Venini ceiling lamp, blown glass elements supported by metal small chains, circa 1960. Estimate: €5,000-€6,000. Nova Ars image. ASTI, Italy – An interesting collection of 20th century design and decorative arts will be sold at auction by Nova Ars on Nov. 7. Ceramics, furniture, lamps, chandeliers, glasswork and some interesting paintings will be offered. The focus is always on made in Italy, without forgetting talents from other countries. LiveAucitoneers.com will provide Internet live bidding. The auction will begin at 6:30 p.m. local, 9:30 a.m. Pacific.
Nova Ars specializes in objects of Contemporary Art, Modernism and design made in Italy during the 20th century.
Highlight pieces in the Nov. 7 auction include:
– Napoleone Martinuzzi and Vittorio Zecchin glass vase, 1930, blown blue glass vase with silver decorations. Estimates: €2,500,00-€3,000.
– Fini e Cocchia, Azimuth model floor lamp, 1971, 71.6 inches high. Estimates: €9,000-€10,000.
– Stilnovo ceiling lamp with 30 lights, circa 1955. Estimate: €6,000,00-€7,000.
– Venini ceiling lamp, blown glass elements supported by metal small chains, circa 1960. Estimate: €5,000-€6,000.
Venini ceiling lamp, blown glass elements supported by metal small chains, circa 1960. Estimate: €5,000-€6,000. Nova Ars image.
Napoleone Martinuzzi, Vittorio Zecchin glass vase, 1930, blown blue glass vase with silver decorations. Dimensions: height 30 cm, diameter 25cm. Estimate: €2,500-€3,000. Nova Ars image.
Fini e Cocchia, Azimuth model floor lamp, 1971, 71.6 inches high. Estimate: €9,000-€10,000. Nova Ars image.
Stilnovo ceiling lamp with 30 lights, circa 1955. Estimate: €6,000,00-€7,000. Nova Ars image.
Alessandro Mendini, Proust armchair, painted fabric and wood. Estimate: €45,000-€50,000. Nova Ars image.
Rancho la Brea Tar Pool. Restoration by Charles. R. Knight for Amer. Mus. (N.Y.) mural decorations 9′ by 12′ in hall of the Age of Man. One sloth (Mylodon, now Paramylodon) trapped, two guarding against Sabre Tooth (Smilodon). Condors (unidentified further, may be Teratornis or a California condor) waiting on McNabb’s cypress. In the rear of pool which has yeilded much elephant material. San Gabriel range with Mt. Lowe center and Mt. Wilson at right of erect sloth. Old Baldy at right. The Jesse Earl Hyde Collection, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Department of Geological Scienceshttp://geology.cwru.edu/~huwig/
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Surrounded by a gooey graveyard of prehistoric beasts, a small crew diligently wades through a backlog of fossil finds from a century of excavation at the La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of Los Angeles.
Digs over the years have unearthed bones of mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and other unsuspecting Ice Age creatures that became trapped in ponds of sticky asphalt. But it’s the smaller discoveries — plants, insects and rodents — in recent years that are shaping scientists’ views of life in the region 11,000 to 50,000 years ago.
“Earlier excavations really missed a great part of the story,” said John Harris, chief curator at the George C. Page Museum, which oversees the fossil collection. People “were only taking out bones they could see, but it’s the hidden bones that provide clues to the environment.”
The museum on Monday celebrates 100 years of digging, which has recovered some 5.5 million bones representing more than 600 species of animals and plants, the richest cache of Ice Age fossils.
There’s so much left to do that it could easily take another century to complete. On a recent Wednesday, a volunteer in a white lab coat pounded away at a bison skull in the museum’s fishbowl laboratory where visitors can witness paleontology in action. Nearby, two workers hunched over microscopes, sorting bone fragments belonging to extinct creatures.
In the back storage, floor-to-ceiling shelves of wooden crates house bones that need to be cleaned, identified or labeled. The museum estimates it has 100,000 specimens to catalog and another million to scrub.
Long before skyscrapers towered over Wilshire Boulevard, giant beasts ruled the land. Back then, sagebrush scrub covered the basin, home to herds of mammoths, bison, camels and ground sloths. Mastodons hung out in the woodlands. Lurking were meat-eating predators including saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and giant jaguars.
Every so often, creatures would get bogged down in pools of water and asphalt that seeped from underground crude oil deposits, and die of dehydration or starvation. Stranded animals that appeared to be easy prey then became a trap for predators that also got stuck in the ooze.
In 1913, the predecessor to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County launched a two-year project to uncover only the best-preserved mammal bones, largely ignoring everything else. Though the early digs gave scientists a glimpse into the types of animals that roamed, there was still much to be learned.
After the early missteps, scientists in 1969 decided to focus on pulling everything out and revisited a tar pit dubbed Pit 91 to do a more detailed excavation. For nearly 40 years, work at Pit 91 dominated the Page Museum’s efforts as visitors gawked from a viewing platform.
Museum officials temporarily halted digging at Pit 91 several years ago to concentrate on an unexpected trove of Ice Age fossils that was found during the construction of an underground garage next to the tar pits, located some 7 miles (11 kilometers) west of downtown Los Angeles.
“I can’t think of any other site that is as rich,” said Sarah George, executive director of the Natural History Museum of Utah.
Every time a foundation is dug, “more old blocks of tar filled with fossils came out of the ground,” said George, who used to work as a curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Despite a century of digging, scientists still can’t agree on how the Ice Age beasts became extinct. Some suggested that the prehistoric predators may have competed with humans for similar prey and that carnivores ate carcasses out of desperation. But Larisa DeSantis of Vanderbilt University said dental studies of saber-toothed cats and other carnivores suggest they were “living the good life” before they became extinct.
Museum excavators plan to leave some fossils buried — in case better tools are invented to study them in the next century.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Rancho la Brea Tar Pool. Restoration by Charles. R. Knight for Amer. Mus. (N.Y.) mural decorations 9′ by 12′ in hall of the Age of Man. One sloth (Mylodon, now Paramylodon) trapped, two guarding against Sabre Tooth (Smilodon). Condors (unidentified further, may be Teratornis or a California condor) waiting on McNabb’s cypress. In the rear of pool which has yeilded much elephant material. San Gabriel range with Mt. Lowe center and Mt. Wilson at right of erect sloth. Old Baldy at right. The Jesse Earl Hyde Collection, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Department of Geological Scienceshttp://geology.cwru.edu/~huwig/
Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image. LONDON – Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions will present an auction of works by some of the most celebrated book illustrators, including Henry Alken, George Cruikshank, James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson, as well as illustrators Joseph Crawhall and Edward Gordon Craig. This single-owner collection comprises over 340 rare and wonderful fine color plate books from the “Library of a Gentleman.” The sale will take place on Thursday, Nov. 7, beginning at 1 p.m. GMT (5 a.m. Pacific). LiveAuctioneers.com will provide Internet live bidding.
A selection of humorous caricatures include a rare complete set of the important satirical magazine La Caricature (Paris, 1830-35). Established in 1830 by Charles Philipon La Caricature was a fundamental part of the fight against the power of King Louis-Philippe of France, a battle that won Philipon six months in prison for “Contempt of the King.”
Illustrated by famous artists of the time (Daumier and Grandville to name but a few) and including about 100 hand-colored plates and an additional proof of plate 122, this set is expected to fetch £15,000-£20,000.
La Caricature is in very good company with another rarity found in The Attorney-General’s Charges Against the late Queen [1821], a collection of caricatures aimed at Queen Caroline. The lot includes 49 hand-colored etched plates, a few by brothers George and Robert Cruikshank, but the majority by Theodore Lane, one of which is pictured above. This highly collectible work carries an estimate of £4,000-£6,000.
George Cruikshank is particularly well represented throughout the sale and was clearly of great interest to the collector who amassed this outstanding library. A British born caricaturist and book illustrator, Cruishank was apprenticed to his father, Isaac Cruikshank, a leading caricaturist in the late 1790s.
He was well known in his early life as a social caricaturist of English life for mainstream publications, but later became renowned as being the illustrator of the first English translation of Grimms’ Fairy Tales in 1823.
His political prints of the Royal family packed a satirical punch and in 1820, he reportedly received a bribe of £100 to ensure he did not depict King George IV in an immoral situation. In later life, his notoriety grew further when he was Charles Dicken’s illustrator for Sketches by Boz (1836), The Mudfog Papers (1837–38) and Oliver Twist (1838). In 1871 Cruikshank wrote to The Times claiming, as did several others, he wrote much of the plot of Oliver Twist, and the letter generated much debate.
The Wits Magazine, and Attic Miscellany (1818) is one of only a few works illustrated jointly by both George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson. This copy is a complete set of the first and only edition and is the rarest item in the Cruishank collection. Only one copy has appeared at auction since 1923, set to fetch £3,000-£4,000. Also illustrated by Cruikshank are Albert M. Cohn’s bound collection of 12 songsheets, estimated at £3,000-£4,000, and a set of his Comic Almanacks for 1835 to 1839 with a reasonable estimate of £600-£800.
Thomas Rowlandson is unquestionably the most prominently featured artist in this library. According to R.V. Tooley, author of reference work English Books with Coloured Plates 1790 to 1860, one of the rarest of his books is the complete set of the first edition of The Comforts of Bath (1798). This exceedingly scarce item carries an estimate to match its exclusivity at £8,000-£12,000. One of the most important by Rowlandson, is Comparative Anatomy. Resemblances between the Countenances of Men and Beasts (1822). It is one of three known albums of original drawings and watercolours by Rowlandson, titled as such. This piece demonstrates the interest that Rowlandson had in the scientific developments of physiognomy and comparative anatomy, and how his humorous engagement with contemporary scientific thought influenced his drawings and watercolors. It is estimated to sell for £10,000-£15,000.
Of interest for city collectors is, Laroon’s Cries of the City of London Drawne After Life (1711) which depicts some of the earliest studies of 18th century street traders and performers of and is valued at £4,000-£6,000. Vernet’s Incroyables et Merveilleuses (Paris, c.1815), a volume containing a magnificent suite of 33 hand-colored engraved plates featuring the flamboyant costumes of the dandies and fashionable ladies of the empire, is estimated to achieve £8,000-£12,000.
One of the most prevalent artists in the sporting books selection is the famous English painter and engraver Henry Alken. A number of excellent pieces are included within the sale, such as A Cockney’s Shooting Season in Suffolk (1822), a clean copy in its original printed wrappers, and Ideas, Accidental and Incidental to Hunting and other Sports; Caught in Leicestershire (1829), the rare first issue in book form, set to fetch £3,000-£4,000 and £4,000-£6,000 respectively.
An extensive collection Joseph Crawhall literature includes several of the author’s own personal copies with additional sketches, watercolors and manuscript material, some inscribed by him. A presentation copy of The Compleatest Angling Booke … (1859), from the author, is bound in tan calf with relievo panel of two fish swimming among waterlilies by Fazakerley of Liverpool and estimated at £3,000-£4,000.
Police in Hyde Park, N.Y., are asking for help in identifying the suspect seen in this frame grabbed from a surveillance video.
HYDE PARK, N.Y. (ACNI) – A jewel thief is on the loose, but he may not necessarily fit the stereotype of a youthful cat burglar who can leap effortlessly from window to ledge.
Police in Hyde Park, N.Y., say they need the public’s help in identifying a suspect whom they believe stole jewelry valued at more than $8,000 from local antique shops.
Authorities say the suspect, who is middle-aged, is about 5ft 10in tall and 180-200 lbs., and has short or balding hair.
The Hyde Park Antique Center and the Beekman Arms Antique Market in Rhinebeck, N.Y., were hit by the same criminal on October 21st. Surveillance footage suggests that the suspect used either keys or a lock pick to open jewelry cases and steal contents at both shops. He may have left in a dark-colored sedan with New York license plates.
Anyone with information on the suspect’s identity is urged to contact Detective Jason Ruscillo at the Hyde Park Police Department. Tel. 845-229-2931.
PARIS (AP) – Condemned apartments covered in spray paint have probably never been in such demand.
An entire apartment tower on Quai d’Austerlitz in the eastern end of Paris has been turned over to 105 street artists from around the world, giving them a chance to turn each home into its own art installation during the building’s final days.
The artists had seven months to tag “Tour Paris 13” — named for the district where it’s located — coating apartments sometimes still filled with debris, trash and furniture. All their work will vanish by the end of the year, as the tower, which has nine stories and a basement, is demolished piece by piece after next week.
“I really wanted the artist to intervene on a whole space,” said Mehdi Ben Cheikh, the gallery owner who initiated the project. “I didn’t want the spectators to come and look at art. I wanted the spectators to come and enter an art work … which means there are things everywhere — we enter a room, and have to turn around in every direction to understand the surroundings.”
The result is a tower exhibiting a range of artistic styles. There’s a skull-inspired mural, Arabic calligraphy, a bloody bathroom, and a glow-in-the-dark cow crawling with snakes.
Would-be visitors have lined up for up to eight hours for a one-hour visit, with signs at various points around the block estimating their wait time. Only 49 people are allowed in at one time in the apartment block, which overlooks the Seine.
A handful of people are still living in the building and refusing to leave until the bitter end.
Some of the artists of Tour Paris 13 are participating in an unprecedented international urban contemporary art auction on Friday, with pieces created spur of the moment on Thursday standing alongside works from Keith Haring and Basquiat.
“I’ve been following graffiti and street art for about 30 years and so this represents another step in slightly different direction,” said Martha Cooper, the famous street photographer who is documenting their work in progress. “Having an auction in Paris, in a big auction house, is pretty amazing.”
A 1986 Basquiat piece, “Monticello,” is estimated to sell at 600,000 to 900,000 euros ($828,180 to $1.2 million), and a 1984 acrylic of Keith Haring’s “Sneeze,” from 500,000 to 700,000 euros.
“We are the new artists. Graffiti art is the world’s biggest art movement,” said Mear One, an artist from Los Angeles who was painting live outside the Drouot Auction House on Thursday. “In the 1970s, art was so elite that only the upper level people could do art or appreciate. So it got boring … and now, we are in a situation where this is the art form.
“All that other art is cool, but it has roots in the past, and we are the here and the now.”
Click to view an extensive gallery of photos taken on 11 floors of Tour Paris 13 by kerouac2:
This US $10 Silver Certificate was printed in 1934. It is from the North Africa series of U.S. Silver Certificates ($1, $5, and $10), issued to the United States Armed Forces in Europe and North Africa during World War II. They are distinct with a bright yellow Treasury Seal. This Silver Certificate is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Photo by Godot13.
ROYERSFORD, Pa. (AP) – A Pennsylvania man has perhaps the most valuable $10 certificate you’ll ever see.
Billy Baeder owns the 1933 silver certificate that an auctioneer says is worth at least a half-million dollars.
The bill bears an unusual inscription, “Payable in silver coin to bearer on demand,” and has the serial number “A00000001A.” It is perhaps the most valuable bill printed since 1929, when bills were shrunk to their current size.
Baeder told Philly.com that his late father, also a collector, bought the bill two dozen years ago for about the price of a compact car.
Matthew Quinn, assistant director of currency for auction house Stack’s Bowers, says the bill “would easily be worth about $500,000 and up.”
# # #
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
This US $10 Silver Certificate was printed in 1934. It is from the North Africa series of U.S. Silver Certificates ($1, $5, and $10), issued to the United States Armed Forces in Europe and North Africa during World War II. They are distinct with a bright yellow Treasury Seal. This Silver Certificate is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Photo by Godot13.
NEW YORK (AP) – EBay is expanding its same-day delivery service to more locations and letting buyers and sellers create “collections” of products available on its site as it moves beyond its roots as an online auctioneer.
EBay Inc. said Tuesday that it is expanding eBay Now to 25 markets by the end of 2014. The service is live now in Chicago and will go to Dallas later this year and to London in early 2014.
To help advance the service, which promises delivery in as little as an hour, eBay says it has bought courier service startup Shutl for an undisclosed sum.
EBay’s “collections” are groups of products available on the site, as selected by celebrities, bloggers, regular eBay users or stores themselves. People can follow the collections, their curators or other users. The company is also taking a page from social networks and will let both buyers and sellers create profiles for themselves on the site.
EBay has been working on shedding its auction-site image, and says that more than three-quarters of what it sells is new merchandise, sold not to the highest bidder over several days but to buyers paying immediately.
Shares of eBay slid 11 cents to close at $51.83.
# # #
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Sign at entrance to Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. Photo taken Aug, 2, 2010 by JL1Row, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) – The Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame will close next month to make way for construction, and is scheduled to reopen in April 2015.
The Hall of Fame, which is in the basement of the Lambeau Field Atrium, will be moved to make way for a new Packers Pro Shop, the Press-Gazette Media reported.
The new Packers Hall of Fame will be located in sections of the first and second floors of the atrium.
While the hall is closed, some of its artifacts and memorabilia will be lent to the Neville Public Museum. The team said details of that arrangement will announced later.
The new Pro Shop will be larger and located in a revamped ground level. The atrium will remain open for events throughout construction.
The construction is part of a $141 million project that’s being paid for in full by the team, with no public money.
Of the $20 million spent on atrium work so far, 97 percent has gone to Wisconsin businesses, the Packers said. That includes 42 percent spent on Brown County businesses.
The team estimates this phase of construction will employ about 1,500 workers over the next two years.
# # #
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Sign at entrance to Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame. Photo taken Aug, 2, 2010 by JL1Row, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to display a collection of photographs chronicling a century of changes in China’s landscapes next month.
The exhibit, titled “Evolving Landscapes: 100 Years of Change in Western China,” will be on display in the Ruth Davis Design Gallery at Nancy Nicholas Hall from Nov. 3 through Nov. 27.
Two scientists separated by more than 100 years took the photographs of the land in China’s Sichuan and Hubei provinces. Yin Kaipu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences re-photographed the same locations that early 20th-century British naturalist and photographer Ernest Henry Wilson shot.
The exhibit marks the first time the photographs have been presented publicly. A Chinese delegation including Yin Kaipu will participate in the exhibit’s formal opening on Nov. 7.
# # #
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Official gubernatorial portrait of New York Governor (and later United States Secretary of State) William H. Seward painted 1866 or earlier by artist Chester Harding (American, 1792-1866).
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – It’s not folly; some Juneau residents are proposing a bronze statue of William H. Seward.
Seward was the secretary of state under President Abraham Lincoln who acquired Alaska for the United States from Russia.
Critics at the time characterized the purchase as “Seward’s folly,” but the acquisition became one of Seward’s legacies.
A ceremonial groundbreaking was held for the proposed statue Thursday at the Dimond Court Building, across from the Capitol, KTOO reported.
Supporters wearing hard hats, and name tags designating their places within a fictional Seward Cabinet, shoveled dirt into a plywood planter.
John Venables, a historic re-enactor who portrays Seward, proposed the statue. He said during the ceremony kicking off a fundraising and design campaign for the bronze statute that it was “a great day for Juneau, Alaska.”
Juneau architect Wayne Jensen says statues of Seward can be found elsewhere in the United States, but such a pivotal figure of Alaska history should have a statue in Juneau.
The hope is to have the statue ready by 2017, the 150th anniversary of the $7.2 million purchase of Alaska, or as it was known then, Russian America.
The state Department of Administration approved the plaza as the proposed site, the Juneau Empire reported.
A life-size statue of Seward can be found at the Loussac Library in Anchorage. It portrays Seward with a cane and top hat in his left hand and two books held to his chest in his right hand.
A plaque on the statue notes Seward’s accomplishments as “a dedicated abolitionist and an avowed expansionist,” according to the Smithsonian Institution’s Art Inventories Catalog. Seward visited Alaska in 1869, three years before his death, and predicted Alaska would become a state, according to the plaque.
The sculpture was by Richard MacDonald and was a gift from Arnold L. Muldoon.
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Official gubernatorial portrait of New York Governor (and later United States Secretary of State) William H. Seward painted 1866 or earlier by artist Chester Harding (American, 1792-1866).
