BEVERLY, Mass. – On Jan. 18 Kaminski Auctions presented the estate of Mary L. Alchian of Palm Springs, California. Alchian was a prominent Palm Springs businesswoman and jeweler with a discerning eye for fine jewelry and California art.
LiveAuctioneers.com provide Internet bidding services.
With over 10,000 signed up to bid on the Internet, 300 phone bids and 80-100 present in the audience there was spirited competition on every lot.
A vivid watercolor by Ettore Simonetti (Italian, 1857-1909) titled Market Scene and, signed lower right, was the top lot of the sale achieving a price of $21,600 against an estimate of $3,000-$4,000.
Alchian’s jewelry collection included rare Cartier pieces. A pair of 18K yellow gold earrings, signed Cartier, with 18 natural emeralds and 16 diamonds was hammered down at $20,400, while an unusual Art Deco Cartier 14 carat yellow gold compact with diamonds and sapphires, marked A1170, sold for $5,400.
Her vast collection of jewelry included many unusual Art Deco pieces. A featured lot in the sale was an eye-catching platinum, diamond and sapphire bow bracelet that sold for $14,400.
Numerous phone bidders and collectors online vied for a rare T.B. Starr Art Deco Chinese carved jade pin from the 1920s or ’30s. Set in platinum with a circular diamond border and cabochon rubies, it was valued at $2,500-$4,500 and was finally hammered down at $11,400. A pair of lovely Art Deco diamond and platinum drop earrings with 20 diamonds sold for $6,600.
More eclectic items in the collection included a circa 1920s 18K white gold, pearl and diamond purse in the style of Boucheron with 52 diamonds. It achieved a price of $11,400, while a 19th century harp by the Charles Lindeman Co. of Chicago, numbered 800, sold for $4,800.
Various lots from other estates achieved solid prices as well, including an English sterling silver lidded wine cooler with grape motif, hallmarked for London 1826-27, by makers Rebecca Emes and Edward Barnard that sold for $14,400.
For information call 978-927-2223.
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Pair of 18K yellow gold earrings, signed Cartier, with 18 natural emeralds. Price realized: $20,400. Kaminski Auctions image
Platinum, diamond, and sapphire bow bracelet, diamonds approximately 8 carats. Price realized: $14,400. Kaminski Auctions image
ST. LOUIS – When a single art pottery vase by Frederick Hurten Rhead was sold in April by John Moran Auctioneers for a record-breaking $570,000, collector attention again focused on the University City pottery and porcelain works. Production at the studios lasted only a few years and never achieved commercial success. Yet, for one shining moment, the project united the talents of three luminaries of the ceramics world – the British-born Rhead, America’s premier woman potter Adele Alsop Robineau, and French porcelain master Taxile Doat.
Around the turn of the 20th century in St. Louis, wheeler-dealer businessman E.G. Lewis was constantly on the lookout for new commercial opportunities, although he had a history of not finishing what he started. No doubt encouraged by his wife, Mabel, he got into the specialty magazines-for-women field. By the time of the famous Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, he had purchased 85 acres for residential real estate development and built his publishing headquarters there. University City, where he invested, still exists as a separately governed town within St. Louis and the beautiful Woman’s Magazine Building is now its City Hall.
Women’s rights and women’s education were the viral topics of the day. Seizing the moment, Lewis set up what he called the American Woman’s League and conceived a grandiose scheme to establish a university curriculum of correspondence courses to sell to his magazine subscribers. He began by hiring well-known teachers for an Art Academy to offer instruction in drawing, painting, sculpture, and above all ceramics. The time between Lewis’ proposal of the idea in 1909 and the last kiln firing in 1914 was short, but the pottery and porcelain made by the faculty in that brief period remains as a breathtaking tribute to a dream that was never quite realized.
Collectors face two difficulties in their study of University City’s output. Little of the output of the ceramic studios was offered for sale, and there is no distinct, easily recognizable unifying style. Fortunately, the entire complex story of Lewis and his educational venture is explored in the excellent catalog University City Ceramics: Art Pottery of the American Woman’s League by David Conradsen, curator of decorative arts, St. Louis Art Museum, and Ellen Paul Denker, written to accompany a 2004 exhibition.
An archival photo reprinted in the catalog documents Lewis’s initial success in staffing the Art Academy ceramics division with internationally recognized talent. The occasion was the first kiln firing at University City in April 1910; the production is displayed on tables in the front. At center stands Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865-1929), one of the most influential American ceramists of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Based in Syracuse, New York, she was a brilliant studio potter devoted to creativity not commerce. In 1899 with her husband, Samuel, she had founded the magazine Keramic Studio, which explored ceramic manufacture and decoration.
Standing on the right in the 1910 photo is Taxile Doat (1851-1939), the venerable French master with a snowy beard, who arrived in St. Louis from France in 1909 to head the ceramics department at University City, where he remained until its closure in 1914. While working in porcelain at Sevres, he had specialized in delicate pate-sur-pate decoration using classical themes, but he also experimented in his private studio with Japanese forms and glazes. The Robineaus had published a translation of Doat’s book on porcelain technique, Grand Feu Ceramics, which had influenced Adelaide to become an expert in that medium.
At left in the photo is Frederick Hurten Rhead (1880-1942), who arrived at University City to write the correspondence course in pottery making and to teach advanced students, while he made exquisite works of his own, which would further the reputation of the school. Born and trained in England, Rhead and his wife, Agnes, had been in the United States since 1902; he had worked in many of the Ohio potteries and eventually continued his career in California after leaving St. Louis in 1911. He was already well-known to American potters through his articles in Keramic Studio.
The St. Louis Art Museum is fortunate to retain works by all three of these notable University City ceramists in its permanent collection and examples can be viewed online at www.slam.org. In an interview with ACN, curator David Conradsen noted, “Doat had published the secret of how to make porcelain, which was the province of national manufactories like Sevres. Businessman E.G. Lewis seized on the idea of hiring Robineau and Doat. If she can teach herself how to make porcelain using this formula as published by Doat, any American woman can do it. And then he added Rhead for good measure, an artist who was published almost weekly in Keramics Studio.
“He brought this extraordinary group of talent to University City, and it’s unfortunate that they didn’t have a longer run. But what we’re left with are these extraordinary objects and the story of these fascinating individuals. There’s the problem of what Lewis said he was doing and what he actually did. He talked big, but I do think he was kind of a visionary. He just had too many balls in the air and he never stuck with anything long enough to see it succeed. It’s easy to second guess Lewis but when you look at the objects, they speak for themselves. The ceramics are his lasting legacy.”
Each of the three artists under discussion had distinguished careers before and after the University City venture, so collectors must consider what pieces were made there and what was manufactured elsewhere. An index on marks in the Conradsen catalog is a guide to possible variants. The record-setting Rhead peacock vase had an impeccable provenance beginning with its purchase in St. Louis in 1910 and ending up several generations later in Southern California, and Rhead did some his best work while in residence at University City. A 1910 panel of tiles with peacock design is a prize possession of the Two Red Roses Foundation, which is planning a new Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement scheduled to open in Florida in 2017.
Adelaide Alsop Robineau also was at University City for only about two years, yet it was there that she created her masterpiece, the intricately carved “Scarab Vase” now at the Everson Museum of Art. This vase and several others created for the American Woman’s league were part of the presentation that won her the grand prize at the international exposition in Turin, Italy in 1911. One mark she used was her monogram with an incised UC and a date.
Although much of her work is now in museums, Robineau’s forms and other ceramics by the University City artists do show up at auctions. Don Treadway of the Treadway Toomey Galleries said recently, “I’ve actually sold a good bit of Robineau and University City privately. I have two clients in the St. Louis area who like it because of the local connection. I have had numerous things through the years by all of these people, but it’s pretty difficult to find most of it. In terms of the more important artists in American art pottery, these were some of the best and some of the most elusive. You can have all the money in the world but you can’t always find pieces.” Treadway was fortunate enough to sell a rare Frederick Rhead vase in 2007 which had been consigned from a California collection.
Taxile Doat had a long and prolific career, principally in France, so his work shows up at European auction houses as well as in American sales. He arrived in University City with a large study collection of his porcelains, and then – as was the case with Robineau – went on to do some of his most spectacular exhibition pieces while working at the school. Another archival photo shows him at work in the studio on a monumental porcelain charger commemorating the first convention of the American Woman’s League. Collectors can choose from wide variety of Doat styles ranging from classical works for Sevres to simple Japanese forms with stunning glazes.
University City Ceramics catalog is available for $29.95 from St Louis Art Museum bookstore; call the shop at 314-655-5249 or email museumshop@slam.org.
Perfectly suited to the form, a multicolored peacock wraps its tail around a slender vase signed by Frederick and Agnes Rhead, which sold for a record-setting $570,000 at John Moran in California last year. Dated 1910, the masterwork was created by the artist and his wife during their brief residency at the University City ceramics school for women in the St. Louis area. John Moran Auctioneers image
This diminutive vase topped with yellow phlox demonstrates Adelaide Alsop Robineau’s mastery of the porcelain process. Made at University City in 1910, the elaborately carved vase features cutout reticulations filled with translucent glaze. St. Louis Art Museum image
The Rheads also created architectural tile patterns for interior decoration. A fireplace surround with landscape frieze was created in 1911 for the home of John J. Meacham in University City and is now permanently installed in the St. Louis Art Museum nearby. St. Louis Art Museum image
Taxile Doat, who came to University City directly from the Sevres factory in France, had literally written the book – ‘Grand Feu Ceramics’ – on porcelain manufacture. Among his works now in the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum is this variation on a traditional Japanese sake bottle covered with a crystalline glaze. St. Louis Art Museum image
Although he produced art pottery and tiles both before and after his residency at University City, important works by Frederick Rhead seldom come on the market. This small vase with an incised organic pattern was hammered down for $21,000 at Treadway Toomey in 2007. Treadway Toomey Auctions image
Once again, Frederick Rhead demonstrates his ability to unify form and design in this 12-inch vase wrapped with an incised pattern of winter trees, made circa 1911 during his residence in University City.
When Taxile Doat arrived at University City to teach porcelain techniques in 1909, he brought with him a study collection of examples he had produced while working in the Sevres factory or his French studio. One of hiss favorite forms was a glazed circular charger with a classical pate-sur-pate medallion at its center. Similar examples have sold on the American and European auction markets in the $3,000-$7,000 range. St. Louis Art Museum image
BEACHWOOD, Ohio – Carvings of birds, especially ducks and other wild species, are collected by those who consider the best examples to be art, while other examples are to be used as decoys when hunting. While both types of decoys can be found at antiques auctions and shops, most are sold in auctions or shows that specialize in decoys, wood carvings and related pieces.
The best of the 20th- and 21st-century carvers are famous, and collectors can name the most talented. A stone carver named Charles H. Hart (1862-1960) hunted and made decoys for his brother and friends. At first Hart specialized in just a few species, including black ducks, Canada Geese, goldeneyes and mallards. About 1900, he started making a stick-up black duck that had detached wings that flap and a head that could be turned. Hart was soon selling his birds to stores in Boston. In the 1930s, when the country was fascinated by the explorations in Antarctica, he began carving penguins. Most had applied flippers and color showing at the neck of theblack and white birds. He made them in all sizes from about 6 inches to 4 feet high.
Today, because of the movies Happy Feet and Madagascar featuring penguins, there is renewed interest in the penguins and the work by Charles Hart. The 8-inch-high birds have been auctioning for $400 to $750.
Q: I bought a secondhand Ethan Allen drop-leaf side table back in 1967. It’s still in very good condition. It’s maple and in a typical Early American style. It’s marked “Ethan Allen” and “Baumritter.” Why Baumritter? And what is the table worth?
A: The furniture company we know as Ethan Allen was founded in 1932 as Baumritter Corp. The owners were Theodore Baumritter and his brother-in-law, Nathan S. Ancell. The company, based in New York City, made and sold housewares and decorative items the first few years. It didn’t start manufacturing and selling furniture until 1939, three years after the partners bought a closed furniture factory in Beecher Falls, Vermont. The company named its Early American line of furniture “Ethan Allen” after the Revolutionary War hero from Vermont. The company’s name was changed from Baumritter Corp. to Ethan Allen Industries in 1972. Your table is an early one if it’s marked “Baumritter,” but it’s not an antique. Still, the table is well-made and solid and could sell for $100 to $250.
Q: I have a gasoline ration card from July 10, 1942, that belonged to my husband’s grandmother. It has a large capital letter “A” and the words “Basic Gasoline Ration, United States of America, Office of Price Administration” on the top. My grandmother’s name and address and the make, model and date of her car are written in ink. Is this worth anything or just a piece of the past?
A: During World War II, gasoline, tires, sugar, meat, shoes and other items were rationed. Gasoline rationing began in 1942 and lasted until World War II ended in August 1945. Gas rationing was meant to reduce driving so the supply of rubber and gas could be used for military needs. The car owner received a ration book with coupons that had to be redeemed when buying the gas. A sticker with the appropriate letter was displayed on the car’s windshield. Most people were issued the “A” sticker and card, which allowed three or four gallons of gas a week. People working in the war effort who needed to drive to work were allowed up to 8 gallons a week and had a “B” card. “C” was for doctors, nurses, ministers, mail delivery, farm workers, construction workers, and several other groups, “E” for emergency vehicles, “R” for nonhighway farm vehicles, “T” for truckers, and “X” for members of Congress and other special groups. Gasoline ration cards sell for $1 to $3.
Q: I have a signed Phoebe Stabler brass Madonna and child statue that was my great-grandmother’s. Is this of any value?
A: Phoebe Stabler (1879-1955) was an English sculptor best known for her pottery figures. She also made figures in bronze and stone. Bronze figures made by Stabler have sold for over $1,000 at auction. A 13-inch bronze Madonna and child with John the Baptist, made by Stabler in 1907, sold for $3,686 in 2012.
Q: I have a pewter chick and cracked eggshell figural napkin holder that’s been in our family well over 80 years. Can you tell me who made it and its value?
A: Napkin rings were fashionable from 1869 to about 1900. Most were made of silver plate, though sterling silver, porcelain, glass, wood and other materials were also used. Silver-plated figural napkin rings are popular with collectors today. Several companies, including Derby Silver Co., made figural chick and egg napkin rings. Most figural rings with silver plating in good condition sell for $100 to $300.
Tip: It can be hard to thread a needle, especially with the old pure cotton thread that should be used for repairing old fabric. Put hairspray on the end of the thread to stiffen it.
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.
Cracker Jack toy, Zephyr train, red paint, Tootsietoy, 1930s, 2 1/4 inches, $25.
Order the special reports set: “Buyers’ Guide to 20th Century Costume Jewelry,” Part One and Part Two. Only $34.95. These reports identify the most popular makers and designers of costume jewelry. European and North American costume jewelry, Mexican silver jewelry and mid-century jewelry. Recognize Hobe and Sigi jewelry and rare pieces of Bakelite. For the serious collector and the beginner. Available only from Kovels for $34.95 plus $4.95 postage and handling. Order by phone at 800-303-1996; online at Kovels.com; or mail to Kovels, P.O. Box 22900, Beachwood, OH 44122.
LONDON – How did I get interested in antiques and collecting? Down a hole in a Victorian rubbish dump. Unlikely, I know, but it’s true.
It was the discovery that an area of my hometown, romantically called Fol Hollow, was actually a derivation of Foul Hollow, because a century or more ago, that was where the residents dumped all their waste.
Alerted to the story as a young reporter on the local newspaper, I was amazed to see the clay pipes, pot lids, ginger beer bottles and other collectables being unearthed by the wheelbarrow load. Until then, I thought all stuff that dated from the 19th century was in museums.
The dump had been uncovered when high-grade silica sand had been discovered beneath it. The bulldozers moved in, as did hordes of bottle diggers and after joining them, after a few minutes, my garden fork stuck gold: an embossed glass bottle, strangely with a marble in its neck.
A little research in the town reference library revealed that in the early 1800s, fizzy drinks manufacturers had a problem stopping gas escaping from their products.
In 1814, in a patent application for a bottle-filling machine, one William Hamilton had sketched a bottle with a pointed bottom, forcing it to be stored lying on its side. This ensured that the cork always remained moist and didn’t shrink, allowing the gas to escape.
This remained the common method of bottling aerated mineral water until 1875, when Hiram Codd patented the marble stopper. Trapped inside the bottle’s neck, the marble was forced upwards by the gas as the bottle was filled, pressed hard against a rubber washer in the lip.
It worked famously, so well in fact that when the time came to open the bottle, a sharp rap on the bottle top was required to dislodge it. It’s how the British phrase “a load of codswallop” was coined, apparently.
Soon our house was full of the things – we made a point of collecting only those bearing the names of drinks firms from our hometown – which were quickly joined by other “discoveries” such as clay pipes, pot lids, cobalt blue glass poison bottles – they have ribs and “pimples” in their design so that they could be identified by the visually impaired – and pots which once contained ointment so magical it could cure everything from scrofula to sciatica.
It had been a similar story for 70-year-old Marti Newman, expect she didn’t have the sweat and toil of digging for her treasures. She found them as a young woman out diving off the coast in South Florida.
We’ll be home from Florida by the time you read this, but we met Marti at the annual show and tabletop sale run by the Suncoast Antiques Bottle Collectors’ Association. Not only was she one of the oldest members, she was also exhibiting glass with links to the earliest of all period American glass.
Her first find, she explained, was an antique soda bottle – pop to us Brits – covered in barnacles. Like us, it was enough to start her on a long road of collecting, but now was the time to downsize.
One of her prize pieces was an early flask of a type first made by Henry William Stiegel, at his glassworks in Pennsylvania, which he founded in 1763. It was made of blown clear glass and decorated with charming hand-applied gilt decoration and etching.
Her 19th century example could be mine for $50 (£33) although it would never have survived the suitcase journey home. Actually, I would have preferred her gin flask decorated with a likeness of opera singer Jenny Lind (1820-1887), the “Swedish Nightingale.” It was made probably to commemorate her yearlong tour of the U.S. in 1850, organized by circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum. Price: $125 (£82).
Or I did until I saw the so-called “back bar bottles” – saloon whisky decanters being exhibited by Paul Van Vactor. He had traveled the 900 miles from his home in Louisville, Kentucky, to show at the fair and the quality of his collection was superb.
The best were decorated in white enamel, overlaid onto the body of the decanter with the name of the saloon where they were used. He tries to concentrate on those from his hometown, although after 45 years of collecting, his show table featured everything from mini, pint, quart named whisky bottles and Kentucky blue decorated stoneware flagons.
Exhibitor Dave Theiben is a Floridian but was making the show part of his vacation. His oldest exhibit was a German, black glass wine bottle with snapped pontil. That’s the rough scar where the object has been broken away from the rod of glass from which it was made.
The pontil mark is important to collectors for dating purposes. Its presence indicates that a piece was blown freehand, while its absence means either that it has been ground away leaving a smooth dimple or that the work was mold-blown and therefore later.
Dave had priced the bottle at $200 (£132) but I fancied his 1950s “Freshen up with 7Up” soda jerk’s paper hat. He had acquired a number of them in a job lot and was selling them at $5 (£3.30) a time.
A group of good early wine bottles were on Charlie Livingston’s table. UK collectors pay handsomely for such examples, the earliest among which have a globular body and tall, drawn neck.
The so-called shaft and globe bottle was common in the mid-1600s, but by the end of the century, necks became shorter until, by the early 1700s, they had almost disappeared into the shoulder of the vessel. These are termed onion bottles, while those shaped like today’s bottles began to emerge in the 1740s.
Personalized, individually hand-blown bottles were valued possessions of the rich and were used over and over again. To avoid the owner losing them or them being claimed by another, they were often marked at the time of manufacture with his initials or coat of arms.
Later, the idea spread among tavern keepers, wine merchants and even universities. Many also bear dates, and while they do give an indication of the age of a bottle, they are more likely to relate to the wine’s vintage, or to commemorate important personal events such as a birth or the receipt of a knighthood.
Sadly none of the latter was forthcoming at the show, but Charlie Livingston had good examples of the former, with affordable prices around the $200 to $300 mark (£130-200). We hope to go back next year with more spending money.
Marti Newman shows off her Steigel-type glass flask.
Some of the saloon bar whisky bottles shown by Paul Van Vactor. From the left, they are inscribed Lalley’s Jockey Club, Thorne’s Whisky and Rosebud.
Floridian Dave Theiben with his early German free-blown wine bottle and his $5 soda jerk’s hat.
Some of the early shaft and globe and onion wine bottles shown by Charlie Livingston from Tampa, Florida. Those without the natural shine have been lifted from the seabed
Seabed bottles, some of them encrusted with barnacles.
They may not be antique, but collectors will pay for vintage bottles transfer-decorated with leading brands both past and present.
There is also strong demand among collectors for antique bottle labels, which can be purchased cheaply and are easy to store. The pointed bottle at the top of the picture is a Hamilton. Ironically it came originally from Bournemouth.
CAIRO (AFP) – The damage caused by a botched repair of the mask of Tutankhamun that left dried glue on the priceless relic may be undone with careful treatment, a German conservator said Saturday.
The golden funerary mask, one of the main tourist attractions at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, bears the sticky aftermath of what appears to have been overzealous use of glue to fix its beard in place.
The beard had fallen off accidently when the mask was removed from its case last year to repair the lighting in the case where it is displayed, officials said.
“There is no actual endangering of the mask … the measures that have been taken are reversible,” Christian Eckmann, who specializes in conserving archaeological glass and metal objects, told reporters at a press conference at the museum.
Eckmann said that when the lighting in the display case was being repaired in August 2014, “the mask was touched and the beard fell … due to the glue which was used during the first restoration of the mask in 1941.”
He said he was unaware what kind of epoxy was used in the repair, but epoxy “is not the best solution” to fix artifacts even if it is often used.
However, the glue was applied improperly and its remains were visible on the braided beard piece, he said.
“It can be reversed. It has to be done very carefully, but it is reversible,” said Eckmann, who has now been appointed by the antiquities ministry to oversee the mask’s repair.
Describing the botched repair work, Eckmann said “there was an attempt to glue (the beard) with another resin.”
“The beard is very heavy … more than two kilos (4.4 pounds),” he told AFP, saying it was still difficult to clearly assess the damage done to the priceless relic.
Antiquities Minister Mahmud al-Damaty on Friday denied that the 3,000-year-old relic was treated carelessly.
“The job was done correctly,” he told AFP.
A museum official previously said the damage occurred when the mask hit the display case and almost fell when it was removed.
“So (the curator) grabbed it in his arms to break the fall, and the beard separated,” he said.
“This mistake can happen. But what caused it to get worse? The curator was scared and he fixed it hastily.”
The death mask of the enigmatic boy king is one of the crown jewels of the Egyptian Museum, which also houses the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses II.
The museum used to attract millions of tourists before a 2011 revolt – centered in nearby Tahrir Square – brought down president Hosni Mubarak and unleashed four years of tumult.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) – A California group wants the Navy to reverse course on the Ranger, a Newport News-built aircraft carrier that proved itself in battle, starred in Hollywood and is now destined for the scrap yard.
Top Gun Super Carrier of Long Beach Inc. has secured $14 million in pledges and contacted members of Congress to try and save the ship, said project manager Michael B. Shanahan. Its campaign has spread to social media and an online petition at change.org.
A few years ago, a previous group tried to raise money to save the ship but fell well short of its goal. Shanahan said his group has major corporate backing and is working on the logistical hurdles of parking the ship in Long Beach, California.
“We’re for real,” he said recently in a phone interview from California.
But so is the dismantling contract between the Navy and International Shipbreaking of Brownsville, Texas.
Under terms of a deal announced in December, the Navy will pay the company 1 cent to tow the ship from Bremerton, Washington, around South America. The trip to Texas is expected to last four to five months.
As the group’s name suggests, Ranger appeared in the hit film Top Gun starring Tom Cruise. It also had a cameo in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, where it served as a stand-in for the USS Enterprise – the carrier, not the starship.
More to the point, Ranger proved its mettle in combat, earning 13 battle stars for service in Vietnam. In January 1991, it was among the flotilla that launched air strikes in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
The third Forrestal-class carrier to be built, Ranger was decommissioned in 1993.
After decommissioning, it was kept for potential future reactivation until stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in 2004 and redesignated for donation. For the next eight years, the Navy made the ship available, said Chris Johnson, a spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command.
One group, the USS Ranger Foundation, expressed interest.
“Unfortunately, that organization was only able to raise $105,000 of their estimated $32 million in startup costs,” Johnson said in an email to the Daily Press. “Because we’re not able to keep ships in storage indefinitely, the Navy removed the ship from donation hold in 2012 and awarded the scrapping contract in December 2014.
“We are not entertaining any additional offers,” he said, “and we have no plan to return the ship to donation hold. We expect the ship will be removed by the scrapping contractor in February.”
Shanahan’s group has offered to donate money so the Navy can keep the carrier in Bremerton while plans are finalized. Johnson said the Navy can’t accept private money for an inherently military purpose.
“It is not accurate when the organization says they have funds available to keep the ship in storage,” Johnson said.
Johnson also pointed out that putting the Ranger in Long Beach would compete with the battleship Iowa museum 6 miles away in San Pedro and the aircraft carrier Midway museum 100 miles away in San Diego.
Shanahan says his group envisions the ship as a self-sustaining commercial attraction.
The Navy preferred to see the ship converted into a memorial or museum, which is why it was available for eight years, Johnson said. But when the previous effort fell through, the Navy decided it was time to move on. It costs taxpayers $100,000 to $200,000 per year to store the aircraft carrier, including security, fire/flooding protection and periodic exterior maintenance to keep paint from falling into the water.
“Unfortunately, we are not able to keep ships in storage forever,” he said, “and so we had no choice but to move forward with this contract.”
SAN ANTONIO (AP) – Ten years have passed since Rick Range found a small, bronze Spanish cannon that may have been fired at the Alamo, tucked away in a building in rural North Texas.
“And I was amazed. It was in a dark storage-type workroom, way out in the country,” said Range, a Dallas-area Alamo researcher.
That well-traveled cannon, now on display at the Alamo, was dedicated at a ceremony Saturday to acknowledge those who helped get it there in late 2010. While it has not been linked conclusively to the 1836 siege and battle, there were enough clues to convince the San Jacinto Battleground Conservancy to restore it and put it on permanent loan at the state shrine. Alamo Historian Bruce Winders said the cannon is one of six on the grounds of the shrine, and the only one made of bronze, that were there in 1836.
The cannon is thought to be one of 13 dug up in 1852, near Houston and Alamo streets, for a fence built for local pioneer Samuel Maverick. Historians theorize it might have been fired from wooden palisades by the Alamo church, from a platform in the church or near the Alamo’s south main gate.
The conservancy found correspondence indicating the cannon was sent as payment for a debt in the 1880s from San Antonio to the country estate of the Howard B. French family of Philadelphia, and displayed on their lawn as “the Alamo cannon.” In 1986, collector J.P. Bryan of Houston bought the nearly 400-pound gun and shipped it back to Texas.
Bryan sold it in an auction to John McRae, who kept it on his family farm north of Dallas. Range learned about the purchase in 2005 and began looking for the cannon. Although McRae had died in 2000, his daughter showed Range the cannon and agreed in 2008 to donate it for display at the Alamo, as her father had wished.
The daughter, Sue McRae Stover, and descendants of Maverick will be acknowledged Saturday, along with family members of Gregorio Esparza, an Alamo defender who may have fired the cannon in the predawn battle, Range said. Author-historian Gregg Dimmick of Wharton will discuss the cannon’s history.
Of the 21 cannons used to defend the Alamo, the bronze gun, known as a 4-pounder to reflect the weight of ordnance it fired, appears to be the ninth one recovered.
Based on old photos and other research, Range believes the most famous Alamo cannon, the 18-pounder fired defiantly in response to Santa Anna’s call for surrender, was on outdoor display in San Pedro Springs Park from about 1870 to 1917.
“What happened to it is a total mystery,” Range told the San Antonio Express-News, adding that the iron gun might have been melted down for a scrap metal drive during World War I.
Jan DeVault, president of the conservancy, said the group raised $5,000 to restore the cannon, which was found badly weathered and oxidized. Donated services by Texas A&M University’s Conservation Research Laboratory, which treated it for two years in a vat of base solution, and the labor and personal expense of many volunteers helped return the mid-1700s gun to the Alamo, she said.
The conservancy has raised a total of about $2 million to preserve, promote and research the San Jacinto site east of Houston, where Texan forces won independence from Mexico about six weeks after the fall of the Alamo. But DeVault said the cannon needed to be in San Antonio for “proper historical context.”
“It was right to return the cannon to the Alamo,” she added.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – A monument honoring the architect of the Nebraska Capitol has been approved to go up in a Lincoln neighborhood.
The Lincoln Journal Star reports that the Capitol Environs Commission approved the monument to recognize Bertram Goodhue on Thursday.
The Near South Neighborhood Association in Lincoln plans to install it before May 10.
The concrete monument will be placed at Goodhue Boulevard and A Street in honor of the New York architect. The association plans to use a $2,500 grant it received from NeighborWorks Lincoln to pay for it.
Ed Zimmer, the city’s historic preservation planner, says the language for an engraved plaque still needs to be approved.
Goodhue Boulevard is one of the four axial streets that radiate out from the Capitol.
NEW YORK (AP) – Antique and fine furniture is Miguel Saco’s specialty. The master restorer and conservator is known for enhancing the natural beauty of furniture from the last four centuries, including pieces found at the White House, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Madrid’s Royal Palace. His expertise and knowledge is sought out by renowned collectors, dealers and art fairs.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, (AFP) – Dutch police on Sunday shot dead a knife-wielding man who tried to stab pedestrians outside an art museum in the northern city of Groningen.
The shooting happened around 5:30 p.m. outside the university city’s Groninger Museum, when the man threatened bystanders with a number of large knives, police spokesman Ernest Zinsmeyer told AFP.
“When police approached the ma, he fled. Officers fired a warning shot but the man tried to stab bystanders as he ran away and police shot him,” he said.
The man then fell into a canal near the museum and was pronounced dead by the time police retrieved him from the water.
Zinsmeyer said the suspect had not yet been identified and his motives were unknown.
He said although a terror attack could not be ruled out, it was unlikely. The incident was being investigated.
As in other countries, Dutch police have been on high alert since a series of Islamist attacks left 17 people dead in Paris earlier this month.
