Michael Sutty prototype portrait bust of Winston Churchill leads our five auction highlights

Michael Sutty Prototype Portrait Bust of Winston Churchill, $11,875

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – The British porcelain modeler Michael Sutty (1937-2003) is best known for his militaria subjects – including many number of portraits of Winston Churchill in different guises. This portrait bust from around 1980 shows the wartime British prime minister dressed in the ceremonial uniform of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. A similar bust with different facial features formed part of Sutty’s Military and Naval Bust series, which was issued in a limited edition of 250 pieces. These come to market occasionally and make around $200-$400 each when they do.

However, the example pictured here, offered by Lion and Unicorn on the second day of a December 18-20 European Ceramics & Glass Auction, is an earlier prototype. Apparently a one-off, it had an estimate of $2,000-$3,000 and hammered for $9,500 ($11,875 with buyer’s premium).

First Edition of an Important 1764 Abolitionist Book, $11,210

A first edition copy of ‘An Authentic Narrative of some Remarkable and Interesting Particulars in the Life of [John Newton] …’, an influential abolitionist text, which hammered for £7,000 and sold for £8,820 ($11,210) with buyer’s premium at Forum Auctions.
A first edition copy of ‘An Authentic Narrative of some Remarkable and Interesting Particulars in the Life of [John Newton] …’, an influential abolitionist text, which hammered for £7,000 and sold for £8,820 ($11,210) with buyer’s premium at Forum Auctions.

LONDON – Although his name is expunged from the title, the subject of this book of letters on the subject of religion and the slave trade is John Newton (1725-1807). A captain of slave ships, who himself spent some time as a slave in Sierra Leone, he later repented of his deeds and became an evangelical preacher and prominent abolitionist. The letters he wrote to Thomas Haweis (circa 1734-1820), one of the leading figures of the 18th-century evangelical revival, documented his life of ‘wickedness’ in the years before he became a curate at Olney in Buckinghamshire and later rector of St. Mary Woolnoth in the City of London. Newton went on to write the hymn Amazing Grace.

This book of Newton’s letters ran to several editions, but the 1764 copy offered by Forum Auctions in London on December 13 is one of only two known first edition printings. The only other recorded is in the National Library of Scotland. Estimated at £400-£600, it hammered for £7,000 and sold for £8,820 ($11,210) with buyer’s premium.

Barbara Streisand-worn Film Costume Top Hat, $7,800

Barbra Streisand-worn costume top hat from the 1970 film ‘On A Clear Day You Can See Forever,’ which hammered for $6,000 and sold for $7,800 with buyer’s premium at Alex Cooper.
Barbra Streisand-worn costume top hat from the 1970 film ‘On A Clear Day You Can See Forever,’ which hammered for $6,000 and sold for $7,800 with buyer’s premium at Alex Cooper.

TOWSON, Md. – Like Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand (b. 1942-) was a force of nature in 20th-century American popular culture, emerging on the scene in the early 1960s with a Grammy-winning debut album, an Academy Award for her first feature film, the 1968 release Funny Girl, and hundreds of millions of records and motion picture tickets sold.

Her 1970 film On A Clear Day You Can See Forever opened to mixed reviews and is largely forgotten today. Directed by Vincente Minnelli (father of Liza and ex-husband to Judy Garland), the plot follows a chain-smoker (Streisand) who goes to a hypnotist to kick her addiction. During the sessions, it’s revealed that Streisand’s character had a previous life as Lady Melinda Winifred Waine Tentrees, a 19th-century illegitimate child who rose to the social elite.

This costume top hat was worn by Streisand in the film and features Paramount Pictures tags identifying it as hers. It had also been screen-matched. The scarcity of Streisand memorabilia in the marketplace sent the lot into orbit, doubling its high estimate to hammer at $6,000 ($7,800 with buyer’s premium). Designed by legendary costumer Cecil Beaton, the tangerine-color top hat with applied decorations and an attached flowing silk scarf was a breakout star for Alex Cooper during its December 16 Art, Furniture, Rugs & Decorative Arts sale.

Pietra Dura Panel Created by the Gobelins Royal Manufactory, $468,500

Pietra dura panel created by the Gobelins Royal Manufactory near Paris, which hammered for €350,000 and sold for €423,500 ($468,500) with buyer’s premium at Tajan.
Pietra dura panel created by the Gobelins Royal Manufactory near Paris, which hammered for €350,000 and sold for €423,500 ($468,500) with buyer’s premium at Tajan.

PARIS – It was in the hope of saving on the huge sums spent procuring works of art from abroad that Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s minister of finance, began inviting craftsmen to work at the Gobelins royal manufactory on the outskirts of Paris. The project began in 1662 with the consolation of a number of tapestry workshops, but by 1688 had expanded its scope to include practitioners of arts not yet fully mastered in France. Among them were craftsmen headhunted from the ducal workshops in Florence with expertise in hardstone carving.

The projects they undertook included a magnificent table set with four rectangular pietra dura plaques and the crowned royal cypher, the design for which is in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Like many hardstone items from the Louis XIV period, the table itself had seemingly left its royal residence some time before the Revolution and been dismantled to allow the panels to be reused in more fashionable ways.

The 10 by 12.5in (26 by 32cm) pietra dura panel offered as part of the Tajan sale of Furniture & Works of Art on December 19 is thought to be part of the commission. Matching one of four panels pictured in the surviving drawing, it is beautifully worked with jasper, agate, chalcedony, and onyx to create the image of a prowling fox in a landscape. Later mounted in white marble and given a giltwood base in the Regence style, it was offered with an estimate of €50,000-€80,000 but hammered for €350,000 and sold for €423,500 ($468,500) with buyer’s premium. Charged only with providing furnishings for royal residences, the Gobelins manufactory was active for around 40 years until 1715.

19th-century Diving Helmet, $54,000

19th-century diving helmet, possibly by John Date or Siebe Gorman, which hammered for $45,000 and sold for $54,000 with buyer’s premium at Nation’s Attic.
19th-century diving helmet, possibly by John Date or Siebe Gorman, which hammered for $45,000 and sold for $54,000 with buyer’s premium at Nation’s Attic.

WICHITA, Kan. – The world of diving collectibles may seem the ultimate in niche, but it is a category with avid buyers and an extreme scarcity of quality vintage items, making key pieces hotly contested when they come to market.

Nation’s Attic is the leading auction house for vintage diving equipment, and when an elderly widow approached them about liquidating her late husband’s collection, they knew they had something special. This helmet, crafted with meticulous detail, carries no identifying marks, but it had features and fittings that were clearly from the 1860s or 1870s. The skillful soldering of copper and the use of convex glass suggests it was the creation of diving pioneer John Date of Montreal, Canada, or possibly the renowned Siebe Gorman firm in London, United Kingdom.

The late collector had found the helmet in a stash of other vintage diving equipment in North Carolina. He purchased the entire lot decades ago, and the helmet was never shown or shared with the diving community, making its reappearance all the more tantalizing to collectors. When the lot came up for bidding, it immediately jumped above its $10,000-$20,000 estimate and kept climbing until it hammered at $45,000, selling for $54,000 with buyer’s premium to a LiveAuctioneers bidder.

While it is not the world record for a diving helmet – that number currently stands at $63,000 – $54,000 is the new record for an item sold through Nation’s Attic.

Peter Cecere Latin American folk and outsider art at Quinn’s Jan. 26

Painted and carved wood Mexican mermaid body mask, most likely from Guerrero, estimated at $600-$900 as part of Quinn’s sale of the Peter Cecere collection.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. – Eccentric? Visionary? An American original? All three descriptions apply to the late Peter Cecere, a career foreign service and cultural affairs officer who collected Latin American folk and outsider art for more than 50 years.

It was while posted to the Latin American embassies of Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico, and latterly Spain that Cecere began to voraciously acquire the art he felt best reflected grass-roots regional cultures. He estimated that, in his lifetime, he owned between 20,000 and 30,000 pieces. A 1990 auction, together with gifts to museums, winnowed down that number, but a renewed vigor for collecting in subsequent decades contributed to the vast holdings that Quinn’s will begin to disperse on Friday, January 26. Bidding on the 405 lots is available via LiveAuctioneers.

Cecere loved the tales that came with each of these objects. “After I die, there’s no more stories,” Cecere said in a 2018 video documentary about his collection – but the colorful narrative that surrounds this idiosyncratic collection is doubtless part of its appeal. At Cecere’s barn-like residence in rural Rappahannock County, Virginia, both the interior and the exterior were crammed with whimsical scrap-metal animals, peasant devotional works and works of macabre art. In the great room, floating from an artfully painted iridescent sky-ceiling, there were angels, devils, and even a flying cucumber-shape ‘bomb’ named Cuke Nuke.

Paintings were displayed on every available wall space, including a series of pop-culture-inspired artworks by African American outsider Chuckie Williams (Louisiana, 1957-2000).They include an acrylic-on-plywood painting of pop star Madonna that was exhibited at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore in 2010-11. It carries one of the sale’s higher estimates at $1,500-$2,500.

A carved and painted wood mermaid body mask, most likely from Guerrero, Mexico and estimated at $600-$900, is a piece that has resided in Cecere’s collection for close to half a century – he bought it for $425 at El Bazar Sabado in Mexico City in 1977 – and he thought particularly highly of his menagerie of oversize Mexican ‘yard art’ animal sculptures. Each fashioned from oil drums or other discarded metal, there are several roosters in the sale, including an 8ft 4in giant estimated at $1,500-$2,500.

Morphy hosts Brian Lebel’s cowboy and Western relics sale Jan. 26

Original 1900 Wild Bunch Gang photo taken by Fort Worth photographer John Swartz, estimated at $60,000-$80,000 at Morphy.

LAS VEGAS – Morphy Auctions is teaming with Brian Lebel’s 34th Old West Show & Auction and the Las Vegas Antique Arms Show for a 473-lot sale featuring antique arms, Western memorabilia and cowboy relics. The catalog for the Friday, January 26 sale is available for bidding at LiveAuctioneers.

“I expect this to be a one-of-a-kind event in the industry, combining the best of the crossover categories – cowboy and Western, Native American, Hollywood and firearms,” said Dan Morphy, founder and president of Morphy Auctions.

Edward H. Bohlin was the Western outfitter to the stars, creating The Lone Ranger’s silver-accented gear, among others. The sale includes an amazing 34 lots bearing the Bohlin name. His personal sterling silver gun belt, mounted with gold repousse, presented together with a pair of Bohlin-mounted Colt Single Action Army revolvers, appeared in countless parades and was exhibited at the 1967 Montreal World’s Fair. The lot is estimated at $200,000-$250,000.

A museum-grade ledger book created and maintained in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Sitting Bull’s nephew White Bull (1849-1947) – purported killer of General Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn – is unique and historically important. In White Bull’s handwriting, it documents coups, combats and winter counts of the Sioux. In all, there are 162 pages, 120 with writing and 33 with drawings. The auction estimate has been set at $200,000-$250,000.

More than a century after their lives are said to have ended abruptly in a dusty Bolivian town, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid continue to fascinate fans of Western lore. The two friends and partners in crime were part of what was known as the “Fort Worth Five,” whose scurrilous outlaw careers were marked by a long string of bank and train robberies. It was the beginning of the end for the so-called “Wild Bunch” gang when their photograph, taken in 1900, came to the attention of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. That image would soon become the mugshot on Wanted posters throughout the western states. The sale features the original 1900 Wild Bunch Gang photo taken by Fort Worth photographer John Swartz, which is estimated at $60,000-$80,000.

Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys, considered his pair of McCabe parade chaps one of his most prized possessions. They were from a complete parade saddle ensemble commissioned in 1931 for wealthy horsewoman H. L. Musick and her champion horse Diamond. After many Rose Bowl appearances, the silver and gold repousse chaps were acquired by Rogers for use at promotional appearances and in photos. They were exhibited nationwide and resided in the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum Collection, and they now carry a $70,000-$90,000 estimate.

A top prize in the sale is an outfit Clayton Moore wore onscreen in his indelible role as The Lone Ranger. The ensemble consists of a specially dyed dark shirt and pants plus a screen-worn hat and black screen-worn mask designed for use in water scenes. With impeccable provenance, the quintessential Lone Ranger outfit has a $10,000-$20,000 estimate. Also of special interest in the auction is a major photo and poster archive that traces the career of Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger.

Collectors will need to look skyward to take in the full impact of a giant Levi Strauss advertising display of a type distributed in the 1940s to stores throughout the western states. The upper portion of the 12ft-tall figural cowboy is composed of painted hardboard, while the lower portion is dressed with a pair of original Levi’s denim jeans having a 76-inch inseam. The display is one of only two known to Morphy’s specialists and will be offered with a $14,000-$16,000 estimate.