October 2, 2014 - Auction Central News

London Eye: September 2014

Frieze contemporary art fair to be held in Regents Park on Oct. 15-18 is set to dominate the London art scene over the next few weeks. Image courtesy of Frieze.

LONDON – Winter is approaching and Londoners are already bracing themselves for the big freeze. Or perhaps that should be the big Frieze. The capital’s hippest art fair, and its more sedate cousin Frieze Masters, are set to hoover up all the media attention in the coming weeks as contemporary art moves to the top of London’s cultural agenda. (Fig. 1) The process started a week ago when Frieze’s co-founders Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharpe announced their decision to step down as the fairs’ directors to pursue new projects.

Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharpe, co-founders of Frieze fair empire, who have announced that they will step down as the fair’s co-directors to pursue other projects. Image courtesy of Frieze.

They have handed over the reins to Victoria Siddall, current director of Frieze Masters, who will direct both Frieze London and Frieze New York.

Frieze is not the only London art fair to undergo a recent change of leadership. The LAPADA Fair — the annual fair organized by the UK’s leading antiques trade association — has just closed its 2014 edition in Berkeley Square and by all accounts it was another successful event. The association is now under the wing of its new CEO, Rebecca Davies, who took over from Sarah Percy-Davis who stood down in May. Percy-Davis is widely credited with having transformed the organization during her 10-year tenure.

Sarah Percy-Davis, who recently stepped down as chief executive of the UK antiques trade association LAPADA, has started her own art market consultancy. Image courtesy of Sarah Percy-Davis.

She is now using those same skills to develop her own art market consultancy, offering business support and advice to a range of private and corporate clients, galleries, dealers, e-commerce companies and collectors. She continues to collaborate with LAPADA, however, and organized a hospitality event at this year’s fair for high-profile investors. “It was a huge success,” she told Auction Central News. “The group thoroughly enjoyed the fair and I’m delighted to report that around 20 significant purchases were made as a result of the initiative.”

The musical chairs has also extended to the British Antique Dealers’ Association, the other main trade body for UK dealers. Michael Cohen, director of Cohen & Cohen, the world’s leading dealers in export porcelain, was recently appointed the association’s new chairman.

Michael Cohen, the new chairman of BADA, the British Antiques Dealers’ Association. Image Auction Central News.

One of Cohen’s first initiatives was to introduce BADA buyer certificates, which will accompany works of art sold by BADA members. Innovations of this kind will be broadly welcomed by those in the industry who attach importance to issues of provenance and due diligence as a means of reassuring buyers.

Staying on questions of title and provenance, this month also saw the relaunch of Art Resolve, the cultural property dispute resolution service, has developed a new approach to settling title disputes over works of art and cultural and historic objects. Art Resolve’s directors, members and friends met recently at the ancient St. Olave’s Church in London to celebrate the relaunch of what is likely to become an important agency in an increasingly critical area of the market.

Guests assembled at St. Olave’s Church in the City of London to celebrate the relaunch of the cultural property dispute resolution service, Art Resolve. Image Auction Central News.

The Art Resolve service is under the chairmanship of Norman Palmer QC, CBE, one of the world’s leading experts in art and cultural property law. The professor gave one of his characteristically witty and erudite speeches to the assembled guests at the relaunch evening.

Sir Norman Palmer, CBE, addresses the faithful at the relaunch of Art Resolve at St. Olave’s Church in the City of London in September. Image Auction Central News.

Palmer has assembled an impressive roster of art market professionals, lawyers and experienced mediators to assist him in running the organization. Panel members include, among others, the specialist mediator Lord Strathcarron, barrister Malcolm Taylor, city solicitor Hetty Gleave, and Diana Cawdell, founder/director of Cawdell Douglas, one of the UK’s leading strategic communications organizations for the international art market.

Diana Cawdell (left) and Hetty Gleave, panel members of Art Resolve, the art market’s dispute resolution agency, recently relaunched at St. Olave’s Church in the heart of London. Image Auction Central News.

Gleave and Cawdell told Auction Central News that Art Resolve aims to fulfill an important role by mediating in what are often thorny issues of authenticity, title, family disputes and restitution. “We’re able to bring a less stressful, more confidential and more cost-effective approach to dispute resolution, offering the parties greater control than the conventional court process,” said Gleave. The note of cultured calm was subtly reinforced at the relaunch by lyric soprano Charlotte Derry and pianist Horacio Redondo Lopez, who together filled the famous medieval church of St. Olave’s with glorious music.

There was a palpable sense of business coming back to life in the capital this month as summer began to fade and early autumn set in. The darker evenings do bring opportunities for a little romance, though. Twenty years ago it would have been unheard of to witness Mallett, one of London’s oldest and most venerable antique furniture dealers, collaborating with a team of funky Vancouver-based postmodern designers.

One of the striking interior lighting designs by Canadian designers Bocci, on view at Mallett at Ely House as part of London Design Festival. Image courtesy of Mallett.

But that is what happened in September when Mallett opened the doors of its suave Dover Street premises, Ely House, for an evening of drinks and discussion to show off their innovative partnership with Canadian architectural and interior design firm Bocci. The building looked spectacular from the street, as one of Bocci’s exterior light installations cascaded down from the windows of the upper floors over the building’s neoclassical facade.

Ely House, the home of antique furniture dealers Mallett, showing a lighting installation by Canadian design firm Bocci. Image Auction Central News.

Scheduled to coincide with the London Design Festival, the evening offered an opportunity for a leisurely stroll around the sumptuous Georgian interiors of Ely House. The move to the “Bishop’s Palace,” as it has been known since the 1720s, seems to have helped Mallett, who have seen their business begin to recover over the past 12 months.

One of the elegant period rooms at Mallett’s Ely House premises in Dover Street. Image Auction Central News.

The company’s recent collaborations with contemporary artists and designers seem to be paying off. Certainly Bocci’s fantasy lighting creations provided a striking and somewhat futuristic counterpoint to the more traditional furnishings at Mallett’s Design Festival open evening.

A chandelier by Bocci, part of the fantasy lighting display at Mallett’s Ely House premises as part of the London Design Festival. Image Auction Central News.

London antiquities dealer Charles Ede Ltd. has also recently announced an imminent move to new premises. The firm will be holding their inaugural exhibition at Three King’s Yard, Mayfair from Oct. 15 to Nov. 14, which will feature a range of important antiquities from the Greek, Roman and Egyptian periods.

This Roman marble statue of Venus Victrix, first to second century, part of the inaugural exhibition at Charles Ede Ltd. from Oct. 15 to Nov. 14 to celebrate their new premises at Three King’s Yard, Mayfair. Image courtesy Charles Ede Ltd.

Antiquities have become a hugely controversial field in recent years as looted objects continue to make their way onto the international art market. However, Charles Ede’s managing director James Ede has been a key figure in pressing for best practice in the London antiquities trade through stringent approaches to provenance research on items offered for sale. We are told that the title of the company’s new exhibition, “A Flourishing Tradition,” seeks to reflect that ethos, referring to both the history of the gallery and the long tradition of antiquities collecting. However, given the current geopolitical turmoil that is bringing increasing quantities of illicit material onto the open market, one wonders whether dealing in antiquities will be able to “flourish” for much longer.

The state-of-the-art refurbishment of the new gallery aims to “reference the age of the Grand Tour whilst embracing a contemporary aesthetic.”

With LiveAuctioneers, Moran’s fall auction harvests strong prices

As much a work of art as a functioning instrument, this Louis XVI-style Steinway Model B piano, serial number 99,999, was painted with a ‘fete galante’ by Arthur Thomas in 1907. Estimated at $30,000–40,000, it sold for $39,975. John Moran Auctioneers image.

PASADENA, Calif. – John Moran Auctioneers opened their fall auction season with a Decorative Arts Auction at the Pasadena Convention Center on Sept. 23. The two-session sale, featuring more than 400 lots of American and European design from the early to mid-20th century, traditional Continental furnishings from the 19th century, silver, Asian furniture and art, and a larger-than-usual selection of paintings, demonstrated a strong market for better items across all categories.

In keeping with recent trends, the vast majority of bidders participated online. LiveAuctioneers.com facilitated Internet live bidding and provided 360 bidders.

The more than 80 California and American paintings in the 228-lot cataloged session made an impression, finding a receptive audience among collectors and dealers who otherwise frequent Moran’s sales to purchase antiques. They showed a clear willingness to cross over into the fine art market, and to pay healthy prices in the process.

Several paintings fetched prices commensurate with those earned at Moran’s semiannual fine art auctions, and a few sold for twice the upper end of the presale estimate. A Summer, a scene of rolling hills by Los Angeles, Calif., painter William Lees Judson (1842–1928), realized $3,900, while Leland Curtis’s more dramatic Sierra Peaks reached a price of $1,882.50 (all prices include 20 percent buyer premium). A number of bidders competed for a hypnotic scene of a lily pond receding deeply into a grove of trees, painted by Wayne Beam Morrell (1923–2013 Rockport, Mass). Boasting deft brushwork and richly saturated color, the oil had no difficulty in selling for $3,000 (est: $1,000–1,500).

Select examples of early 20th century design were also greeted enthusiastically. A hauntingly beautiful Gallé cameo glass vase, wheel-cut in brown, green and blue with stark imagery commemorating the 1914 Battle of Lorraine, commanded an impressive price of $11,685, well over the $3,000-4,000 estimate. A two-piece lot of Art Deco Argenta pottery by Swedish designer William Kage for the Gustavsberg factory was an irresistible find. Glazed in mottled jade green and inlaid in silver with stylized mermaids and boldly patterned borders, the bowl and charger fetched $1,192.25 (est: $600–900). Also in the Art Deco style, a pair of clear glass vases by Sydney Bieler Waugh for Steuben featuring simple lines and boldly etched, classically inspired designs of Pegasus and a recumbent lamb brought $960 (est: $300–400). A Tiffany Studios bronze and Favrile glass Lily lamp with 10 lights earned a price at the high end of its estimate of $15,000–18,000, realizing $17,150, while an oak Morris chair by Gustav Stickley sold comfortably over the estimate of $1,500–2,500 at $4,800.

Good examples of European furnishings and decorative items in classic 19th century revivalist styles typically perform well at Moran’s auctions. This month’s crop of standouts included:

– A pair of 19th century Empire-style patinated bronze five-light candelabra modeled as cherubs standing on tall plinths, estimated at $1,000–2,000, brought $5,400.

– A Louis XV-style Boulle marquetry bracket clock dating to the second half of the 19th century, marked to the movement “H & F Paris,’’ realized $3,900 (est: $800 – 1,000).

– Modeled after “Water” in the “Four Elements” series by J.J. Kandler, a large 19th century Meissen porcelain ewer elaborately molded and painted with Tritons, Neptune, a mermaid and seahorses brought $9,840 (est: $5,000–8,000).

– Also by Meissen, a pair of figurines of cherubs designed after the models by Heinrich Schwabe achieved the high estimate, together realizing $1,200.

– A Spanish Baroque-style vargueno and stand also appealed to buyers despite heavy restorations, bringing $7,800 (est: $3,000–4000).

Moran’s offered two outstandingly grand pianos, each clad in a distinctive art case. A 1901 Louis XVI-style Steinway Model B, serial number 99,999, was decorated with portraits of composers painted to the exterior lid and a “fete galante’’ scene of figures in a bucolic landscape painted on the lid interior by Arthur Thomas in 1907. Arriving at auction with an impressive provenance, the fully functional work of art fetched $39,975, barely missing the high end of the estimate of $30,000–40,000. The other piano, by the venerable Parisian firm Érard, was handsomely outfitted with gilt bronze mounts and complex marquetry inlay. This instrument also clearly impressed buyers, as bidding rang off the scales to $27,000, well over the $10,000–15,000 estimate.

For more information on Moran’s sales contact John Moran Auctioneers at info@johnmoran.com or phone 626-793-1833. Consignment inquiries are always welcome.

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

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

A rare commemorative piece from the Gallé factory, this cameo glass vase marking the 1914 Battle of Lorraine brought $11,685, handily outperforming the $3,000–4,000 estimate. John Moran Auctioneers image.

This summer landscape by Los Angeles artist William Lees Judson (1842–1928), one of several high quality paintings in the sale realized $3,900, nearly double the high estimate. John Moran Auctioneers image.

Estimated to bring $1,000–1,500, this lily pond scene by Wayne Beam Morrell (1923–2013 Rockport, Mass.) entranced bidders and eventually sold for $3,000. John Moran Auctioneers image.

This pair of large Empire-style bronze candelabra demonstrated a strong market for stately pieces of high quality, selling for $5,400 (est: $1,000–2,000). John Moran Auctioneers image.

Modeled after ‘Water’ in J.J. Kandler’s ‘Four Elements’ series, this large Meissen allegorical ewer charmed bidders with its myriad mythological figures, realizing $9,840 (est: $5,000–8,000). John Moran Auctioneers image.

Cowan’s Western-themed sale on LiveAuctioneers exceeds $940,000

Henry Farny's 'Yarns of a Summer Day' sold for $310,000. Cowan's Auctions Inc. image.

CINCINNATI – Total sales for Cowan’s Auctions Fall American Indian and Western Art: Live Salesroom Auction on Sept. 26 reached $944,800. This auction included some of the finest offerings of Western art that have come to the market in recent years. In addition to fine art, the sale featured fine carvings, basketry, weavings, rugs, sculptures and weaponry.

LiveAuctioneers.com provided Intenet live bidding. More than 350 bidders signed up for the sale through LiveAuctioneers, and they placed 274 bids online bids.

The highest selling lot in the auction was a gouache on paper by Henry Farny titled Yarns of a Summer Day. The painting realized $310,000.

Additional paintings by Western artists were offered in the sale. A work by Joseph Henry Sharp, titled California Chrysanthemums sold for $24,600, an oil on canvas piece by Howard Terpning, titled Yellowstone Fall, was hotly contested and sold for $19,680, a watercolor on paper by James Boren, titled Heading for Dodge City, sold for $6,000, and an oil on canvas by Ken Carlson, titled Steer sold for $12,000.

Beaded items were highlighted in the sale. A Sioux beaded hide rifle scabbard sold for $12,000, and a Sioux beaded buffalo hide possible bag realized $13,200.

Exceptional pottery and basketry inspired competitive bidding in the auction. An Apache figural tray basket hammered down at $22,140, an Acoma polychrome olla realized $9,225, an Apache figural olla sold for $5,535, and a Nampeyo of Hano attributed canteen sold for $3,567.

Additional notable lots included a Navajo late classic woman’s dress from the estate of William Haskell Simpson which realized $14,400, a Pauta Saila dancing bear stone sculpture sold for $9,225, a Joseph Jourdain inlaid pipe tomahawk hammered down at $8,400, and a Zuni inlaid rainbow guardian blossom necklace suite realized $6,765.

For more information about the auction or to consign for future auctions, call Danica Farnand at 513-871-1670 ext. 215.

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

ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

Howard Terpning's 'Yellowstone Fall,' sold for $19,690. Cowan's Auctions Inc. image. — Howard Terpning’s ‘Yellowstone Fall,’ sold for $19,690. Cowan’s Auctions Inc. image.

Acoma polychrome olla, price realized: $9,225. Cowan's Auctions Inc. image. — Acoma polychrome olla, price realized: $9,225. Cowan’s Auctions Inc. image.

Sioux beaded hide rifle scabbard, price realized: $12,000. Cowan's Auctions Inc. image. — Sioux beaded hide rifle scabbard, price realized: $12,000. Cowan’s Auctions Inc. image.

Baldwin’s Numismatics moving to 399 Strand in London

LONDON – Numismatic dealer and auctioneer A.H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd. will join Stanley Gibbons in their newly renovated premises on the Strand beginning Oct. 27.

“The move to join our colleagues at Stanley Gibbons represents a progressive new phase in the evolution of the group and an exciting opportunity for our clients. We … will be based at the flagship location for a group of companies operating at the pinnacle of the global collectibles market,” noted Ian Goldbart, managing director.

Located opposite the Savoy on the Strand, the newly refurbished space will bring both retail and auction clients an enriched experience. A new custom designed auction room on the lower ground floor will become the permanent home for the company’s London sales. Private consultation areas and a retail showroom on the first floor will now offer a dedicated viewing space for the company’s stock.

A.H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd. will continue to attend auctions and numismatic fairs all over the world. Baldwin’s Auction Department will still hold a full calendar of sales in Hong Kong and New York alongside its London sales at the new 399 Strand premises, conveniently located near to Charing Cross and Embankment stations.

In 2013, Baldwin’s became part of the Stanley Gibbons Group PLC, and now offers collectors the complete package of coins, stamps, books, fine art and other collectibles. Sister companies consist of fine art and antiques specialist Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions, autographs and collectibles specialist Fraser’s Autographs and philatelic specialist Stanley Gibbons.

The address is A.H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd, 399 Strand, London WC2N 0LX.

Replica of Lincoln coffin on display at landmark cemetery

View of Crown Hill Cemetery and President Benjamin Harrison's grave in Indianapolis. Image by C. Bedford Crenshaw, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Of all the attractions that come through town trying to grab attention, this one stands out for its stillness: It’s a coffin, a replica of Abraham Lincoln’s coffin, supposedly an exact copy.

Made of walnut, covered in black broadcloth and lined in white satin, the box went on display Sunday at a 19th-century Gothic building at Crown Hill Cemetery and Funeral Home called the Waiting Station. The coffin’s limited five-day run ends Thursday.

A coffin is not exactly mainstream entertainment, but on opening day, which featured a performance by Lincoln impersonator Danny Russel, the Lincoln replica drew some three-dozen people. Since then the curious have trickled in steadily, such as David Owens of Greenwood. He was there Monday with his wife, Sherrie.

Owens is a Civil War buff and knows Lincoln. And as a Methodist minister, he has seen a coffin or two.

The Lincoln coffin, with its series of rivets pounded into its sides, struck him as too jazzy.

“Like something Elvis would be buried in, not Lincoln,” he told The Indianapolis Star.

But the coffin was, well, dead-on, built by Indiana’s Batesville Casket Co., the nation’s largest casket maker, to specs gained from an Illinois museum.

Owens walked around the coffin, photographed it and wondered about the silver handles. “Would these tarnish?” he asked.

“Oh, I bet they would,” said Mike Moffitt, Crown Hill’s director of funeral operations, who was on hand not to sell grave plots, but rather for long-term customer cultivation.

Marketing is done delicately in the death industry.

“Funerals and cemeteries are the thing nobody wants to talk about but that everyone eventually needs,” said Abigail Quiocho, Crown Hill’s director of business development.

The Lincoln coffin is one of four replicas that since the early 1990s have toured funeral homes across the country, drawing people who are not mourning and thus may be more approachable. The program is the brainchild of the Indiana casket maker, which loans out the Lincolns to funeral directors at no charge.

In recent years, casket sales have trended down as cremation has gained popularity. In 2011, 42 percent of the deceased were cremated, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, twice the rate 15 years ago.

But Batesville caskets, even with so much at stake, remain decorous. In 2009, when Michael Jackson was laid out in one of the company’s top-of-the-line Promethean models, Batesville sent out not a single news release. A company representative, when pressed, told The Indianapolis Star: “We never discuss any particular business transaction, but based on the images we saw on television, it appears to be a Promethean.”

The traveling Lincoln coffins, Batesville spokeswoman Teresa Gyulafia said, are “public relations, not marketing.”

“This is just a way to engage the community. People like historical things.”

Typically, demand for the coffins peaks in February for President’s Day, Gyulafia said. Next year, because it’s the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, all four are booked solid the entire year.

Obviously, for most people it’s easier to talk about Lincoln’s death than their own. But talking about Lincoln’s “could spark discussion within a family” about their own final arrangements, said Curtis Rostad, executive director of the Indiana Funeral Directors Association. And it’s possible that seeing Lincoln’s casket could tip a family from cremation to burial, in which case the industry would benefit.

But “mostly it’s community service,” Rostad said. “It’s a way to get people to come by their facility and get acquainted with what they do. Any business benefits from doing something that draws people’s attention.”

Other heroic Americans have been buried publicly, such as John F. Kennedy, but from the funeral director’s perspective, Lincoln is special. He was the most conspicuous example of great advances in embalming that came about during the Civil War.

Lincoln died April 15, 1865, the day after he was shot, but it was May 4 before he was put in the ground. In the three-week interim, he was seen by hundreds of thousands of people, his funeral train stopping in 11 cities on its way from Washington to Springfield, Ill. Lincoln’s coffin was opened at each stop.

The funeral train arrived in Indianapolis April 30, 16 days after Lincoln had breathed his last. According to a historical marker Downtown, “some 50,000 people viewed Lincoln’s open casket.”

Lincoln’s coffin is “a relic of our past,” said Rostad, but the handling of his death represented “the time modern funeral practices, to a great extent, began.”

In the Waiting Station, on a card table near the Lincoln coffin, Crown Hill staffers had placed some handouts, including an Abraham Lincoln fact sheet with 50 facts. Before he was president, Lincoln argued a case before the Supreme Court and lost. His shoe size was between 12 and 14. Grave robbers tried to steal his body in 1876 but failed.

Owens, who often jogs through Crown Hill with his wife, got to thinking about mortality and said that it was important that a deceased person’s survivors have “a place to go” to remember the departed.

But that didn’t necessarily mean a hole in the ground. He himself planned to be cremated and have his ashes spread in Crown Hill’s “scattering garden,” a wooded section of the cemetery.

“It’s a very pretty place,” he said.

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Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com

AP-WF-10-01-14 1358GMT

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Monet ‘Waterlily’ painting at Detroit Institute of Arts

'Waterlily Pond, Green Harmony,' Claude Monet, 1899, oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Bequest of Count Isaac de Camondo 1911. © RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

DETROIT (AP) – One of Claude Monet’s most famous paintings is in Detroit for a three-month stay.

Waterlily Pond, Green Harmony is on loan to the Detroit Institute of Arts from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. It’s to be on display at the DIA from Wednesday through Jan. 4.

The painting is one of hundreds Monet created of his flower garden and pond in Giverny, France.

According to the DIA, Monet’s garden became the focus of his paintings for more than two decades until his death in 1926. He painted several versions of the garden’s pond from the same viewpoint, but in different light conditions.

Waterlily Pond, Green Harmony is the only work on display in a gallery adjacent to Rivera court. The exhibit is free with museum admission.

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Online:

http://www.dia.org

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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Cadillac collectors open museum at Gilmore car complex

An interior view of the new museum showing a 26-foot-long long Cadillac sign. Image by Paul Ayres, courtesy of the Gilmore Car Museum.

BARRY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) – Hundreds of people turned out for the opening of a museum dedicated to maintaining and exhibiting collectible Cadillac and LaSalle vehicles.

The Cadillac-LaSalle Club Museum and Research Center is on the grounds of the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, an unincorporated community in Barry County’s Barry Township near Kalamazoo.

Sharon Spindler tells the Kalamazoo Gazette that she was excited to be able to attend Sunday’s ceremony with her father. Eighty-eight-year-old Walter Peltz Jr. worked as a guard at Cadillac’s Clark Street plant in Detroit.

The 10,000-square-foot building is modeled after a 1948 dealership. Its collection includes a model from Cadillac’s first year of production in 1903, a 1937 LaSalle convertible sedan and a 1957 Cadillac Brougham used in the film Driving Miss Daisy.

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Online:

http://www.cadillaclasalleclub.org

AP-WF-09-28-14 2242GMT

ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

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