A xiphactinus skeleton at the reopened North Dakota Heritage Center. Image courtesy of the North Dakota Heritage Center.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) – North Dakota’s official history museum is reopening to the public after nearly two years of renovations.
Gov. Jack Dalrymple was touring the upgraded Heritage Center on Monday, and then the first two galleries of the three-gallery expansion were opening to the public.
The center on the state Capitol grounds in Bismarck has been closed since the fall of 2012 for a $51.7 million makeover.
The grand opening for the expanded and renovated center is scheduled for November, which is the 125th anniversary of North Dakota’s statehood.
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AP-WF-04-28-14 1429GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
A xiphactinus skeleton at the reopened North Dakota Heritage Center. Image courtesy of the North Dakota Heritage Center.
Extremely fine 1864 gold 50-lire, struck in Torino under King Vittorio Emanuele II. Estimate £50,000-£60,000. A.H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd. image. LONDON – The latest offering from one of the world’s most prolific coin collectors, Åke Lindén, maps the social and numismatic history of modern Europe with coins of the highest rarity including a George I gold 100-drachmai, the rarest issue of modern Greece, and one of the finest examples of the 1868 20-lei gold pattern proof. Held as part of Baldwin’s three-day auction schedule, the European part of the collection will be sold on Wednesday, May, 7. Internet live bidding will be facilitated by LiveAuctioneers.com.
“This extensive and impressive collection of European coinage is part of a calendar of auctions to be held throughout 2014, presenting Åke Lindén’s large-scale collection to the numismatic market. Following the success of his Russian coins, which sold through our New York auction earlier this year, in excess of US $1 million, we fully expect that the European collection will be as popular as its Russian counterpart,” said Dimitri Loulakakis, director of World Coins at A.H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd.
Swedish born Lindén found numismatic inspiration from a young age, encouraged by his widely traveled father who brought him coins from every country he visited. Possibly as a result of this, his numismatic interests were wide ranging and eventually he set about amassing his vast collection of every type coin since 1850, from every country in the world. Being the true collector that he was, Lindén would consider any coin that was missing from his collection, regardless of the condition. However, when it came to the very rarest items, he did not hesitate to acquire them in top condition at whatever the price.
An extremely fine 1864 gold 50-lire, struck in Torino under King Vittorio Emanuele II is one of the most sought after pieces from the collection. With a mintage of only 103, it is by far the rarest one-year type coin of the Italian Kingdom series and is estimated to achieve £50,000-£60,000.
This coin was one of the last to be minted before the Kingdom of Italy joined an initiative to unify the countries of Europe under one currency standard, interchangeable across the nations, and called the Latin Monetary Union (LMU), a precursor to the Euro.
Under the reign of its first monarch, King Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy was one of the founding members of the LMU, along with France, Belgium and Switzerland. The standard evolved from the French franc system introduced by Napoleon, based on the gold 20-franc and the silver franc, bimetallism.
A new standard weight currency that could be freely exchanged between the four countries soon enticed other European nations, and in 1868, under the rule of George I, the Kingdom of Greece, along with Spain, entered into the LMU with the first Greek LMU coins minted in 1868. These new coins aligned with the weights of their European counterparts and were minted in France.
The rarest of all regular issue coins of modern Greece, the George I gold 100-drachmai, 1876, was minted in Paris, the same year his daughter, Marie, was born, and was part of the LMU initiative. With a mintage of only 76, the reverse bears the Order of the Saviour, below the royal arms, the oldest and highest decoration awarded by the modern Greek state. King George I gained territory for Greece throughout the 1870s and re-established her standing as a nation in pre-World War I Europe. A statement of his power, this propaganda coin glorifies the second and longest reigning monarch in modern Greek history, who ruled as king for 50 years until his assassination in March 1913. The coin is estimated to sell for £50,000-£60,000.
“The George I 100-drachmai is a testament to Lindén’s dedication to acquiring top quality rarities, it is as close to fleur-de-coin, a perfect coin, as one would ever wish to own. It is a magnificent specimen,” said Loulakakis.
While most of Europe was looking to unite under one currency, Romania fought for independence from Austria and Turkey, something they finally achieved in 1866, under the rule of Carol I.
The provinces, Maramures, Bucovina, Moldova, Crisana, Banat, Transilvania, Moldova, Walachia and Dobrogea, became the principality of Romania and the Leu of 100-bani minted in 1867, with the gold 20-lei added in 1868. Only 100 pieces of the gold pattern proof 20-lei, 1868 were minted, and in 1875 Carol I ceremonially deposited a quantity into the foundations of his summer house, Peleş Castle, a neo-classical palace he was building in the picturesque Carpathian Mountains. The remaining coins were distributed among his friends and dignitaries. This example in the Lindén collection is by far the finest known of the few surviving pieces and is estimated at £40,000-£50,000.
The political turbulence of the early 20th century, which culminated in the outbreak of World War I, brought instability and the imminent collapse of the LMU. Under the rule of Vittorio Emanuele III, himself an avid coin collector, Italy remained neutral to its neighbors. In 1901, still under the LMU, Italy produced the silver 5-lire 1901 prooflike coin in Rome, with a mintage of only 114. It was the first coin bearing Vittorio’s portrait to be produced during his reign and is one of the rarest coins of the Vittorio Emanuele III series. The example offered in the sale is one of the few top quality examples still in existence, and is estimated at £25,000-£30,000.
Another rarity in the sale from the Vittorio Emanuele III series is a unique 1908 bronze 10-centesimi, struck in Rome. From a mintage of three, this coin is the only example in private hands, the others are in state institutions. It is estimated at £12,000-£15,000.
During World War I Germany faced currency shortages due to an increase in people hoarding coins. At the time the German empire was unified under one coinage system, based on 100-pfennig to the mark, with lesser denominations struck in one form for the whole empire, and higher value denominations bearing the head and titles of the local rulers.
From the Kingdom of Saxony, the key coin of the entire “Kaiserreich” series, a silver proof 3-mark, 1917, was struck under Friedrich August III, King of Saxony. One of the last coins to be minted under Friedrich August III before he voluntarily abdicated the throne on Nov. 13, 1918. The fall of the German Empire, and the collapse of the traditional dynasties in 1918, ended this coinage system. With a mintage of just 100, this celebrated rarity bears the bust of Friedrich the Wise on the obverse, and on the reverse the imperial eagle. It is estimated at £30,000-£40,000.
Alexander Calder gouache, $78,200, Cottone Auctions
An original gouache painting by Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976), titled Loops Filled In, sold for $78,200 at a Winter Fine Art & Antiques Auction held March 29 by Cottone Auctions in Geneseo, N.Y. Also, a color linocut on Arches paper by Pablo Picasso (Spanish/French, 1881-1973), titled Faunes et Chevre, also hit $78,200; a color etching and aquatint by Joan Miro (Spanish, 1893-1983), titled Le Permissionaire, brought $40,000; and a Tiffany Studios Daffodil lamp, 25 inches tall, reached for $57,000. Prices include a 15 percent buyer’s premium.
A German stained glass panel, F.X Zettler, Munich, 1920s, depicting an armored knight on horseback under a Renaissance arch, inscribed ‘Zettler’ lower right, 51 x 36 cm/20 x 14in, est. £300-£400. Thomas Del Mar imageLONDON – On May 7th, Thomas Del Mar Ltd, in association with Sotheby’s and with Internet live bidding through LiveAuctioneers, will sell a selection of superior-quality antique armor acquired during the 1920s-1950s by industrialist John Woodman Higgins (1874–1961). It is the second such deaccession from the Higgins collection to be auctioned by Thomas Del Mar.
John Woodman Higgins made his fortune from the Worcester Pressed Steel Company, a Massachusetts firm founded in 1905. From 1927, Higgins decided to collect antique arms and armor seriously, with a view toward filling a museum he was building to showcase the uses of steel throughout the centuries. Correspondence of that year to French dealer Louis Bachereau noted: “I am compiling a considerable collection of antique armor and arms, also including statues, portraits, tapestries and stained glass showing men on horses in armor, flags, pennants, chain mail coats, shields, pole arms, etc.”
Higgins went on to build a collection that numbered more than 5,000 pieces of armor, arms and related objects. In 1931, the Higgins Armory Museum, a novel steel and glass building housing the extensive collection, was opened to the public in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The American Armor Craze:
The first half of the 20th century was a time when romantic tales of chivalry and courtly love captured the imagination of American collectors. In addition to John Woodman Higgins, other collectors included newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, telegraph mogul Clarence Mackay and cigarette maker Rutherfurd Stuyvesant. Their main artistic interests were the Gothic Revival, ancestral castles and medieval works of art including armor.
The collecting of arms and armor became highly competitive; European collections were broken up and handled by the eminent dealers of the day such as Jacques Seligmann and Joseph Duveen. In addition, there were the great influences of scholars like Bashford Dean, who became the first curator of arms and armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Over time, the Higgins Armory collection was refined, and with the benefit of modern scholarship and museology, the decision has been made to further refine the collection and integrate the core collection into the Worcester Art Museum. The deaccession process has occurred in two main phases: the first phase culminated in a 100% sold auction in 2013 conducted by Thomas Del Mar Ltd (in association with Sotheby’s). The final single-owner sale from the Higgins collection is the one slated for May 7.
More than 300 lots represent European and Japanese full armors, helmets and individual elements of armor, such as breastplates and gauntlets. There also will also be edged weapons and firearms; pictures, stained glass, sculpture and antiquities. As with the first sale, this will provide a unique opportunity to acquire armor that, in almost every case, has a pedigree dating back to Higgins’ purchases in the second quarter of the 20th century.
Highlights include a boy’s armor Higgins purchased from the William Randolph Hearst collection, a German fluted full armor in the so-called Maximillian fashion, an etched Italian full armor, and a very rare half armor for a Polish winged hussar.
For additional information about the May 7 auction, contact Thomas Del Mar Ltd by calling 011 44 207 602 4805 or emailing enquiries@thomasdelmar.com.
View the fully illustrated catalog and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.
A German stained glass panel, F.X Zettler, Munich, 1920s, depicting an armored knight on horseback under a Renaissance arch, inscribed ‘Zettler’ lower right, 51 x 36 cm/20 x 14in, est. £300-£400. Thomas Del Mar image
Grouping of European armor from 16th-19th centuries, with estimates from £5,000 to £30,000. Thomas Del Mar image
Painted limestone figure of St Eligius, perhaps Lorraine, early 16th century; the saint modeled as a blacksmith shoeing the partial leg of a horse, his anvil resting on a pedestal hung with tools, plinth titled ‘St Eloi,’ 110 cm/43¼in high. Provenance William Randolph Hearst. Est. £3,000-£4,000. Thomas Del Mar image
19th-century boy’s armor in 16th-century German style, ex collection of William Randolph Hearst. The tall armor is a composite South German cap-a-pie field armor, partly Nuremberg, circa 1540. Est. £15,000- £20,000. Thomas Del Mar image
A stained glass panel of St Adrian of Nicomedia, probably Flemish or German, early 16th century and later. 186.5 x 59 cm. See Detroit Institute of Art, Accession No. 58.111 for what appears to be a companion window depicting St. Wenceslas. Est. £1,000-£2,000. Thomas Del Mar image
A steel target with embossed decoration, 19th century, after an Italian original of the mid-16th century made for the Emperor Charles V. Est. £1,500-£2,000. Thomas Del Mar image
Japanese armor (Tosei Gusoku), Edo period. Est. £1,500-£2,000. Thomas Del Mar image
The Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 Cobra Jet sold at the Larry A. Brown estate auction Friday. Image courtesy Ron Gilligan Auctioneering. STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) – A central Pennsylvania man has made the winning bid on an rare muscle car that set the auction world buzzing.
The Centre Daily Times said George Cowfer of Clearfield County paid $280,000 for the 1969 Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 Cobra Jet at an auction Friday. That’s considerably more than the $200,000 the car was expected to fetch.
The car’s former owner died last fall. He bought it the Mustang at a Centre County dealership but logged only 8,500 miles before garaging it for 40 years.
State College-based auctioneer Ron Gilligan said the GT500 is one of only 1,534 made. The car still has its factory-installed belts, hoses, spark plugs and wiring.
Gilligan said there was so much interest in the car that the traffic crashed his website.
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Image by Bs0u10e01. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt has recovered 10 pharaonic artifacts, including a gilded wooden Tutankhamun statue, looted during the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the antiquities ministry said Tuesday.
The pieces were taken from the famed Egyptian Museum near Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Jan. 28, 2011, when protesters calling for Mubarak’s overthrow drove his feared security forces from the streets.
Along with the Tutankhamun statue, which will be restored by Egyptian experts, two statues of Queen Nefertiti’s children were also recovered, according to antiquities minister Mohamed Ibrahim.
Authorities also recovered a stone likeness of Tutankhamun as a young boy that had been broken off of a larger statue showing him in the arms of a goddess.
One missing artifact was found in Belgium and eight others in the United States, state news agency MENA quoted the ministry as saying.
A total of 54 artifacts went missing from the museum when looters broke in during the uprising, mainly treasures from the era of pharaohs Tutankhamun and Akhenaton. Thirty-five of the pieces have since been recovered.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Image by Bs0u10e01. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
French map by Charles Louis Minard, 1855, sold for £5,208 ($8,763). Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.
LONDON – A map by Charles Louis Minard, sold for £5,208 ($8,763) in Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions sale of maps and atlases alongside a private collection of cartographic curiosities on April 25 at their saleroom, in London’s Mayfair. LiveAuctioneers.com facilitated Internet live bidding.
Carte Figurative et Approximative des Tonnage des Merchandies qui ont circulé en 1855, was a schematic map of the rail and canal routes throughout France and was scaled according to the volume of traffic on each route.
Charles Joseph Minard, 1781-1870, was a pioneer in the use of information graphics, and is considered one of the founders of modern graphic design for conveying statistical information. His work in this field increased significantly following his retirement as superintendent of the Ecole Nationale de Ponts et Chaussées, and inspector of the Corps des Ponts in 1851.
In his article The Thematic maps of Charles Joseph Minard Arthur H. Robinson says about Minard’s work: “The 51 cartes figuratives that come from his fertile mind and adept hand show a combination of cartographic ingenuity and concern with the graphic portrayal of statistical data that was almost unique during the central portion of the century.” The work doubled its presale estimate of £2,000-4,000 selling for £5,208 [Lot 395].
Also attracting fierce bidding was a Russian serio-comic map of Europe dating from 1883 by V.C. Editor K.I. Kordig, which sold for £3,224 ($5,424). Although satirical maps have a long history that stretches back to the medieval period and Munster’s Geographica, 1540, it was with the outbreak of World War I that the genre became a media sensation, and increasingly popular as a collectible. This example is printed on a cotton handkerchief, surrounded by declamatory text panels and a title cartouche that translates as Contemporary Map of Europe [Lot 258].
A private collection of cartographic curiosities attracted interest with globe timepieces ticking up top prices. A French enamel, gilt-brass and rouge marble eight-day globe timepiece, circa 1890, sold for £3,472 ($5,842) [Lot 45] and a brass patent Empire Clock, a globe timepiece with eight-day movement hidden within the pedestal and inscribed “The Empire Clock, Cable, Patent 19460,” sold for £2,976 ($5,007) [Lot 46].
French map by Charles Louis Minard, 1855, sold for £5,208 ($8,763). Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.
Russian serio-comic map of Europe dating from 1883 by K.I. Kordig, printed on a handkerchief. Price realized: £3,224 ($5,424). Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions image.
The former Fairbanks city hall building currently houses the Fairbanks Community Museum. Image by Durkeeco. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) – The old Fairbanks city hall could become a distillery under a plan that seems to have the support of city council.
The building has previously also housed a fire station and a community museum. Now, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports that Patrick Levy, of Fairbanks Distilling Co., says he hopes to be making whisky, vodka or gin within six months.
He still has to buy the city-owned building first, not to mention persuade the borough to designate it a manufacturing zone.
It would be the sixth distillery in Alaska. The Fairbanks City Council passed a nonbinding resolution in support of the plan last week.
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-04-27-14 2104GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The former Fairbanks city hall building currently houses the Fairbanks Community Museum. Image by Durkeeco. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
Dishes rescued from the Arabia steamboat. Image by Johnmaxmena2. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. PITTSBURGH (AP) – More than 300 steamboats, including some built in Pittsburgh, have sunk in the treacherous waters of the Missouri River.
Visitors to the Senator John Heinz History Center now have a chance to see the remains of and cargo from one of those doomed vessels. Almost 2,000 artifacts are part of a new exhibit, “Pittsburgh’s Lost Steamboat: Treasures of the Arabia.”
Those items are among more than a million objects retrieved from the mud 45 feet below a Kansas cornfield.
Not only the sunken boat but some of its cargo came from Pittsburgh factories and workshops. Andrew Masich, president of the history center, said those items help tell the story of the region in the 19th century.
“These objects are a time capsule from when Pittsburgh was the Gateway to the West,” he said.
Masich and Leslie Przybylek, the history center’s lead curator for the “Treasures” exhibit, conducted a tour Thursday. They were accompanied by members of the Hawley and Mackey families, who located and recovered the sunken ship.
The vessel sank Sept. 5, 1856, in the Missouri River near Kansas City, taking down 200 tons of cargo and a mule. The animal was the disaster’s only victim. All 130 passengers and crew members were rowed to shore.
After the river shifted, the steamboat and its contents were buried deep under farmland in a watery, air-free grave on the Kansas side of the waterway.
The location had been known for years, and there had been previous efforts to salvage items. The two families obtained rights to recover the boat and its contents and began their work in 1988.
That work involved simply (well, not so simply because it was 45 feet underground) digging a big pit, and bringing everything out. They kept the items they found wet and cold, using, among other things, large freezers from a restaurant commissary belonging to one of the families, until they could be conserved. Many items still await treatment.
That anaerobic environment preserved many items made of wood, metal, porcelain and glass. Bottles of champagne, jars of pickles and vials of perfume were among the items recovered and found to be in good condition.
“I’m not a judge of champagne,” Bob Hawley said of his taste of the ancient bubbly. “It wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t go across the street for it.”
His partner, Jerry Mackey, said the pickle he tried was “very sweet but not real crispy.”
Containers filled with scent fared well. “The perfume still smelled,” Joan Mackey, Jerry’s wife, said. “That surprised me.”
The 8,000-square-foot show is being presented in partnership with the Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City, Mo., where many similar items are on permanent display. The museum was opened in 1991 by the Hawley and Mackey families.
Locally, visitors enter through a mock cornfield where the well-preserved remains of the boat and its cargo were recovered. The Arabia was one of many vessels built in a shipyard in Brownsville and finished in Pittsburgh. For the next three years it served frontier communities along the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers.
The exhibit at the history center will include tall display cases filled with hundreds of recovered objects that range from axes and boots to saws and woolen jackets. Visitors also will get a sense of what items looked like when family members recovered them from the muck below the cornfield.
Those objects include a keg of Pittsburgh-made nails that melded together into brown, spiky lump of metal and mud.
“Treasures of the Arabia” will feature interactive stations where young visitors can try their hands at piloting a steamboat or identifying different goods carried on the ship.
The exhibit also has a link to “Bloody Kansas” in the years just before the Civil War. Items on display will include one of the 1853 model Sharps carbines that an abolitionist organization sought to bring into Kansas aboard the Arabia. The boxes full of guns were labeled “machinery” and “tools.”
The weapons were discovered and removed from the steamboat before it sank.
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AP-WF-04-28-14 1414GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Dishes rescued from the Arabia steamboat. Image by Johnmaxmena2. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Bell & Howell 240 model 16mm movie camera, circa 1957, used by Orson Welles in 1962 to film his documentary ‘The Land of Don Quixote.’ Heritage Auctions image.
NEW YORK (AP) – Scripts for Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ camera and a cigar ashtray were among the late director’s belongings sold at a New York auction.
LiveAuctioneers.com facilitated Internet live bidding.
Sixty-seven lots fetched $180,000 at Heritage Auctions on Saturday.
Margaret Barrett, Heritage’s director of entertainment-linked auctions, called the items “a piece of cinema royalty.”
Two dozen pages of scripts for the 1941 masterpiece `Citizen Kane‘ went for $15,000, far surpassing the $2,000 presale estimate.
Welles’ old 16mm Bell & Howell movie camera used to film a documentary in Spain sold for $37,500, against a $2,000 estimate.
And a silver-plated cigar ashtray Ernest Hemingway gave Welles fetched $5,000, six times the expected price.
Also on the block were memorabilia the director’s daughter, Beatrice Welles, kept for decades in Sedona, Ariz.
Copyright 2014 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Bell & Howell 240 model 16mm movie camera, circa 1957, used by Orson Welles in 1962 to film his documentary ‘The Land of Don Quixote.’ Heritage Auctions image.
