January 2014 - Page 4 of 19 - Auction Central News

Restoration of Civil War ironclad dead in the water

'The Monitor and Merrimac: The First Fight Between Ironclads,' chromolithograph of the Battle of Hampton Roads, produced by Louis Prang & Co., Boston, 1886. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) – When the turret of the USS Monitor was hoisted from the ocean floor in 2002, the real heavy lifting was just beginning: conserving and restoring more than 200 tons of Civil War ironclad artifacts.

The task went to The Mariners’ Museum. Now, diminishing federal dollars have darkened a lab containing the revolving turret and other large pieces, closing to the public a window on the nation’s maritime history and delaying possibly by decades their public display.

The museum has seen a steady decline in annual funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration amid budget cuts and shifting federal priorities. The private museum was designated by Congress as the official repository for the artifacts, but museum officials say they can’t do it alone.

The museum’s president and CEO, Elliot Gruber, said the 5,000-square-foot lab containing the turret, two Dahlgren guns and the Monitor’s steam engine will remain dark until the federal government restores funding levels. The museum, he said, can’t pour more money into the project while sustaining its own vast collections of maps, books, paintings and other exhibits – 35,000 pieces all told.

Gruber framed the dilemma.

“How do we continue with the conservation effort in an era when funding is harder and harder to obtain, and how does NOAA honor its obligation to the American people to continue the conservation work and put these on display?” he asked in an interview.

The Brooklyn-built Monitor is a staple of American history lessons because of the iron-hulled warship’s pioneering place in maritime lore, its sinking in rough seas off North Carolina on New Year’s Eve 1862 and the discovery of the wreck in 1973. Sixteen of the ship’s 62 crewmembers were killed in the sinking.

The Monitor’s demise came about eight months after its clash with the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia, the former USS Merrimack, in the Battle of Hampton Roads. It ended in a draw.

After the Monitor’s recovery, a $30 million exhibit opened in 2007 and houses pieces retrieved from the wreck, restored and conserved. They include the propeller, the anchor and silverware used by the Monitor’s crew. But expectations that tens of thousands more visitors would flock to the museum’s USS Monitor Center have fallen short.

James Delgado, director of NOAA’s Maritime Heritage Program, said the agency will support the museum’s work “as appropriations allow.”

“We have been partners with the museum since 1987 when at their request they asked for the artifacts to be entrusted to them for conservation. That partnership continues, and the artifacts are not at risk,” Delgado wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

A team of divers descended to the Monitor wreck in 2002 to hoist up the turret, which was filled with coal, sand and silt. Divers had to chip away at the hardened mass so the turret could be lifted. The remains of two sailors were found in the turret and they were buried a year ago at Arlington National Cemetery.

At the museum, the 120-ton turret is stored in a 90,000-gallon tank containing treated water and chemicals intended to draw out the saltwater. Without the bath, the massive piece would have crumbled into a heap after it was pulled from the ocean depths. Two 13-foot-long Dahlgren guns, muzzle-loading naval artillery each weighing 8 tons, and the steam engine that powered the Monitor are also stored in similar concoctions, now covered with thick, black plastic tarp.

The large pieces are undergoing the conservation in the so-called Wet Lab, a hangar-like space. Visitors to the museum once could peer through windows down into the lab from a platform above the space where five conservators used to work. Tours of the lab have also been suspended.

Now, a lone worker, Will Hoffman, sits at a computer at the base of the turret’s towering holding tank where he monitors the pieces from a computer screen.

In an adjoining lab, hundreds of plastic containers hold other Monitor artifacts, ranging from a crewman’s hair contained in a vial to a wooden plug shaped like a mushroom cap. It was used to ram charges into the Dahlgren guns.

The conservators are mindful of the work their work on an American treasure.

“We’re entrusted with the history of America,” Hoffman said.

The conservation, in its 10th year, has now slowed to a holding pattern.

“It’s like a ghost town,” said David Krop, director of the USS Monitor Center. “It’s disheartening; it’s sad.”

If federal dollars hadn’t dipped, the work would be complete within 15 years.

“But right now, if nothing was to change, 50 to 60 years is not out of the question,” Krop said.

Krop said that while the artifacts will remain stable, their restoration will not progress.

NOAA contributed 10 percent of the $500,000 conservation costs last year, but none was received in 2012. In the past, NOAA’s share had risen to about $1 million.

Despite the funding disagreement, relations between NOAA and the museum remain cordial. “Outside of the funding, we see pretty much eye to eye,” Gruber said.

Meantime, he said, the two sides are continuing to talk.

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Steve Szkotak can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sszkotakap

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Online:

The Mariners’ Museum: http://www.marinersmuseum.org

AP-WF-01-26-14 1949GMT

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WWII museum’s restored fighter plane salutes Flying Tigers

A U.S. Army Air Force Curtiss P-40E Warhawk of the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. U.S. Air Force image, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – New Orleans will get a flavor of one of the most heralded episodes of World War II when a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, restored in the shark-nosed markings of the famed Flying Tigers, goes on display at the National World War II Museum.

The aircraft, a P-40E model, is the kind flown by the 1st American Volunteer Group formed in China by Gen. Claire Chennault shortly before the United States entered the war. However, this one never flew for the Tigers; its service was limited to the Aleutian Islands.

Thousands of P-40s were produced during the war and supplied to U.S. allies in every theater. Most were scrapped as advanced fighters such as the P-51 Mustang became available. Today, P-40s are rare.

Having any P-40 is important in telling the Tigers’ story, said Nell Calloway, a granddaughter of Chennault, who organized U.S. volunteer pilots in 1941 as a civilian adviser to the nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek.

“Because the relationship between China and the United States is so important, we have to do whatever we can do to try to remember that airplane and how they used that airplane to contribute to defeating the Japanese,” said Calloway, director of the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe.

Chennault, a Texas native who grew up in Louisiana, resigned from active U.S. duty in 1937 to become an adviser to Chiang. He designed airfields and a warning network “of people, radios, telephones, and telegraph lines that covered all of Free China accessible to enemy aircraft,” he wrote in his autobiography. He retired as a U.S. Air Force lieutenant general. He died in 1958.

Japan, which had moved aggressively in China since 1931, stepped up its attacks in 1937, and full-blown war broke out.

The museum’s P-40 was painted to match the shark-faced aircraft flown by Robert Lee Scott Jr., commander of the 23rd Fighter Group created by Chennault when the Flying Tigers were brought into the U.S. Army Air Force after the United States entered the war.

Chennault wrote in Way of a Fighter that he never knew why the public dubbed his group the “Flying Tigers” when the planes were painted with a shark nose copied from a Royal Air Force squadron.

The Tigers found fame in the air and on the silver screen. The 1942 film Flying Tigers put a swashbuckling John Wayne in the cockpit of a shark-nosed P-40 blasting away at Japanese aircraft.

The museum’s P-40 has the shark face but is painted with the modified fuselage logo designed for U.S. service: a tiger bursting through a star with a torn Japanese flag and Uncle Sam hat, said Rolando Gutierrez, chief engineer of Flyboys Aeroworks, the San Diego, Calif., company that restored the aircraft.

The museum’s curators began searching for a P-40 in 2004, said Tom Czekanski, director of collections and exhibits.

“We knew we wanted it to represent the Air Force in China-Burma-India, so it would be a Flying Tiger – the shark-mouth paint,” he said.

Czekanski wouldn’t say how much it cost to buy and restore. Lafayette oilman and philanthropist Paul Hilliard, a World War II Marine, provided a big chunk of money, he said.

Buffalo, N.Y.-based Curtiss built more than 14,000 P-40s of various models from 1939 to about 1944, but high-performance aircraft such as the Mustang, Republic’s P-47 Thunderbolt and the Vought F4U Corsair outclassed the Warhawk by 1944.

Adding to the P-40’s scarcity is that after the war, enthusiasts snapped up surplus high-performance aircraft for air racing and private piloting. But the P-40 found little demand.

Gutierrez estimated fewer than three dozen remain.

The museum’s P-40 was shipped to Cold Bay in the Aleutian Islands, where it had fewer than 20 hours of flying time when it was scrapped after a taxiing accident in 1942.

“The fields were very muddy, and often the plane would dig in. Then it would flip end over end,” Czekanski said.

In the 1980s, he said, someone looking for a P-38 found the P-40’s remains in a ditch near the airfield.

“We came to this a little late in the collecting game,” Czekanski said. “Early on, people were collecting planes that were in service or parked and saved. As the supply goes down, people go to greater and greater lengths to get them.”

The Warhawk will be the 10th aircraft installed in the museum, though only one can still fly, Czekanski said.

Gutierrez said the P-40’s engine, landing gear, some castings and most of the instruments are original, but most of the plane had to be built from scratch in a 72-week effort using copies of more than 3,000 original drawings provided by the Smithsonian Institution and 4,000 pages of ground-crew manuals.

The aircraft was shipped by truck to New Orleans. Eventually it will be lifted into the second floor of the museum’s Campaigns of Courage pavilion.

AP-WF-01-27-14 1006GMT

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Union Pacific Big Boy locomotive on track to restoration

American Locomotive Co. manufactured 25 Big Boy locomotives for Union Pacific in the 1940s. Big Boy 4014 has been on display in Pomona, Calif. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

POMONA, Calif. (AP) – An enormous steam locomotive that has been entertaining train enthusiasts at a California museum for years began a trek of more than 1,200 miles on Sunday with the ultimate goal of putting the engine back on the nation’s rails.

The 600-ton Big Boy locomotive left the Pomona fairgrounds on its way to a Union Pacific rail yard in Colton, about 60 miles away, where it will be available for two weekends of public viewing before moving on to Cheyenne, Wyo., for restoration work. The goal is to eventually get Engine 4014 back on the rails, said Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt.

The engine, which weighs 1.2 million pounds when its fuel car, or tender, is included, was one of 25 massive steam engines that began riding the transcontinental rails in 1941.

It pulled heavy freight trains over the Wasatch Mountains between Ogden, Utah, and Green River, Wyo., and retired after a 17-year career.

In 1962, the behemoth was donated to the RailGiants Train Museum in Pomona.

Since November, the locomotive has been slowly moved across the grounds at the Pomona fairplex on 4,500 feet of temporary track.

On Sunday, Union Pacific pushed the locomotive onto the main tracks, where it will be towed by modern diesel freight locomotives 56 miles to Colton – a last stop before heading to Wyoming. The repairs there could take several years, Union Pacific has said.

In exchange for getting No. 4014 back, Union Pacific plans to deliver diesel locomotive No. 3105, a caboose and a boxcar to the RailGiants museum, company officials said.

AP-WF-01-27-14 1315GMT

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Bibliopathos to sell early spiritual books, manuscripts Feb. 14

Renaissance illuminated ‘Kyriale’ on vellum, bound with a signed Antiphonary on paper of 18th century. Bibliopathos Auctions image.

VERONA, Italy – Bibliopathos Auctions will conduct an online auction Friday, Feb. 14, exclusively with LiveAuctioneers.com. The sale, which will begin at 7 p.m. CET, 10 a.m. Pacific, offers a collection of spiritual books and some valuable manuscripts.

Highlights include:

1474 Antoninus Florentinus, a rare early incunable in its monastic binding (lot 6);
Illuminated Italian Baroque antiphonal on vellum (lot 10);
Italian book of hours, illuminated by a follower of Mariano del Buono (lot 37);
Best book of hours printed on vellum by Hardouin, profusely illustrated by Jean Pichores (lot 38);
Giant Renaissance Kyriale illuminated on vellum, bound with a signed Antiphonary (lot 110);
Illuminated copy of Leo Magnus Sermones (1470), the first book ever printed by an italian printer (lot 113);
Giant gradual on paper in its amazing contemporary binding (lot 118);
Giant illumination with King David playing the Psalter dated around 1430 (lot 125).

There will be additional theological and spiritual works, including the collected works of the main classical authors and some important sources for the history of the Church.

Prospective buyers are advised there is no premium on the hammer price; the amount to be paid will be the same as the winning bid, excluding shipping charges and insurance (when requested).

For details phone +39 335 6327 764.

View the fully illustrated catalog and register to bed absentee or live via the Internet as the sale is taking place by logging on to www.liveauctioneers.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.

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Rare illuminated incunable of Saint Antoninus Florentinus’ early treatises ‘On excommunication’ and ‘On marriage’ in its monastic binding. Bibliopathos Auctions image.

Illuminated Italian Baroque antiphonal on vellum. Bibliopathos Auctions image.

Bible, medieval illumination manuscript on vellum, France, 1280. Bibliopathos Auctions image.

Italian book of hours, 19 illuminations, by a follower of Mariano del Buono, in a silk embroidered case. Bibliopathos Auctions image.

Giant Florentine gradual manuscript on paper, 1689. Bibliopathos Auctions image.

Dreweatts & Bloomsbury sale to bid adieu to travel posters Feb. 12

David Klein, ‘Fly TWA, San Francisco,’ offset lithograph in colors, circa 1958. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury image.

LONDON – A selection of vintage travel posters will sit alongside British Railway, propaganda and sporting designs in the Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ sale of Vintage Posters on Wednesday, Feb. 12.

LiveAuctioneers.com will facilitate Internet live bidding for the 145-lot auction.

The famous American illustrator and graphic designer Raymond Ameijide (1924-2000) created the most expensive piece in the sale for Pan Am airline to promote Bermuda as the holiday destination of choice (lot 13). The original offset lithograph, which was created in the 1950s, helped Bermuda’s tourism reach its peak in the 1960s and ’70s. It is estimated to sell for £2,000-£3,000.

By the mid-1950s another American artist, David Klein, had formed a reputation as a prominent American commercial artist. In the decade that followed he produced award-winning travel posters, mostly for Trans World Airlines. Many of these posters are now considered symbolic of the 1960s “jet age.” Included in the sale, circa 1958 is the iconic “Fly TWA, San Francisco,” (Lot 103) showing the Golden Gate Bridge in Klein’s typically optimistic color scheme, it is estimated to sell for £1,000-£1,500.

A U.S. government-commissioned World War II propaganda offset lithograph poster by John Falter is one of a series of over 300 recruitment posters he created throughout the war, in his capacity as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve. The poster depicts a family and their priest cast in the shadow of a German Nazi soldier beating a victim. Its title “This World Cannot Exist Half Slave and Half Free” (Lot 76) is a paraphrased quote from Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech. The Navy used the same designs in different formats and with different text, but the message in this poster invites the viewer to “fight for freedom.” It is estimated to sell for £200-£400.

French painter, poster artist and print maker, Etienne Maurice Firmin Bouisset (1859–1925) is well known for his work painting posters for French chocolate maker Menier. Hired by the company in 1897 the artist used his daughter as a model for the iconic poster that will be featured in the sale. The image was used on a number of advertisements for Menier and across their branded products. Popular with collectors, the original lithograph poster (lot 52) was created in 1895 and is estimated to sell for £1,000-£1,500.

A collection of railway posters includes a 1939 lithograph poster (Lot 63) by artist Austin Cooper for Harrogate British Spa LNER (London and North Eastern Railway). The son of an Irish farmer, Cooper began his career as a commercial artist in Montreal, but moved to London in 1922 where he worked as a poster designer until 1943. Despite turning his back on commercial art to concentrate on painting, a postwar exhibition was arranged at the London Gallery in 1948 due to popular demand for his advertising designs and artwork that was the first of a number of shows. His first poster was commissioned by the London Underground but his clients included Underground Electric Railway Co., Royal Mail Line and Indian State Railways. It is estimated to sell for £800-£1,200.

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.

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Austin Cooper for Harrogate British Spa LNER (London and North Eastern Railway), lithograph in colors, 1939, London. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury image.

Firmin Bouisset (1859 –1925) for French chocolate maker Menier, lithograph in colors, circa 1895, Paris. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury image.

John Falter, U.S. government-commissioned World War II poster, lithograph in colors, 1942. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury image.

Ray Ameijide, ‘Bermuda, Pan Am.,’ offset lithograph in colors. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury image.

Reading the Streets: Olek in Little Italy

Olek for the LISA Project, New York City, photo by Jamie Rojo via BrooklyStreetArt.com.

NEW YORK – Just in time for two installments of the polar vortex (as with most sequels, the second is worse), my favorite yarn bomber Olek decided to warm us up. With some help from the Little Italy Street Art Project (LISA), a 2-year-old private initiative to bring art to the touristy neighborhood, Olek and some brave friends assembled the fiery colored, crocheted blanket on a 4-degree night, no less. I wish I could have brought them hot chocolate.

The lucky recipient of the 60-foot long tapestry is a parking lot fence on Mulberry Street, between Hester and Grand. The yarn forms a camouflage blanket for the metal fence. The weather may remind me of winter white and blues, but Olek warmed up our eyes with oranges, browns, reds, greens and yellows, and with them hints of fall and spring. The pattern is mostly abstract but the greens and browns come to together to resemble trees, and the other colors fire or heat.

Above these zigzaging colors, the words “there is no such thing as part freedom” are sewn in blue, white, pink and orange in thick block lettering. The quote is attributed to Nelson Mandela, who died shortly before the piece was installed and so also serves as a tribute to his memory. I love that this tribute bucks the more common portrait trend for memorials and instead captures Mandela’s work and activism with words and colors. Of course faces are important for memory, but I’d love to see another street artist experiment with new ways to pay tribute and give thanks for departed heroes.

ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

Olek for the LISA Project, New York City, photo by Olek via instagram.com/oleknyc.

Philippines to file suit to retrieve Imelda Marcos’ Monet

Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926), 'Le bassin aux nympheas,' 1919, oil on canvas.

MANILA (AFP) – The Philippines will file a civil suit in the United States to recover a Monet painting that vanished after the 1986 revolution which forced former first lady Imelda Marcos into exile, an official said Monday.

The painting, one of more than 150 missing masterpieces the Philippines authorities are trying to recover, was sold by a one-time secretary of Marcos, said Andres Bautista, head of the watchdog body tasked with recovering the Marcos wealth.

“We are initiating a civil lawsuit in order to recover the painting, (and) also to recover the proceeds of the (sale of the) painting including bank accounts of more than $50 million,” he told foreign correspondents.

Marcos’ former secretary Vilma Bautista, 75, was convicted by a U.S. court in November of trying to sell part of the Marcos family’s hoard of artworks and other luxuries accumulated during the corrupt rule of strongman President Ferdinand Marcos.

Andres Bautista, the government official, said the former secretary “said she was just holding monies for Mrs. Marcos,” who is now a congresswoman in the Philippines.

He also said the government wanted to recover $5 million paid to two of the secretary’s nephews in Hong Kong for facilitating the sale of the Monet.

The painting, one of the famous impressionist’s water lily series, had been taken along with three other works in late 1995 from the walls of a New York townhouse owned by the Philippine government.

Manila had created an entire government department to track down any ill-gotten wealth from the Marcos regime, much of which disappeared in the aftermath of the 1986 revolution.

Andres Bautista said his agency, the Presidential Commission on Good Government, had recovered about $4 billion in assets from the Marcos family and their allies but that large amounts were still missing or being contested in court.

“There are over 150 missing paintings. We don’t know where they are located, paintings of all the masters: Rembrandts, Van Goghs, Picassos. We have a list … (but) we think there are paintings that are not on list,” he said.

He also said a huge collection of jewelry, seized from the Marcos family after their downfall, would be put on display although the items might eventually be auctioned off.

“It (the display) will teach people that crime does not pay. It will be a statement against excesses committed in the past. There is also the potential tourist draw,” he said.

Although the Marcos family fled into exile after Ferdinand Marcos was toppled, they have since returned to the Philippines and made a political comeback with Imelda being elected to congress, her son, Ferdinand Junior to the Senate and a daughter as governor of the Marcos’ home province in the north.

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Kovels Antiques & Collecting: Week of Jan. 27, 2014

This Federal worktable probably was made in the early 19th century in Vermont. It sold for $3,900 at a Skinner auction in Boston in October.

BEACHWOOD, Ohio – Sewing was as important as cooking in centuries past. The most valuable things in an 18th-century American home were linens, bedcovers and drapes. The wealthy could import fabrics from Europe. The average family made their own fabric. They raised sheep or plants, sheared the sheep or harvested the plants, and went through many steps to make thread, color it and weave it into cloth. Then the cloth had to be cut and sewn into clothing or household items.

So it is not surprising that the sewing supplies in a well-to-do home were stored in a special sewing worktable in the main room. The women of the household could take out the fabric and sew whenever there was time. It often was a winter job done while sitting near a fireplace. Most sewing stands looked like small tables and stood about 28 inches high, the height of a desk. There was a drawer to hold sewing tools, needles, thread, scissors and measuring tape. Many were made with a large fabric bag hanging below the drawer, accessible when the top of the table was lifted. It is a form not seen in the average 20th-century home, so when the bag is missing from a table, collectors may not realize they’re looking at a sewing table with a missing part.

An October 2013 Skinner auction offered an early 19th-century sewing table missing its original bag. The maple and mahogany worktable with an attractive patterned top sold for $3,900.

Q: I have a 14-piece set of kitchen canisters that are the color of mother-of-pearl. They’re decorated with gold trim and red roses. There are six large canisters labeled Coffee, Rice, Oatmeal, Flour, Sugar and Tea; six smaller canisters for spices labeled Ginger, Cinnamon, Cloves, Nutmeg, Allspice and Pepper; and two cruets labeled Oil and Vinegar. The marks on the bottom are “Ditmar Urbach” above a star, the letter “Z,” an image of a wing and “Made in Czechoslovakia.” When were they made and how much are they worth?

A: The mother-of-pearl glaze on your set was popular in the 1920s. Sets like yours sell for about $200 to $400. The pottery where your set was made was founded in 1882 as Brothers Urbach in Turn-Teplitz, Bohemia, Austria (now Trnovany, Czech Republic). In 1919 it merged with Ditmar and became Ditmar-Urbach. It was taken over by the Nazis in 1938 and became Ostmark-Ceramics AG

Q: My mother bought a beautiful American Character doll for my ninth birthday in 1932. The doll’s eyes open and close and her mouth is open in a smile that shows her teeth. She can’t say “Mama” anymore, but other than that she is in fine shape. Can you tell me her present value?

A: The American Character Doll Co. was founded in New York City in 1919. The company made baby dolls, toddler dolls, mama dolls and other dolls in several sizes. The dolls were made of composition, rubber or hard plastic. American Character dolls were high-end dolls with well-made clothes. Although they sold for only a few dollars in the 1920s and ’30s, they were expensive at the time. The company’s best years were in the 1950s and early ’60s when its Betsy McCall and Tiny Tears dolls were so popular. American Character Doll Co. went out of business in 1968 and its molds were sold to Ideal. It’s impossible to suggest a value for your doll without knowing exactly which American Character doll you have. But the loss of its voice lowers the value. American Character dolls sell for prices from under $100 to a high of a few hundred dollars.

Q: What is a “Mickey Mouse” telephone insulator? I keep getting that reference when I check online for Mickey Mouse collectibles.

A: Most telephone insulators, the glass pieces at the top of telephone poles that hold the wires, have rounded tops. A few varieties have protruding pieces that make the insulator look like a silhouette of Mickey Mouse’s head. The protruding pieces look like large ears. Because the name and shape are unusual, these insulators are popular with collectors.

Q: I have a heavy brass letter opener marked “Harlow, Breed & Cooley Wool, 184 Summer St., Boston.” Does it have any value?

A: Harlow, Breed & Cooley were wool dealers in Boston from about 1912 until about 1926. Advertising letter openers made of brass sell for under $20 to over $100, depending on the design.

Q: I paid $50 for a hanging scale I bought at a yard sale. The scale says, “Pelouze Mfg. Co., Makers, Chicago, USA, patent pending.” It can weigh items up to 20 pounds. Can you tell me its possible value?

A: William N. Pelouze founded Pelouze Scale and Manufacturing Co. in Chicago in 1894. The company made several different kinds of scales. It eventually was bought by Rubbermaid, which was bought by Newell Co. in 1999. Pelouze scales are now being made by Newell Rubbermaid. The price of a collectible is what someone will pay for it. You paid $50 for the scale, so it was worth that much to you. Other similar scales have sold for $35 to $60.

Tip: Put ceramic saucers or glass or plastic plant holders under vases of flowers or potted plants to protect your furniture. You can buy inexpensive throwaway plastic dishes that have a rim and are exactly the right size and shape for a planter.

Terry Kovel and Kim Kovel answer questions sent to the column. By sending a letter with a question, you give full permission for use in the column or any other Kovel forum. Names, addresses or email addresses will not be published. We cannot guarantee the return of photographs, but if a stamped envelope is included, we will try. The amount of mail makes personal answers or appraisals impossible. Write to Kovels, Auction Central News, King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

CURRENT PRICES

Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions.

Clifton Pottery teapot, Indian Ware, low lines, 2 7/8 x 8 1/2 inches, $25.
Spool holder, tiger maple, carved, cutouts, cast iron, 7 1/2 x 9 inches, $120.
Sterling-silver dish, Windsor pattern, lobed body, Reed & Barton, circa 1940, 8 1/2 inches, $215.
Whirligig, wooden, painted, man, green jacket, metal rod, circa 1905, 18 inches, $250.
Toy Heinz truck, pressed steel, white paint, Metal Craft, 12 inches, $300.
Peachblow rose bowl, tri-fold, Mount Washington Art Glass Society sticker, 3 1/2 inches, $375.
Tin shield, stars, stripes, red, white & blue paint, scalloped top, 17 1/2 x 14 inches, $600.
Synagogue wall hanging, 10 Commandments in Hebrew & English, silk embroidery, circa 1920, 24 x 34 inches, $625.
Corner cupboard, walnut, glass door, two panel doors, Pennsylvania, circa 1800, 82 x 41 inches, $650.
Store sign, top hat, sheet tin, red paint, silvered buckle and band, circa 1820, 12 x 19 inches, $1,185.

New! The Kovels.com Premium website is up and running. In addition to 900,000 free prices for antiques and collectibles – more than 11,000 of them with photographs – premium subscribers will find a dictionary of marks for silver and another for ceramics, with pictured marks and company histories. Premium membership also includes a subscription to the digital edition of our newsletter, “Kovels on Antiques and Collectibles,” and its archives, where you’ll find hundreds of articles about almost anything you might collect. Up-to-date information for the savvy collector. Go to Kovels.com and click on “Subscription” for more information.

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Keno Auctions sells Colonial document for $912,500

Page 1 of the manuscript penned by Robert R. Livingston, a Founding Father of the United States of America. Keno Auctions image.

NEW YORK – Keno Auctions of New York City sold an important and historically significant document Sunday for $912,500. Titled “Letter from the Twelve United States Colonies, by their delegates in Congress to the Inhabitants of Great Britain,” the document sold well above its presale auction estimate of $100,000 to $400,000.

Internet live bidding was facilitated by LiveAuctioneers.com

This document was long thought to be lost, but in July 2013 archivist Emilie Gruchow discovered it in the attic of the Morris-Jumel Mansion inside a folder of Colonial doctor’s bills tucked away in a drawer. The document, penned by Robert R. Livingston, was a final plea for peace by the Continental Congress to the people of Great Britain to avoid the Revolutionary War. It was also a prelude to the Declaration of Independence, which Livingston helped draft with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin less than a year later.

This working draft was printed in July 1775 and is complete with fascinating edits, including entire paragraphs crossed out and rewritten in the margins. Scholar Michael Hattem of Yale University stated, the document is “… the missing piece from the culminating moments in which the Colonists began to think of themselves not as British subjects, but as American citizens.”

The winning bid of $912,500 was from a private collector on the phone with manuscript specialist Seth Kaller. This price is the highest for any item auctioned off during Americana week 2014 in New York

Leigh Keno, president of Keno Auctions, said, “I am elated that the manuscript did so well. All of the proceeds benefit one the finest museums in New York City. The board of the museum was here in the room when it sold, and they were thrilled.”

Carol Ward, president of the Morris-Jumel Mansion, said after the sale, “I am still in a state of shock. It was so beyond our expectations. This auction quadruples the size of our endowment and ensures that the mansion can serve the public for generations to come.”

Click here to view the fully illustrated catalog for this sale, complete with prices realized

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Wyo. aims to protect fragile Ute Indian rock art

A similar Native American rock painting near Douglas, Wyo. Image courtesy of Wusel007. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

RAWLINS, Wyo. (AP) – On the windswept northern plains, a group Ute Indians ventured along with a herd of stolen horses. Their destination in 1880, the Powder Wash area of south central Wyoming, a few miles from the Colorado border, and an isolated encampment that offered shelter, water and a place to sketch fantastic art work.

Now, officially known as the Powder Wash Archaeological District, it’s home to a wealth of rock art sites, a driftwood corral encircling the entire valley, a group of wickiups (a type of tepee) and enclosed rock shelters.

Because of its importance, the archaeological district was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on Dec. 6.

Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.

The most impressive – and fragile – feature of Powder Wash are its 19 rock art sites where either images were drawn primarily by use of charcoal onto sandstone outcrops or etched into the stone’s surface.

“Basically what was going on there was a very long, long period of use, perhaps as early as the 1500s, but the heaviest concentration of use occurred between about 1700 and 1880,” said James Keyser, a former archaeologist with the Oregon Archaeological Society.

Though some locals have known of the site’s existence for decades, it wasn’t until the 1990s when a crew with the Western Archaeological Services officially discovered the site as they conducted land surveys for a proposed pipeline project.

In Sept. 2006, Keyser brought specialists from the Oregon Archaeological Society, assisted by volunteers from the Wyoming Archaeological Society, to conduct an extensive survey on the rock art at Powder Wash.

“I grew up in western Montana, and I saw my first rock art site when I was 9 years old and kind of fell in love with it. I’ve been studying rock art ever since,” he said.

Keyser’s interpretation of the art at Powder Wash concluded that it was most likely done by the Ute, because of its close match to similar drawings known to be from the Indian tribe.

“What you have here are Ute horse raiders. They came north into Wyoming where they stole their enemy’s horses,” Keyser said. “They took them back to the Powder Rim where they held them before taking them back to their tribal lands on the northern Colorado Plateau. It was pretty common for the plains Indians to raid their neighbors as well as the immigrants.”

The rock art at Powder Wash is considered to be biographical, telling a story, rather than representing something spiritual. Many of the themes involve drawings of horses, which were incredibly important to the Ute. As with most Indian tribes the horse represented a symbol of their wealth. Along with horses there are also vivid depictions of bison, bear, birds, elk, as well as human figures.

“There are some overlapping images that better represent drawings from the Shoshoni. They may have been using this area for the same reasons,” said Patrick Walker, Rawlins Bureau of Land Management field office archaeologist, during a presentation to fellow employees.

“A lot of the rock art is found in little sheltered areas,” Walker added. “A lot of them are not deep shelters offering any kind of (potential) occupation. People weren’t necessarily living in them. Literally they are just angled rocks that you can get under.”

Besides the charcoal drawings, also known as pictographs, there are impressive sized boulders with symbols and figures carved into the rock, known as petroglyphs.

“There’s not much that was pecked out here,” Walker said. “It’s not like you see in places in the southwest where they pecked away at the desert varnish. These are actually ground into the rock. This is the only site I know of that has exposed, external, big incised rocks like this.”

Though visitors can get up and personal with many of the features at Powder Wash, it is the huge driftwood enclosure, used by the Indians to create a corral and staging area for the pilfered horses that is best viewed from the air.

“It actually encompasses about three square miles,” Walker said. “It stretches along the juniper ridges surrounding the valley. The thing special about the valley is (the Ute) had everything. You had a great water source. You had a lot of grass in the bottom of the valley, and you had sheltered (defensible) areas.”

Although the Powder Wash Archaeological District is in a remote location it has come under threat from both natural and man-made threats.

Since the fieldwork was done in 2006, some of the art has crumbled. Because the rock is made of soft sandstone it is very susceptible to erosion, Walker said.

“The rock art is very fragile,” he added. “You absolutely do not want to touch it. Even when the rock is not breaking off in big chunks, you can go up to it and run your hand over it, and a trickle sand will come off the rock face.”

Along with the assaults from Mother Nature there also has been a great deal of illegal commercial moss rock collecting at the site, along with vandalism to the artwork.

“It’s really a tough thing for archaeologist to decide what’s best,” Walker said. “Do we keep it a secret as long possible, and hope that it’s going to protect itself because nobody knows about it? Or, do we shine a spotlight on it, and tell people there is this great thing here and we’re keeping our eyes on it?”

Keyser is also concerned with the fragility of the Indian artwork.

“We don’t keep it a secret just to keep it secret. We keep it secret because one idiot with a spray can, or one idiot with a pocketknife can ruin something that’s priceless,” he said.

Unfortunately, listing Powder Wash on the National Registry does not provide any type of formal protection.

“It’s more a feather in your hat,” Keyser said. “Federal agents and federal land management agencies are supposed to put the best and brightest things on the National Register to ensure that those sites are taken into account when land development projects are purposed.

Anyone seeking development on public lands have to research the National Register to determine if historic or important sites are present.

“Powder Wash would come up as a big red flag,” Keyser said. “Basically it says ‘hey we’ve got something really keen down here.’ In that sense, it brings it into the process with a higher level of scrutiny.”

It doesn’t mean you can’t develop in the area, but what it does mean is that land managing agencies will put on more cautionary stipulations in place with tighter control. People just can’t go willy-nilly through the area.”

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Information from: Rawlins (Wyo.) Daily Times, http://www.rawlinstimes.com

AP-WF-01-25-14 2012GMT

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