Catherine Saunders-Watson, Author at Auction Central News

Skinner Fine Jewelry auction glitters with nearly $1.8M in sales

Art Deco diamond, onyx, jadeite and coral brooch by Boucheron Paris, sold for $189,600. Image courtesy Skinner Inc.

BOSTON – Skinner Inc. today announced the results of its March 17, 2009 Fine Jewelry sale. The auction achieved its overall high estimate, grossing $1,768,021.

A number of the top-selling lots came to Skinner from the family of William and Henry Waters, who established Baltimore’s Waters Art Museum. The star of the show was a stunning Renaissance Revival long chain (lot 530) that sold for $402,000. It was estimated at $75,000-$125,000.

Another eye-catching lot, an archaeological Revival gold and glass bead fringe necklace, circa 1880, sold for $67,545.50.   Additional highlights included an Art Deco diamond, onyx, jadeite and coral brooch by Boucheron Paris (lot 514), which sold for $189,600.00, and a Renaissance Revival enamel, sapphire and diamond brooch (lot 529) that achieved $71,100.

In Memoriam: New Orleans artist Johnny Donnels, 84

French Quarter Cottages, watercolor and India ink painting by Johnny Donnels. Courtesy LiveAuctioneers Archive/New Orleans Auction Gallery 3/29/09 auction catalog.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Johnny Donnels, who won acclaim for his pictures of the people and places in New Orleans’ French Quarter, has died. He was 84.

Cheron Brylski, a close friend, said Friday that Donnels fell outside his Desire Street home last week and broke his hip. He died Thursday, March 19.

Donnels had a gallery near Jackson Square for more than 50 years. He lived in the Quarter for most of his life, and was playwright Tennessee Williams’ neighbor in the 1940s.

His work, chronicled in a 1999 book, has been exhibited at the Kennedy Center, Harvard University, the Ford Times Collection of American Art, the National Academy of Design, the New Orleans Museum of Art and Historic New Orleans Collection.

Although he was a renowned photographer, Donnels began his career as a painter.

For a time, he worked as a police sketch artist. In the 1960s, Donnels bartered a painting for a camera, and a career change followed.

AP-ES-03-21-09 0723EDT

Egypt wants a 3,000-year-old coffin back from U.S.

CAIRO (AP) – Egypt will soon file an official request with U.S. authorities to return a 3,000-year-old wooden coffin illegally smuggled out of the country more than a century ago, the country’s top archaeologist said Sunday.

In a statement, Zahi Hawass said the nearly 5-foot-long coffin was taken from Egypt in 1884 after it was stolen from a tomb in Luxor, an ancient pharaonic capital in southern Egypt.

Hawass says the ornamented coffin belonged to Pharaoh Ames of the 21st Dynasty, which ruled over Egypt from 1081-931 B.C.

The coffin is currently in the hands of the customs authority in Miami, Florida, who confiscated it after it was shipped to the United States from Spain, added the statement.

U.S. officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Egypt has launched a drive to recover its antiquities taken abroad, including some residing in famous museums.

AP-ES-03-22-09 1319EDT

Gun auction featuring Joseph Murphy’s Colt collection earns $11.4M

Engraved and gold-inlaid Colt single-action army revolver known as Sears & Roebuck Cowboy Special, sold for $747,500. Image courtesy James D. Julia Auctioneers.

FAIRFIELD, Maine (AP) – A two-day auction of high-end firearms and memorabilia generated sales totaling nearly $11.4 million.

About 100 bidders and spectators showed up Tuesday, March 17, for the final day of the sale at the James D. Julia Inc. auction house in Fairfield.

A highlight was the sale of 40 lots from the Colt firearms collection of Pennsylvania businessman Joseph A. Murphy.

Julia said the collection is the finest, gun for gun, ever to come to auction. Two other auctions that will include rare pieces from Murphy’s collection are scheduled for October 2009 and March 2010.
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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-03-18-09 1410EDT

C.M. Russell art auction fundraiser tops $1.4M

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) – Unofficial tallies show the C.M. Russell Art Auction in Great Falls sold $1,466,930 worth of artwork on Friday and Saturday nights, the fifth-best weekend in the auction’s history.

Spirited bidding pushed one of Charlie Russell’s watercolors to $100,000 as the auction sold $807,700 worth of art Saturday night.

Since its inception in 1969, the auction has been a fundraiser for the C.M. Russell Museum. The Great Falls Ad Club, which sponsors the event, adds a 13 percent surcharge to the bid price (10 percent for cash and checks), then deducts its expenses from that total and donates the rest to the museum.

Over the years, the Ad Club has donated $5,579,342 to the museum through the auction, including $1,046,175 from the popular Quick Draw event.
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Information from: Great Falls Tribune,
http://www.greatfallstribune.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-03-22-09 2358EDT

Bertoia’s breaks house record with $4.2M Kaufman debut

Marklin Fidelitas clown caravan, sold for $103,500 on March 19, 2009 at Bertoia's. Image courtesy Bertoia Auctions.

VINELAND, N.J. – The March 19-21 no-reserve sale premiering the Donald Kaufman Antique Toy Collection rang the register at more than $4.2 million and set a new house record for its producer, Bertoia Auctions. The high-energy event, which was the opener for an ongoing series of sales to disperse the massive Kaufman collection, reminded many of the great auctions of 20 years ago. The three-day gross slightly surpassed Bertoia’s previous house record – also in the range of $4.2 million – which had been set in 1998 when the New Jersey company auctioned the Stan Sax bank collection.

Toy industry veterans at the red-carpet preview and sale concurred that the affair was the “best-attended toy auction ever.” Bidders were quick to reserve seats in the main saleroom, which overflowed into the adjacent gallery. Additional competitors worldwide kept the phone bank and Internet console buzzing with bids. Online bidders through LiveAuctioneers.com added more than $341,000 to the final tally.

The sale’s grand-prize winner was a rare circa-1909 Marklin Fidelitas clown caravan measuring 37½ inches long. A stunning hand-painted toy made by prewar Germany’s premier toy manufacturer, it had been estimated at $30,000-$40,000 but well exceeded expectations with a selling price of $103,500 (inclusive of 15 percent buyer’s premium). The buyer was a private collector from Europe.

In Memoriam: Barbara Franchi, 73, movie ephemera expert

Barbara Franchi and her husband Rudy at an Antiques Roadshow taping in San Diego. Courtesy Rudy Franchi.

LOS ANGELES – Barbara Franchi, who co-existed with comfort in the worlds of collectible movie ephemera and murder mystery reviews, died on Feb. 28 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 73 years old. According to her husband, Rudy Franchi, the cause of death was cancer related.

Barbara Franchi was founder of the mystery fiction review Web site www.reviewingtheevidence.com, which, within a few short years of its launch, became a major force in the rarefied world of cozies, procedurals, hard-boiled, noir and all the other sub-genres of whodunits. Blurbed on book jackets and quoted extensively, the site was a labor of love for Barbara, who funded it through her career in movie poster sales.

Together with her husband, Barbara operated The Nostalgia Factory, a collectibles shop founded in Montreal in 1969. Its base was moved to Newport, R.I., and in the mid-1980s to Boston.

During the early 1990s, Barbara transferred the inventory of the shop electronically to the Web site www.nostalgia.com. As an early participant in the world of Internet commerce, the site eventually became a top online vendor of original vintage movie, introducing many innovations that later became common practices in the industry.

Barbara was also co-author of Miller’s Movie Collectibles, which has become a standard text on valuable vintage-cinema paper.
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Missing Italian statue found in North Carolina couple’s home

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – A 350-year-old statue of a saint and former pope, taken from an Italian church nearly two decades ago, has been found in the home of a North Carolina couple who had no idea it was stolen, authorities said.

The intricately carved bust of St. Innocent will be returned to the church in Naples, Italy, U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement agents said.

The statue was one of 17 similar busts and two oil paintings taken from the church in November 1990. Authorities told The Charlotte Observer the trail went cold until two years ago, when officials in Rome let federal agents know an Italian citizen sold a similar statue to an antiques dealer from Greensboro.

The statue sold in Charlotte was bought by the same dealer at an antiques fair in France, said Neal Johnson, the Charlotte dealer who bought the statue from the same Greensboro dealer and sold it to the couple.

“I’ve never heard of this happening anywhere other than some big-time story in New York,” Johnson said. “You don’t always know the lineage of pieces you buy.”

Complete dinosaur skeleton a no-sale at NYC auction

NEW YORK (AP) – A rare full skeleton of a 150 million-year-old dinosaur languished on an auction block Saturday, failing to sell despite interest from two museums, the auctioneers said.

Neither museum could meet the less than $300,000 minimum price for the 9-foot-long fossil of a dryosaurus, said Josh Chait, operations director of I.M. Chait Gallery/Auctioneers.

The stumbling block “was a lack of funding, more than the price,” he said.

He said the gallery was still trying to broker a deal and had agreed to waive its commission if the fossil sold to a museum. He declined to identify the institutions that were interested.

The dryosaurus was a long-necked, plant-eating reptile that lived in the Jurassic Period.

The skeleton, unearthed at a private quarry in southern Wyoming in 1993, was being sold by Western Paleontological Laboratories Inc. The Lehi, Utah-based company searches for fossils and keeps some for display and scientific research.

Rose family protests ‘plundering’ of Brandeis museum

WALTHAM, Mass. (AP) – The family whose name adorns the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University has demanded that the facility remain a public art museum and that the school refrain from selling off its works.

Fifty members of the Rose family issued a statement on Monday protesting what they called the “plundering” of the museum.

“The art has been put on the auction block. The museum has been put on the chopping block. We object,” said the statement, which was issued before a symposium on the issue held on the Brandeis campus.

A news release from the school in January said it would “close the museum” and “publicly sell the art collection.” But university president Jehuda Reinharz later clarified the statement, saying that, while the Rose may no longer be a public museum, offering exhibits and paid admission to people who want to browse its galleries, it would remain open with a focus on serving the school’s educational needs, with more exhibits by students and faculty.

The family urged Reinharz and trustees to restore the budget, staffing and activities of the facility.

“Repurposing the museum is closing by another name,” it said. “It would not be the Rose.”

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