic and social history of the late 20th century, and in particular the sexual revolution as it evolved in the late ’50s, the counter-culture driven ’60s, and of course the 1970s, which was the era in which the ethos defined by Bob Guccione and Penthouse really held sway over the larger culture,” notes Jeremy Frommer, the cofounder of The Guccione Collection.
In addition to celebrating female beauty and uncovering scandal (among the items here are explicit, unsettling photographs of Deborah Murphree, the Southern streetwalker whose sexual pay-for-play with television preacher Jimmy Swaggart laid bare the hypocrisy of televangelism), that ethos also defined an aesthetic. The seriously artistic side of Guccione gets short shrift when cultural historians delve into the excesses that began to swallow up the publisher’s empire beginning in the 1980s. That aesthetic, however, is on display in full bloom in many of the auction’s items, including a passel of early ’70s erotic photographs staged and shot by Guccione himself. “Guccione’s photography revolutionized the way the female form was presented in popular culture,” Frommer asserts. “And his approach—his use of diffuse light, of shadows, his way of posing his subjects—came directly from much of what he learned as a painter.”
Particularly striking and revelatory are a series of silver gelatin prints of Guccione photographs of Gillian Duxbury, the one-time Page Three girl who appeared as March 1972 Penthouse Pet of the Month under the name Billie Deane. The black-and-white shots are frank, almost documentarian in their not-quite-voyeuristic approach. They give the impression of looking at a beautiful female form in its natural environment as opposed to the overlit sets or not-so-great outdoors that constituted the settings of more conventional work. One gets the sense of a relaxed autumn afternoon spent in the company of exceptional beauty. As with Guccione’s oils, the goal is a kind of privileged, but not artificially elevated, view.
Also here are examples of Guccione’s correspondence: memos, letters to politicians of note (including Dick Cheney); and covers and layouts annotated by the editor/publisher that give an intriguing insight into his work ethic and magazine-making savvy. Never without a pen, pencil, or piece of charcoal in his hand, Guccione was a fierce and deft doodler and sketch artist, and many examples of his off-the-cuff artistic observations are collected here as well.
The publisher himself is hardly the only artist on display in this auction: Also on the block is original artwork by brilliant Penthouse contributors including Michael Arthur Cummings (the wildly popular Balloonheads cartoons) and Bill Lee, among others. The pre-superstardom portraits of Madonna, nude and in her early 20s, were shot by Herman Kulkens, and show her in poses both playfully ornamental (her nude cowgirl shots are particularly insouciant) and disarmingly unguarded.
Next up, the Caligula Auction, including original 35mm reels found in the Guccione archives of the infamous Gore Vidal and notorious Tinto Brass’ Caligula. Coming Christmastime.
For more information, contact info@guccionecollection.com or phone 201-381-1777.
Madonna nude photographs: unpublished shots from a modeling photoshoot taken by Herman Kulkens. Guccione Collection image.
Marilyn Monroe stag print: These prints, supposedly of a 20-year-old Marilyn Monroe, were taken from a 1948 stag film and published in ‘Penthouse’ in 1980. Guccione Collection image.
Bob Guccione M oil painting: one of Bob Guccione’s seminal pieces, which depicts his second wife, Muriel. This painting is dated July 1954. Guccione Collection image.
Bob Guccione ‘Fearsome Couple:’ 1 of 66 original oils from Guccione’s triumphant return to painting in the 1990s. Guccione Collection image.
‘Caligula’ preproduction key art: preproduction key art for Bob Guccione’s Roman epic ‘Caligula.’ Guccione Collection image.
‘Muhammad Ali – A Peek into the Boxer’s Life:’ vintage 35mm slides from Muhammad Ali’s visit to Dubai. Guccione Collection image.
John Berkey nude: fascinating, erotic painting from the master of science-fiction art, John Berkey. Guccione Collection image.
Lot 202A: fine Chinese white jade carved Kwanyin statue. Estimate: $2,500-$4,500. 888 Auctions image.
RICHMOND HILL, Ontario – 888 Auctions will hold its Chinese jade and Asian works of art sale on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 2 p.m. Eastern, featuring fine jade boulders, jadeite bangles pendants, paintings, porcelains, jewelry, precious stones, metalware and natural history. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding for the 533-lot auction.
“Our auction sales in jadeite and jade continue to stand very strong through the year. An extraordinary sales record achieved in Lot 180 from our October auction, an exquisite white jade boulder with identification certificate and sold for $240,000 (Canadian),” said Donnie Kim of 888 Auctions.
In this auction, 888 will continue to present buyers with premium jade items such as lot 202A, a fine Chinese white jade carved Kwanyin statue of even white tone, close to perfect quality, carved in a serene expression Kwanyin in flowing robes with high luster polish on custom wood stand carved as a lotus plinth. It has a high estimate of $4,500. Also in the spotlight is lot 246, a rare spinach green jade carved square dragon seal of spinach green tone. The body is pierced with an aperture, the seal is carved with Chinese scripts in low relief, and the base is deeply and crisply carved with four archaic characters. It has a high estimate of $3,000.
Other quality jade pieces with excellent carvings can be found at:
– Lot 199: Chinese white jade carved recumbent horse, estimate: $600-$1,200;
– Lot 203: fine Chinese white jade boulder carved dragon, estimate at $4,000-$8,000;
– Lot 214: 17th/18th century Chinese white jade carved hair holder, estimated at $1,000-$2,000;
– Lot 234: Chinese Hetian white jade tear drop pendant, estimated at $600-$1,200;
– Lot 252: Chinese green jade dragon vase with lid Qianlong mark, estimated at $2,000-$3,000.
In addition, collectors will find premium bangles comparable to lot 175 from 888 Auctions’ August auction, an important emerald green jadeite bangle that was hammered at $55,000. The finest pieces in the November auction are lot 175, a Chinese emerald green jadeite bangle having great translucency (high estimate $8,000), and lot 193, a Chinese icy clear and deep green jadeite bangle with high translucency and clarity with spots of deep green tone (high estimate of $4,000). Also noteworthy is lot 177, an important Chinese emerald green jadeite bangle of even emerald green tone and a rounded edge with fine polished finish, which carries a high estimate of $8,000.
Additional quality pieces of jadeite can be found at:
– Lot 125: Chinese fine emerald green jadeite lotus leaf, estimated at $2,000-$3,000;
– Lot 128: fine Chinese emerald green jadeite leaf pendant, estimated at $1,000-$2,000;
– Lot 133: fine icy emerald green jadeite dragon pendant, estimate at $600-$1,200;
– Lot 135: Chinese icy emerald green jadeite ruyi pendant, estimated at $1,000-$2,000;
– Lot 137: Chinese icy emerald green bat jadeite pendant, provenance: T. Ng Collection Toronto, estimated at $600-$1,600;
– Lot 142: icy emerald green jadeite pendant with clear stones, estimated at $800-$1,600;
– Lot 144: fine emerald green jadeite pendant with clear stones, estimated at $800-$1,600;
– Lot 150: Chinese icy jadeite double dragon pendant, estimated at $800-$1,600;
– Lot 309: icy emerald green jadeite pendant with clear stones, estimated at $1,000-$2,000.
A standout in the painting section is lot 72, a Chinese long 100 birds silk painting by Shen Quan, painted 100 birds and phoenix, long scroll on silk, signed Shen Quan with red seals, which has a high estimate of $25,000. Lot 390, a Chinese Famille Rose gilt plate Guangxu Period, carries a high estimate of $5,000. From the bronze section, lot 459, a Chinese gold splash bronze censer of squatted hu shape, flanked with pair of foo dog heads and decorated with splashes of gold, bottom marked four characters Ming Xuande mark, has a high estimate of $5,000. Lot 495, a Chinese carved horn libation cup from the T. Ng Collection, Toronto, estimated a $4,000, is expected to do well.
For details please visit www.888auctions.com or call the auctioneers at 905-763-7201.
Quality consignments are still being accepted for 888 Auctions’ Dec 5 sale. To consign an item, an estate or a collection, call the number above or email info@888auctions.com.
Portrait of artist Wang Jianwei in his studio, Beijing, 2013. Photo: Xiao Mi. Courtesy the artist.
NEW YORK – The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum announced today the selection of Beijing-based artist Wang Jianwei as the first commissioned artist for the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative at the Guggenheim Museum.
Launched in earlier this year, the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative at the Guggenheim Museum has been established to expand the discourse on contemporary Chinese art by commissioning Chinese artists to create major works that will enter the Guggenheim Museum’s permanent collection and to present a series of exhibitions in conjunction with scholarly publications, notable lectures and education programs.
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative is part of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Program directed by Dr. Alexandra Munroe, Samsung senior curator, Asian Art.
Wang Jianwei is recognized throughout Asia and Europe for his bold experiments in conceptual, multimedia, and installation art—linking live performance, theater and film production to sculpture, documentary photography, and figurative and abstract painting. His highly innovative, masterfully formal and subtly complex practice engages with the most topical issues of social and political life in China today. The exhibition will be the artist’s first solo museum show in North America.
For this first cycle of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative at the Guggenheim Museum, Wang Jianwei has been commissioned to produce a multimedia installation comprised of sculpture, video, and painting—promising an immersive, rich and complex environment. The thematic, conceptual and formal parameters of the commission will be developed over the next year, and the work will be presented to the public at the Guggenheim Museum in fall 2014 as the first of three commission-based exhibitions that will explore key ideas and core artists who shape contemporary Chinese art within a global context.
Wang Jianwei is considered one of the leading artists of the historic, post-reform avant-garde and experimental art movements in China. Wang is also recognized as an influential thought leader and cultural catalyst in China for his work as a writer and for his public discourse on contemporary Chinese art and culture. Born in 1958 in Sichuan Province (Western China), Wang pursued his graduate studies at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) in Hangzhou. Beginning in the early 1990s, Wang became a pioneer of video and installation art in China, while developing a singular artistic practice invested in increasingly elaborate multimedia productions. Exploring history and social memory, Wang’s subject matter often concerns the everyday, existential conditions of life in China under rapid economic reform and the expansion of urbanization of traditionally rural societies. Informed by critical theory and Chinese philosophy, his works often seek to give form to structures of contingency, process and the nature of contemporary being.
Wang Jianwei’s work has been featured in several exhibitions, including “Documenta X” (1997); “How Latitudes Become Form: Art in a Global Age,” Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2003); “Past in Reverse, Contemporary Art of East Asia,” San Diego Museum of Art (2004); “Between Past and Future,” International Center of Photography and Asia Society, New York (2004); “The Wall” (2005), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and his projects: “Flying Bird Is Motionless” (2005) and “Dilemma: Three-Way Fork in the Road” (2007), were presented at Chambers Fine Art, New York. Wang recently had two solo exhibitions in Beijing: “Yellow Signal” (2011) at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) and “the event matured, accomplished in sight of all non-existent human outcomes” (2013) at the Long March Space.
“Wang Jianwei: The Texture of Reality” (working title) is organized by Dr. Thomas J. Berghuis, The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Curator of Chinese Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Portrait of artist Wang Jianwei in his studio, Beijing, 2013. Photo: Xiao Mi. Courtesy the artist.
Three-piece setting of Baltimore & Ohio Railroad dinnerware by Shenango China. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and B. Langston LLC. NORFOLK, Va. (AP) – People say, if you do what you love, it won’t feel like work.
Here’s someone who followed that line of thinking: Leigh Greer, who said, “All my life, when I’ve had dinner parties, my favorite thing was setting the table.”
She turned that passion into a business, setting table after table for fun and profit.
Her shop, Table Seven, opened a year ago in November in Ghent’s vibrant and growing 21st Street shopping district. Greer specializes in tabletop antiques, selling everything for dining and, now, renting things, too.
The very specific niche market she created has caused a clamor for her things. Customers are charmed and inspired by the enticing narrative vignettes she creates with dishes and related accessories.
She does it like this: Antique hotel silver is featured beside a stack of well-traveled suitcases and an old dinner menu from a long-closed restaurant. A book about Grace Kelly joins other objects that play off the color of its jacket or items the movie star princess might have used—a gilt mirror, a dish that says “Monaco.” A few wooden darts with real feathers are tossed into a bowl, setting a manly tone shoulder to shoulder with an antique champagne bucket. There are barware and bridal sections and an array of antique silver eating utensils for tots.
She fleshes out her inventory with fabric holiday table banners, candelabras, old damask tablecloths and lots more.
What Greer has always thought of as play is actually masterful merchandising.
Her background is as a preschool teacher, so she has had plenty of practice keeping the attention of a young audience, an art form not unlike harnessing a following of fickle and cash-conscious consumers who still want to put on a good show for guests.
Need a vintage cheese knife? She has it. Want a plate from a hotel where your parents spent their honeymoon or a Navy ship on which your father served? Chances are, she can find it.
Looking to rent 100 cups and saucers and cake plates to go with them? Yes, again.
That very thing, a September tea for 100 at the Woman’s Club of Portsmouth, was her biggest rental order to date.
So how did this all begin?
Innocently, of course.
While growing up in Greenville, S.C., she watched her mother and grandmother tend the family’s antiques.
“My mother and I would go around to antique shows and shops when I was in high school,” she said. As Greer grew up, her mom would preview stores, then bring Greer there to choose.
Eventually, Greer moved here and taught for years at Loch-Meadow Kindergarten at Church of the Good Shepherd on Hampton Boulevard and later worked at her own church, First Presbyterian, on Colonial Avenue.
Along the way, she fell in love with hotel silver and restaurant china. She started indulging her passion, buying a spoon here, a teacup there, thick, storied and sensible pieces by Buffalo, Syracuse and Shenango that had served so many guests so well at so many establishments.
In an antiques shop on Granby Street, nearly a lifetime ago, she bought a hotel creamer from the Waldorf Astoria, the posh New York City hotel. She thought it was just so, so cute.
Soon she assembled a small collection of hotel china and, eventually, had so much of it that about five years ago, when a friend in her Norfolk neighborhood had a Christmas craft show, Greer set up a card table there.
“I took almost all the silver and china I had at the time. I wanted to see if other people liked it as much as I did, and it was very successful,” she said.
Figuring she might make a go of this as a business, she traveled to shows in Washington, Richmond and the Shenandoah Valley, and eventually rented a booth at an antiques show at the Virginia Beach Convention Center. Shoppers snatched up mess-hall china from every branch of service, from venerable places like The Greenbrier resort, from airlines long out of business and ships that had made their final ocean journeys. Buyers were thrilled to find this memorabilia.
But, eventually, all that packing and loading and setting up for two-day events got old.
“It got too hard to decide what to take for shows,” she said, “and, in the back of my mind, I started thinking about it, about having a shop. It was not something I had ever dreamed of. It just evolved. But I’m 55, and they say in your 50s is the best time to start something new in your life.”
Now, after 12 months on the west end of 21st Street, she has had a great response. She settled into an expanding area of retailers that includes restaurants and eateries, another antiques hub that moved here from a few blocks away. It includes Lana Hobbs Wolcott Antiques and Michael Millard-Lowe in the Antique Design Center with American Interiors Ltd. And, coming soon across the street, Greer is delighted to tell visitors, is yet another new neighbor, the upscale Fresh Market, with gourmet grocery shoppers who she is sure will need her pretties.
And there are lots of them, including books with dining themes.
“I buy anything that I think will fit,” she said. She mixes in items to accessorize tables, anything that has to do with entertaining, parties or special occasions. She offers limited and carefully selected new merchandise, such as the 10 different things she chose at this summer’s gift show in New York, items like charger-size paper place mats with colored borders of period dining chairs; sparklers; unusual tea towels; and metal letter tabs that can spell out initials or messages, like “Bon Voyage.”
For serving cheese or appetizers, she carries waxed papers. For football parties, there are paper runners marked off like a playing field. For Thanksgiving dinners, she has paper table toppers that family and guests can write on to say what they are thankful for. This Christmas she’ll feature about a dozen or so different selections of food items, including a Louisville, Ky., bourbon cake and beef jerky in “really cool packaging” that she’s sure will be a hit with men.
Her tabletop rental business began last spring after she did a vintage “Mason-jar look” May wedding reception at Talbot Hall in Norfolk and provided china, silver and paper place mats. More weddings followed, then brides began asking if she had what Greer now calls “froufrou” or flowered vintage china.
“So I thought, well, I’d better get froufrou,” she said, and laughed. By the time the Woman’s Club of Portsmouth called to rent cups and such for their please-pass-the-sugar-tongs, 100-person tea, she had plenty. That thinner china rents for $1.75 per plate. Hotel china, still her favorite, is $2.
She’s networked her way into the local wedding industry to expand the tabletop rental aspect of her business and, in the shop, creates holiday-themed tables for her retail customers.
For Thanksgiving, she imagines hostesses coming to her for paper place mats that look etched with sepia brown turkeys, for big turkey platters, or for grill plates, thick and sectioned off to keep servings of cranberry sauce from running into the turkey dressing like on the ridged Shenango china plates she found that used to clatter down the cafeteria line at a North Carolina elementary school.
For Christmas, she’s stockpiled all her red china and white china with red trim, and ordered vintage-look, tabletop bottlebrush trees. Last year, she set up fantasy tables for six, then did it again with glitter and glam toward New Year’s Eve. Each time, almost everything on them sold. So did nearly all her tiny glass and crystal salt cellars.
And, for a personal touch, she’ll track down more items to fill customer wish lists.
“It’s so much fun when I find things that people want,” she said. “I have several special customers. And when I call them, they’re here within an hour.”
A restored P-51D Mustang, built in 1944, in its wartime markings. Image by Adrian Pingstone, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. GALVESTON, Texas (AP) – Two men have died after a vintage fighter plane crashed near Galveston.
The Texas Department of Public Safety says 51-year-old pilot Keith Hibbett of Denton and his 66-year-old passenger John Stephen Busby, who was visiting from the United Kingdom, were killed in the crash Wednesday.
U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Lehmann says the captain of a charter boat notified authorities after seeing the P-51 Mustang crash in an area between Chocolate Bay and Galveston Bay. He says the plane went down in water some 4 feet deep.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford says the Lone Star Flight Museum in Galveston operated the plane. He says the pilot was not in contact with air traffic controllers when the crash happened.
The cause of the crash is being investigated.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-10-24-13 0652GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
A restored P-51D Mustang, built in 1944, in its wartime markings. Image by Adrian Pingstone, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Baseball signed by Yankees legend Mickey Mantle, which is being auctioned Oct. 25 by Ivey-Selkirk Auctioneers. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com and Ivey-Selkirk Auctioneers. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) – When New York Yankees legend Mickey Mantle signed a baseball for 9-year-old Dennis Schrader at a 1956 spring training game in Florida, it began a lifelong obsession. Today, Schrader has more than 4,600 signed baseballs, certified by Guinness as the largest such collection in the world.
That obsession is now on display at the St. Petersburg Museum of History in Florida. “Schrader’s Little Cooperstown” opened to the public Tuesday, and Schrader was grinning from ear to ear. He and his wife have loaned the balls to the museum for 20 years, and after that, they will be returned to the family.
Previously, Schrader’s baseballs were displayed in a 12-by-14-foot room in his home that had walls a foot thick, a bank vault door, motion sensors and video camera surveillance. The semi-retired mobile home executive once spent $25,000 on a single ball, signed by Joe DiMaggio and then-wife Marilyn Monroe.
He estimates the collection is worth $2 million to $3 million.
The collection is a trip through baseball history, and Schrader will personally give tours of the collection to groups.
There are the obvious great signatures: Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. There are several Negro League balls, a tribute to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League featured in the movie A League of Their Own, and several signed by celebrities and politicians.
“He captured the essence of baseball,” said St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster.
In August 2011, Guinness World Records certified him as the owner of 4,020 baseballs signed by major league baseball players. Duplicates and balls signed by nonbaseball celebrities—including President Barack Obama—brought his collection of baseballs to more than 4,600.
Guinness requires the sign off and authentication from a reputable auction house or relevant institution or society, which specializes in collections of the type submitted, spokesman Jamie Panas said in an email.
The collection was verified by the president of All American Sports Collectibles and St. Petersburg Museum of History who are versed in baseball histories, he said.
It cost the museum $300,000 to design the exhibit and two years for city officials to convince Schrader to loan the precious collection.
The museum, which sits along St. Petersburg’s downtown waterfront, is also gearing up to celebrate the 100th anniversary of baseball spring training in the city. Spring training began in St. Petersburg with the St. Louis Browns playing at Coffee Pot Park in 1914.
Schrader admitted that “there’s an emptiness” in his home without the baseballs, but said the vault was filled with other collectibles, including his wife’s 500 cookie jars and several hundred celebrity autographed photos.
Schrader’s wife, Mary, said she and her husband won’t stop collecting signed baseballs.
“In fact, I have a ball in my purse right now,” Mary Schrader said, laughing and showing the blank ball. “I always carry one around, because you never know who you’ll run into.”
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-10-22-13 2301GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Baseball signed by Yankees legend Mickey Mantle, which is being auctioned Oct. 25 by Ivey-Selkirk Auctioneers. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com and Ivey-Selkirk Auctioneers.
![Lot 62: Ellis Ruley (USA, 1882-1959), ‘Autum [sic] Leaves,’ oil on board, 28 x 22inches (board), 25 x 31 inches (frame). Estimate: $20,000-$30,000. Material Culture image.](https://www.liveauctioneers.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2013_1025_mc62.jpg "Lot 62: Ellis Ruley (USA, 1882-1959), ‘Autum [sic] Leaves,’ oil on board, 28 x 22inches (board), 25 x 31 inches (frame). Estimate: $20,000-$30,000. Material Culture image.")
