John Moran auction sets record for American art pottery

PASADENA, Calif. — In a remarkable sale punctuated throughout by spectacular results, John Moran Auctioneers set four auction records for decorative and fine art, including a record price for an American art pottery vase with the sale of a masterwork by Frederick Hurten Rhead (1880-1942). The April 29 auction, which included 211 cataloged lots of Continental furniture and paintings, early 20th century American design, porcelain, silver and Asian artifacts, selected from multiple estates and private collections throughout California, totaled more than $1.8 million in sales and underscored the strength in the market for top-tier works of art and highest quality furnishings.

LiveAuctioneers.com provided Internet live bidding.

The Rhead vase realized $570,000 (including 20 percent buyer’s premium), a healthy $54,000 over the previous record of $516,000, set in March 2007 by a smaller example created during Rhead’s residence in Santa Barbara, California. The Santa Barbara vase featured the quintessential California motif of a grove of eucalyptus trees.

The new record holder reigns as a supreme example of the potter’s art, incised in minute detail with a bewitching peacock, its tail feathers glazed in turquoise and three shades of green, fanned luxuriantly over a brown and buff-colored ground accented with stylized black tree branches. Standing 17 1/2 inches high and dated 1910, the vase was made during the British-born Rhead’s brief tenure at the University City Pottery in University City, Mo., and is also signed by Rhead’s wife and collaborator, Agnes Rhead (b.1877). Another example of Rhead’s work, a panel of four tiles, also made in 1910 and also depicting a peacock, sold at auction for $637,500 in October 2012 to Rudy Ciccarello of the Two Red Roses Foundation in Florida.

In addition to rarity, compelling design, and peerless craftsmanship, the vase sold at Moran’s possessed that all-important guarantee of auction success: impeccable provenance. Purchased from the pottery in the summer of 1910 by a couple residing in St. Louis, Mo., it was given as a wedding anniversary and baby gift to the Meyers Family of Iowa City, Iowa, and handed down through several generations of the family. Only recently was it plucked from obscurity, discovered by an heir during a clean out of his Southern California home.

Several minutes of fast-moving combat eliminated all but three contenders. In the end, one of the telephone bidders, Robert Kaplan, finally prevailed over the one remaining floor bidder, who appeared to have dropped out early but surprised everyone by re-entering the fight late in the game. It has since been revealed that Kaplan was acting as agent for Ciccarello.

The record-setting vase and the tile panel will soon be united in a setting worthy of their stature and where they will be available for public viewing. The Two Red Roses Foundation is breaking ground on a new museum in St. Petersburg, Fla. The Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, scheduled to open the first quarter of 2017, will be the first museum in the United States solely dedicated to preserving the legacy of American Arts and Crafts design. The museum plans to showcase the two Rhead peacocks as highlights of its holdings of more than 1,300 items of decorative and fine art, including several hundred from Ciccarello’s collection.

Moran’s audience saw not one, but two art pottery records set on the 29th. Just a few moments prior to the sale of the Rhead vase, a vase made in 1929 by Margaret Kelly Cable (1884-1960) realized $43,200, surpassing by $31,200 the previous record for Cable pottery. A one-time student of Rhead, Cable was hired in 1910 as the head of the newly founded ceramics department of the North Dakota School of Mines, where she devoted herself to promoting the use of the local clays and to producing, in her own words, “design material particular to the prairies.” The 13-inch-high vase, glazed brown and incised all around with repeating motifs of flickertails (a kind of ground squirrel native to the northern United States) and wheat stalks, carried an estimate of $5,000-$7,000. It too sold to a phone bidder after a prolonged battle.

Two of the new records Moran’s established were for fine art. A sweeping view of the Roman countryside by Russian painter Feodor Matveef (1758-1826) painted in the grand tradition of the classical landscape, drew intense interest from Europe and Russia. The large (58 x 72 inches) oil painting arrived on the block for the first time in decades, consigned from a private collector who acquired it from Sotheby’s, London in the 1980s. With expectations already running high, it took the stage carrying an estimate of $70,000-$90,000. A slew of  bidders drove the price up to a final bid of $420,000, placed by a Russian telephone bidder. The previous record price for a work by Matveef was $353,840.

The other painting achieving a new high price for the artist was an oil by Theodor Von Hormann (1840-1895 Austrian) depicting a springtime scene of children at tables in a garden beneath blossoming trees. Estimated to realize $12,000-$18,000, the 31 3/4 x 39 1/4-inch canvas ultimately sold to a European bidder for $180,000.

Moran’s also captured an enthusiastic audience for ornate Continental furniture. An impressive C. Bechstein grand piano made in 1882, the French Empire style case elaborately mounted in gilt bronze with lyres, scrolling foliage, laurel sprays and lion’s mask-headed monopodia, lured a bidder up to $78,000 (estimate: $50,000-$70,000). Equally imposing, and consigned from the same Malibu, Calif., collection, was an enormous 24-light Louis XV-style gilt and patinated bronze chandelier with figures of dragons perched among its branches. It sold over the high estimate of $20,000, for $27,000. A distinguished pair of elegantly proportioned Continental rouge marble and gilt bronze columnar pedestals with finely cast Corinthian capitals performed extremely well, finding a buyer for $15,600 (estimate $3,000-$5,000).

Additional sale highlights include:

• A pair of unsigned Continental terra cotta sculptures dating to the 18th or early 19th century, depicting full-length classical figures of allegorical of Spring and Autumn, fetched $45,000 (estimate: $5,000-$7,000).

• A circa 1920 “mystery” clock by Swiss maker Juvenia, featuring a cherub rowing a silver leaf-form boat on a mirror-glass lake, his oar indicating the hours on a dial enameled with Commedia dell’Arte figures frolicking in a landscape, enchanted bidders far and wide, selling for $13,200 (estimate: $4,000-$6,000).

• A red coral carving of two conjoined figures realized $9,000 (estimate $2,000-$4,000), confirming the still-rising demand for Chinese works of art.

For more information on Moran’s sales, both past and upcoming, contact John Moran Auctioneers at: info@johnmoran.com or 626-793-1833. Consignment inquiries are always welcome.

 

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

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ADDITIONAL LOTS OF NOTE

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