The rapid development of affordable photographic techniques in the mid-19th century was a technological innovation that affected every level of society. By the time of the American Civil War, photographs had an impact on family relations, battlefield strategy and national politics. Scenes of conflict—once portrayed as heroic in paintings and drawings—were now revealed with tragic realism, and even 150 years later, the viewer cannot help but be moved by the images.

Historians and collectors have a valuable new resource, the scholarly catalog Photography and the American Civil War, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After an initial run in New York, which will end Sept. 2, the show will travel to the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., Sept. 27 to Jan. 5 and the New Orleans Museum of Art, Jan. 31 to May 4, 2014. The exhibition was timed to coincide with sesquicentennial of the Battle of Gettysburg, a turning point in the war, which took place July 1-3, 1863.

In the volume, Jeff L. Rosenheim, the MMA’s curator in charge in the Department of Photographs, writes that the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 spurred the popularity of family photos: “Lincoln’s order for militia to protect and preserve the United States government was heeded across the North, and was a boon to photographers from Massachusetts to Michigan. Similarly, in the South it was a catalyst for Confederate militiamen to seek their portraits before heading off to serve their equally new leader, Jefferson Davis. The result of this military activity was the creation of an unparalleled mass national photographic portrait of men and women of all means, of large and small families, and of groups of soldiers.”

Soldiers carried photographs of wives and sweethearts into battle, while the women who waited back home had an image of their absent warrior nearby. Most common images were tintypes printed on sheet metal or ambrotypes printed on glass; both were often mounted in decorative cases with embossed borders. Small carte de visite prints on paper were another easy way to carry a photo. Women and men often carried lockets with a cherished image inside. People began to share photos when they met, much as we do today.

Rosenheim explains, “It was a matter of practicalities more than aesthetics. If a soldier had the cash and wanted only a single picture, he paid for an ambrotype or a tintype and within a few minutes departed the studio, near camp or in town, with a handsome cased image; if he wanted multiple examples of his portrait, or had lost most of his cash the night before in the last hand of poker, he bought a carte de visite or a dozen copies thereof. If he chose the carte de visite, he had to return the picture gallery later in the day, or on the next day, since the photographer had to print the negative in the sun and then mount the miniature portrait on card stock. The next stop for the soldier often was the post office.”

Soldiers put on a brave face for these images; they look young, alive, and ready to fight. Almost all are in blue or gray uniforms, some obviously homemade. Whether they sit or stand at attention, many display weapons—rifles, small arms, swords and even large knives.

The Civil War also saw the broad use of field photography at major battle sites, which illustrated what type of damage these armaments could do. Stark images of the dead and wounded gave families back home an accurate view of the results of modern warfare, which had an effect on political sentiment on both sides of the conflict.

Perhaps the best-known name in Civil War photography is Mathew Brady (circa 1822-1896), who had opened a daguerreotype portrait studio on Broadway in New York City in 1844, when he was a young man. But Rosenheim notes, “By the time of the fall of Fort Sumter, Brady was less a photographer than an entrepreneur who managed what we would call today a picture agency, which operated much like the Associated Press. He hired the best photographers, worked all the picture outlets (newspapers and magazines), and hobnobbed with influential politicians and the social elite.” Many of the historic images he exhibited in 1862—and took credit for—had actually been taken by Alexander Gardner (1821-1882), one of his team of photographers, who eventually left Brady to establish his own studio.

Photography and the American Civil War is illustrated with over 250 images from the Metropolitan’s extensive holdings and other public and private collections. Rosenheim’s research provides new information on the history of the photographic process, the photographers who labored to chronicle the war, and the effect their images had on American life. As the exhibition travels and more collectors have access to the catalog, this information will prove valuable to buyers and sellers in the auction market who focus on material from the “War between the States.”

In many cases, Civil War portrait photographs have been carefully preserved in family albums and come to auction complete with the names of the sitters and their regiments. They may also be attached to archives of letters or military records, a fortunate circumstance that increases their value for historians. Certain auction houses specialize in sales that focus on historical and political memorabilia.

Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati, Ohio, presents American History sales several times a year, which include vintage photography. The interest in history and archaeology comes naturally to founder Wes Cowan, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology, a subject that he taught at Ohio State University. Cowan grew up in an antique-oriented household and had a strong interest in early photography, particularly stereoscopic views.

Katie Horstman, director of American history at Cowan’s, was in charge of the extremely successful American History auction this June. Highlights included an albumen print of Abraham Lincoln with Gen. George B. McClellan and his staff on the battlefield of Antietam in October 1862, taken by Alexander Gardner, which brought $15,275, and a print titled “General R.E. Lee and Staff” made by Matthew Brady’s Washington, D.C., firm in 1865, which sold for $19,975.

“There were over 150 lots of Civil War photography,” notes Horstman. “Some of our consignors are individual private collectors, who have been accumulating things over a long period of time. The first part of the June sale consisted of carte de visite images of Civil War soldiers, primarily out of Maine, and many of those in this sale were involved in the Battle of Gettysburg in some way.” These came from the estate of a single collector who focused on Maine regiments. Other consignments for the history sale come from institutions which are deaccessioning items or from dealers’ inventories.

Horstman continues, “The buyers range from private collectors to dealers, some of whom may be buying for institutions. Our next live American History Auction will take place on Nov. 15, 2013, and we are currently in the process of accepting consignments for the sale. It will feature early historic photography, with a focus on Civil War cased images and paper photographs.”

Tennessee is known as the Volunteer State, a claim that goes back to the Revolutionary War when the Overmountain Men from the Appalachians fought in the Battle of Kings Mountain. At Case Auctions in Knoxville, images of soldiers with a local connection often bring a premium. President John Case says, “We get excellent prices for Tennessee-related items; they bring more than I would have expected. When we get them, I think folks recognize the rarity, and the lots bring pretty strong bidding from institutions and private collectors.”

Case continues, “An important sale that comes to mind is the McCammon Archive that sold for $10,400 (est. $4,000-$5,000). It had his tintype image accompanied by his letters.” The letters, which were written by Union Capt. Oliver Pinkney McCammon to his future wife, A.E. McCall, of Blount County, Tenn., over the course of the war, document important military actions, political concerns and general conditions in the camps.

Citing an important lot sold in 2011, Case says, “We also had a tintype of Sirenius Mort, who was a Union lieutenant and came from a family of East Tennessee potters. That went to an institution for $5,290 (est. $700-$1,000)—but that was because we knew who he was and he was also a potter. His family was split in its loyalties; his other brothers went and fought for the Confederacy. Union images tend to bring as much sometimes as the Confederate ones because we were so pro-Union in East Tennessee.”

He emphasizes that families are willing to part with such photographs and accompanying material because they know they will be documented in the catalog and become available to historians. Case says, “I have a lot of ambrotype Confederate soldiers coming up in January.” Sometimes the smallest details add to the value, as was the case with one lot destined for that sale: “When you looked at the image of the soldier with a magnifying glass, you could see that he had a star on his buckle. That changed everything because that meant he was from Mississippi and that commands double.”

Jeff Rosenheim wrote an article about the landmark exhibition he organized, “Photography and the American Civil War,” in the March/April 2013 issue of The Magazine Antiques, which states why these portraits are so important: “The show examines the role of the camera during a cataclysmic period in American history and attempts, as much as is possible, to effect a balance between North and South, and between what we know and what we do not. Formal field portraits of well-dressed officers are tempered by more intimate likenesses of common soldiers, Rebels and Yankees, in whose eyes and body language rest much of the pathos of the war.”

 

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WINTERTHUR, Del. – Before global positioning satellites photographed the earth from outer space, paper maps were the cutting-edge technology that connected man with the world around him. What lies beyond the river? How do I get to the next settlement? Where does one country end and another begin?

To find the answers, explorers undertook perilous journeys through mountains and across oceans, taking measurements and drawing physical contours. This painstakingly assembled data, once analyzed, ensured that ever more accurate maps could be published and distributed.

“Common Destinations: Maps in the American Experience,” an exhibition running through Jan. 5 at Winterthur in Delaware, brings together more than 100 rarely seen exhibits dating from the 1750s to the 1870s. The maps and objects, drawn from the permanent collections of the famous museum and its research library, illustrate how cartography influenced daily life on this continent.

The exhibition was conceived and curated by Dr. Martin Bruckner, associate professor in English and American literature at the University of Delaware, who also has secondary appointment in the Center for Material Culture Studies. He is the author of The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity (UNCP, 2006).

He stated, “Then, as today, American took pride in building unity out of diversity, and maps helped a fledgling nation forge common bonds and foster good citizenship. Visitors will see how men used maps at home and abroad; how women and children engaged with maps to nurture family ties; and how maps became the social glue that would bind a people of strangers into a community during times of change and development.”

In a painting by Edward Savage (1761-1817) which is closely tied to the exhibition theme, George Washington and his family examine the new plan for a national capital city. In 1791, the president had asked French-born architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant (1754-1825) to submit a grand design, and his unusual grid plan with diagonal avenues intersecting north-south and east-west streets at circles and plazas is very much in evidence in the layout of modern Washington. Today the work would be done with a computer program, back then the plans were laboriously drawn by hand using drafting instruments.

One of the themes explored in the show is how mapmakers were working out a balance between artistic elements—the decorative cartouches and flourishes—and the developing interest in even greater scientific accuracy in the content of the maps. Serious map collectors have been among the most enthusiastic visitors since the exhibition first opened in April.

Many more will come later this year for a scholarly conference at Winterthur on Oct. 11-12 featuring presentations by distinguished academics and a series of workshops with curators and conservators. By fall, “Common Destinations” also will be available as an online exhibition at www.winterthur.org, so that many more people have access to the material.

Catharine Dann Roeber, Winterthur curatorial fellow who worked with Dr. Bruckner on the exhibition, said, “There are wonderful maps in the show, but the emphasis is on how people interacted with maps and learned from them and incorporated them into their daily life. There are objects you would not normally see if you were just looking for the ‘greatest hits’ of American map-making.”

She continued, “One of the main things that Dr. Bruckner was trying to do was bring in the story of how maps were used and experienced by all types of Americans. So we have wonderful map samplers and one of the Westtown School needlework globes. We have paper maps that were made both by schoolgirls and schoolboys. There are ceramic objects that have images based on the cartouches from maps, so it’s really a multimedia exploration, not just the flat maps that people are used to seeing.”

She notes, “One of my favorite objects is a wonderful little pocket globe that was intended to be part of a kit for schoolchildren for learning geography. It’s called the Holbrook Apparatus. It’s a little globe that splits in half, so you have the world on the outside and a flat map on the inside.”

Some of the most recent objects in the exhibition come from the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which revived public interest in American history and antique artifacts. Roeber says, “Philadelphia was an important center for map production. By the 19th century, a number of the printing houses were turning out maps in great numbers. At the Centennial Exposition, there were a number of these printing houses that were featuring maps for schools and institutions and town halls. We have some wonderful images of that.”

In the marketplace, rare maps can bring startling prices. Not long after the continent’s discovery, an early 16th century map commissioned from a group of scholars by the Duke of Lorraine first labeled our land mass “America,” a name derived from explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512). Christie’s referred to this as “The Million Dollar Map” when one of four known examples sold for more than that sum in 2005. The only extant large version of this map was acquired by the Library of Congress 10 years ago.

Marc Fagan, director of consignments, prints and maps at the Neal Auction Co. in New Orleans, is an expert on antique maps, particularly those of regional interest. From Texas to Florida, the young United States vied for territory with European powers. The great port city of New Orleans and the vast Louisiana territory were under both French and Spanish rule before being purchased in 1803. As sovereignty and physical borders constantly shifted, new maps had to be printed to reflect the changes.

Fireworks erupted on the floor at Neal’s annual Louisiana Purchase Auction in November 2009. Dating to 1858, a rare copy of Norman’s Chart of the Lower Mississippi River from Natchez to New Orleans after Marie Adrien Persac (American/Louisiana, 1827-1873) came up for sale with an estimate of $18,000/25,000. The map records the divisions of land along the river with owners’ names and features vignettes of New Orleans, Baton Rouge and plantations with a decorative border of cotton plant and sugar cane motifs. After spirited bidding, the important document was purchased for $316,000.

Fagan says, “That is one of the most famous maps regionally, and it is rare. In general, there are various reasons why people like maps. It might be the aesthetics, the rarity, the importance of them—whether they show something for the first time—and the condition. That map had it all. It was the first one to come up—no one knew when another one came up. It was aesthetically very pleasing. And two guys wanted it.”

Many of the historic maps sold at Neal’s emerge from old Southern collections. The expert explains, “A lot of times there will be several maps in a collection—two, three, four—that have been passed down. A man starts a collection and his family doesn’t want them for some reason. Or single maps will come out of a house. Whenever you have success for one thing, it draws consignors, particularly with the information available on the internet.” Potential consignors can easily find out the results for similar material in past sales, and they give the auction house a call.

Fagan is always on the hunt for historic maps from the Americas and Europe. He adds, “We’ve had globes, I love globes. We sold a good pair of English floor globes five years ago for about $75,000.” On his want list are early detailed county maps and city maps, which “are very difficult to come by.” Past catalogs can be viewed online at www.nealauction.com, and Neal sales are great destination auctions because of the food and entertainment possibilities nearby in the Garden District and French Quarter.

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Native American images by Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) continue to bring strong prices in the auction market. A vintage platinum print of one of Curtis’s classic images, The Vanishing Race, brought $10,890 in the High Noon Western Americana Auction on Jan. 26.

His photographic career and relationship with tribal peoples has been the subject of extensive scholarly research and literary exploration. On view through June 16 at the St. Louis Art Museum, “Edward Curtis: Visions of Native America” examines the photographer’s monumental endeavor to document tribes in the early decades of the 20th century.

At the age of 12, Curtis built his first camera with the aid of a manual. In 1891, the young man and his family moved from Minnesota to Seattle, where he became part owner of a photographic studio. Under normal circumstances, Curtis might have become just another successful commercial photographer in a local market. Many made a good living taking carefully posed pictures of engaged couples and infants now buried in family archives.

Curtis’s interest in the natural world set his feet on a different path. While engaged in photographing scenic views of the Puget Sound for a contest, he took a portrait of a Native American mussel and clam digger, Princess Angeline (Kickisomlo), the nonagenarian daughter of Seattle’s Chief Sealth. Not only was Curtis’s work awarded a gold medal in the competition, his efforts to record tribal life – before it changed irrevocably – became the driving force behind his creative work.

On the E.H. Harriman expedition to Alaska in 1899, Curtis began to develop new skills as an amateur ethnographer. After returning home, he traveled throughout the country, taking photographs of Indian tribes. Although always strapped for funds, the photographer captured revealing portraits of tribal members and documented important ceremonies, dwellings, artwork and scenery around the settlements.

Soon, Curtis conceived a grand idea for a massive publication of his photographs with accompanying text. In 1904, he received an important commission – photographing the American president’s sons. His plans for the Indian study received a boost when he had an opportunity to discuss the project with an enthusiastic Teddy Roosevelt.

Finally in 1906, railroad magnate John Pierpont Morgan agreed to supply $75,000 as start-up money toward preparing and printing The North American Indian, a set of 20 volumes with 1,500 photographs. Over 200 complete sets were printed, and Morgan received 25 as part of the agreement.

Curtis labored on the project for over 20 years in a race against time to capture as much information as he could, even though Native American life was already rapidly changing as tribal members adopted 20th century technology. Scenes were undoubtedly staged at times, and some have criticized his decision to remove modern elements – such a clock – from the images. But his entire focus was on recording what remained of traditional tribal culture while it was still possible.

Eric Lutz, associate curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the St. Louis Art Museum, explained the goals of the current exhibition, which he co-curated: “I think what makes this show unique is the way we’re showing two sides of Curtis. We’re saying, you can’t just take a photograph at face value. You really have to think about the context in which it was taken.

“How much historical truth do we read into these images? And how much do we need to know about the context to understand it better? When most people look at Curtis photographs, they’re not automatically aware of the fact that most of the Indians had been moved onto reservations at the time those pictures were taken. These profound changes had already taken place by the time he did this project.”

Photographs taken by Curtis for The North American Indian, both portraits and landscape views, frequently come up for sale in the auction market at a variety of price points. Most common are examples of the photogravure prints which accompanied the set’s many volumes; prices start in the $150 to $500 range, with value depending on condition and the desirability of particular views.

Lutz explained the process: “Since he was very prolific as a print maker, there is a lot of his material out there. All the ones we have on display are photogravures – the photographer makes a printing plate from the negative in order to be able to reproduce it in quantity. When he made a printing plate, he could actually work on that plate to change the image if he wanted to take out a detail or heighten a feature. He liked to have that control over the image, which the process gave him. He could reproduce the image by the thousands. If you had to do that by hand, it would take forever.“

The Saint Louis Art Museum had been given around 2,000 Curtis images by a generous donor. Lutz admitted that it took some time to choose the small number on view: “There were some images that we knew ahead of time we wanted to show, ones that brought up a lot of interesting issues we wanted to talk about. For example, we wanted to show examples of his early portraiture versus later portraiture from the 1920s – the changes over time. In our case, because I was working with the curator of Native American art here, we showed images that brought up certain questions. Curtis had a very complex life. How did he go about doing this gigantic documentary project? We highlight some of the successes and some of the failures he had as a photographer.”

One of the curator’s personal favorites is A Cree Girl, a girl wrapped in a rabbit fur robe with natural scenery behind her. The young woman seems at ease in this candid rather than stiffly posed image. The movement of tree branches in the background gives a sense of motion to the picture. As he took more and more photographs, Curtis became better at quickly establishing a valuable sense of rapport with his subjects.

In addition to still photographs, Curtis made sound recordings and moving pictures on the reservations he visited. Always struggling to raise money to fund long-term projects, Curtis put together touring shows featuring hand-colored lantern slides and filmed sections accompanied by music.

Around 1916, his photographic studio began to produce artistic gold tone or “Orotone” prints on glass. A negative chosen from his extensive inventory was used to print an image on a glass plate coated with silver gelatin emulsion. The plate was then covered on the back with gold-colored pigment. The completed prints were sold with a protective ornamental frame, which added to their decorative appeal.

The technique was popular at the time, and Edward Curtis made thousands of gold tone prints from his catalog of Native American photographs. He felt the process gave the photos more depth and transparency than traditional reproduction methods. The glass plates are fragile, however, and many were accidently destroyed over the years, so the surviving examples often bring higher prices than prints on paper. In the recent High Noon Western Americana Auction, a framed gold tone print of The Vanishing Race brought $5,747.50 and another framed view of Canyon de Chelly sold for $7,260.

Dozens of biographical volumes discussing Curtis’s life and work are available. A new assessment – Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis (2012) by Timothy Egan – is available in print and e-book formats. Christopher Cardozo has written many books on the artist including Edward S. Curtis: The Women (2005) with Louise Erdrich and Anne Makepeace.

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The art world has divided its creative cast into artists with academic training in their craft and what might be called spontaneous artists, who paint or sculpt or fashion works just because they feel compelled to do so. The latter are often labeled as outsider, visionary, folk, or simply self-taught artists, and at times they have been judged by slightly different standards from their formally schooled counterparts.

Thornton Dial can be accurately defined as “self-taught,” but his work has transcended such limiting categories. His drawings, paintings and constructions have crossed over into the broader contemporary art field, while retaining the emotional resonance of his historical and cultural influences.

“Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial” is a traveling exhibition organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which presents 70 of the artist’s best works, including 25 on view for the first time. The show will be on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art through May 20; at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., June 30 to Sept. 30; and at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Nov. 3 to Jan. 13.

In an interview before the opening in New Orleans, Joanne Cubbs, the IMA’s adjunct curator of American Art, addressed the pluses and minuses of the “self-taught” pigeonhole: “Like a wide assortment of other artists who work outside the familiar conventions of the established art world, Dial found himself characterized as a ‘folk’ or ‘outsider’ artist.

“Accepted and understood through the lens of these categories, Dial’s work gained important recognition. But at the same time, he has fallen prey to the problematic notions that frequently accompany these terms, to their fetishizing of difference and to their often false characterizations of his art as naïve, innocent or insular.

“Because Dial’s complex and large-scale paintings and sculpture so closely resemble forms of mainstream contemporary art, there has been even further confusion, and he has experienced some extreme highs and lows in the art world’s critical reception and understanding of his work over the years.”

Now in his early 80s, Thornton Dial was born in Emelle, Ala., in 1928 and lived through the cultural changes experienced by blacks living in the South during the 20th century. Cubbs said, “Dial’s art is filled with a vocabulary of repeating symbols that provides clues to the work’s richly layered meanings. He uses the tiger as an avatar of African American struggle and the ability to land on one’s feet despite the imbalances of injustice in a racist world.”

Dial was employed for almost 33 years as a welder for the railway carmaker Pullman Standard Co. and labored at other jobs in the construction field, in the course of which he gained physical skills that have been utilized in his artistic compositions. He always made things, but little survives from his early years. Cubbs explained, “It is true that, until the mid 1980s, Dial maintained a certain amount of secrecy about his work. Fearing reprisals from whites and even fellow blacks who might resent or misunderstand his social commentary, he reportedly hid, recycled or buried many of his earlier creations.”

As folk and “outsider” art emerged as a collecting field in the 1980s and 1990s, Dial’s work gained institutional attention. He was one of the artists included in “Self-Taught Artists of the 20th Century,” a 1998-1999 touring exhibition with a comprehensive catalog organized by the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City.

Dial has produced much new work in the intervening years, as can be seen in the current “Hard Truths” exhibition. Ranging from sensitive charcoal drawings on paper to elaborate assemblages of found materials, these works have helped him break out of the constrictive “self-taught” label and attracted the attention of the broader art market.

Folk art expert Steve Slotin presents two annual auctions in his special field. Next up is The Spring Masterpiece Sale on April 21-22 in Buford, Ga. He is also the director and founder of Atlanta’s Folk Fest, Aug. 17-19, which will include 100 galleries and dealers from around the country.

Slotin has strong opinions about his specialty area: “For a long time this art has been kept out of the mainstream art community. Self-taught art is the most important visual culture America has ever produced.” He particularly cherishes the freedom of American folk art from European academic influence.

He continues, “There are probably about 10 folk art exhibitions traveling the country right now. This is the one true American art form—being shown at museums and being sold at auctions—that’s still affordable to collect. Now a lot of these pieces have gone way up in value, but this is a from-the-ground-up art field where the prices are not set by the artist but by the market.”

In addition to “Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial” in New Orleans, “Bill Traylor: Drawings from the Collections of the High Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts” is on view in Atlanta through May 13. Another touring exhibition, “Stranger in Paradise: the Work of Reverend Howard Finster,” will be at the Akron (Ohio) Art Museum through June 3.

“We always have examples of Thornton Dial’s work in our auctions,” Slotin points out. “Since we focus on folk art masters, he’s always been one of the artists included. We’ve tried to seek out some of the best pieces available. Some of the smaller pieces are affordable for any collector, even those just getting into folk art. But we occasionally get in large constructions and more important pieces, and they will go to the high-end folk art collector.”

Slotin has observed the growing appeal of Dial and other folk artists to mainstream collectors: “We’ve always had the self-taught art collectors collecting Thornton Dial—always. Because Thornton Dial and a lot of material in the self-taught art field is in the midst of crossing over into the contemporary art field and the mainstream art field, I’ve seen people who don’t typically buy self-taught art from us, buy a piece by Thornton Dial or Bill Traylor or other artists in this area.”

He added, “Dial does have a recurring theme in his work involving tigers and other animals with a lady, particularly in his work over the last two decades. It’s very attractive, and there’s symbolic meaning behind it all. Each piece is always a little different. We will have quite a few works in the April auction. There should be a whole page of the catalog dedicated to him.”

On a concluding note, Joanne Cubbs, curator of the current exhibition said of the artist: “Although his work can be dark, it also expresses the hope that we will somehow find our way through that darkness. Every image of social injustice is actually a call for our betterment. Within each evocation of struggle and ruin, there is always the underlying possibility of human transcendence, moral striving and spiritual regeneration. A unique merging of aesthetics, history, social conscience and metaphysics, Dial’s work moves the discourse of contemporary art into remarkable new territory.”

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The technique of enameling, in which colored ground glass is fused to metal by firing, dates back to ancient times. Although originally devised as a substitute for precious or semi-precious stone inlays, enameling became a highly-sophisticated art form in its own right.

Many countries produced fine enamel works, but the workshops in Russia – especially those of the 19th and early 20th century – created vividly colored examples that are eagerly sought-after by collectors. The country stood at a cultural crossroads, absorbing influences from East and West.

The catalogue Russian Enamels: Kievan Rus to Faberge, which accompanied a 1996-1997 exhibition mounted by the Walter Art Museum in Baltimore and the Hillwood Museum in Washington, is a classic reference for collectors. The volume includes examples ranging from a Greek 2nd century B.C. bracelet found in the Crimea to precious treasures from the workshops of Carl Faberge.

The late Anne Odom, then Chief Curator at Hillwood, wrote: “The quintessentially ‘Russian’ enamels were the result of a melding process that had been going on for centuries, mixing Turkish, Persian, and Western styles that had entered the Russian design vocabulary in the 17th century. By the end of the 19th century they had been fused into a style that today is popularly recognized as Russian.”

Collectors and connoisseurs of enamels have a lot to celebrate. In addition to works in the permanent collections of the two museums, the exhibition mentioned above included loans from a mysterious private collection. This source has recently been revealed as the collection of Jean Montgomery Riddell, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 100.

The Riddell collection – more than 260 examples of enameled Russian silver – has been bequeathed to Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum. A case of representative pieces, including the tankard illustrated here are already on display, and the museum plans a touring exhibition with catalogue within the next few years.

William Johnston, Walters’ Senior Curator at Large, wrote the introduction to the 1996 catalogue and is now working on the Riddell project. The curator met Mrs. Riddell many years ago, when she came to the museum. He remembers, “The Walters is quite strong in Russian decorative arts, including enamels, silver, and ivories. I took her around, and she asked if we would be interested in her collection. We went down to her apartment in the Washington, D.C. area and she showed me around, and then we kept in touch over the years.”

The collector’s husband, Richard J. Riddell, had begun to collect Russian enamels during his work for the United States government. With his collection as a foundation, Jean Riddell began to enlarge her holdings through acquisitions from well-known dealers at home and abroad.

Johnston continues, “Jean Riddell formed what was regarded as the largest collection anywhere of Russian enamels. She bought a few earlier representative pieces from the 17th and 18th centuries, and she also bought some St. Petersburg Faberge. But what she concentrated on were the Moscow enamels of the late 19th century and the early 20th century.”

These Moscow pieces include tea wares and boxes decorated with traditional Russian motifs by noted artisan Feodor Ruckert, exquisite painted plaques from the Stroganov Institute, a striking kovsh made by Ivan Khlebnikov, and plique-a-jour pieces from the firm of Pavel Ovchinnikov. The Russian Enamels catalogue recommended above has an excellent glossary which explains complex enameling techniques such as champlevé, cloisonné, filigree, and plique-a-jour.

Auction prices for these enamels have soared in recent years, as wealthy Russians have actively participated in the international market. When Soviet politicians were more concerned about factories and harvests, decorative arts flowed to Europe and the United States. Now western collections formed in the 20th century are coming up for sale, and Russian buyers compete vigorously to buy back fine examples of their national heritage.

Jackson’s International Auctioneers in Cedar Falls, Iowa has become an outstanding player in the global market. One of the firm’s specialties is Russian material including icons, porcelain, silver, and enamels. Their November 2011 auction totaled $4.5 million, thanks in part to a miniature Russian triptych of the Kazan Mother of God, which sold for $240,000.

Stars among the enameled lots included a silver-gilt box with a painting of a warrior on the cover, marked by Feodor Ruckert of Moscow, 1908-1917, which sold for $132,000, and a hexagonal box of the same period from Faberge’s Moscow workshop decorated with a portrait Tsar Ivan which brought $84,000.

James L. Jackson, the auction house’s president, has become an expert in the Russian market. He notes that small treasures like the personal icons and decorated boxes are highly prized by Russian buyers, not only as additions to their own collections but also as gifts to friends.

He explains, “Believe it or not, these are the kind of things they give – something small and portable. When you have that much wealth, what is $100,000 here or there? He acknowledges that the Russian market has become an important part of Jackson’s business: “That’s been growing and growing and growing. Fifteen or twenty years ago, there were very few people who could speak fluently about Russian icons and knew the major players – collectors, sellers, dealers, museums, what have you.”

Having catalogued so much Russian material, Jackson finds he has become the go-to man on the subject: “The fruit that it bore was that people of every ilk – major collectors, museums, universities – began to call me, because I’m of the old school where you share knowledge. There are some serious American collectors, to be certain, but I would say all of the major works in the last sale went back to Moscow and St. Petersburg.”

Jackson is already looking forward to the next sale of Russian material on May 22-23, 2012, which will include important material from private collections including more icons from Dr. John Sinsky. LiveAuctioneers.com will provide the Internet live bidding.

Meanwhile, collectors can follow the progress of the exhibition of the Riddell bequest at www.thewalters.org. Enthusiasts also can look forward to the Hillwood Museum’s upcoming exhibition, “The Style that Ruled the Empires: Russia, Napoleon, and 1812,” on view February 14-June 2, 2012. Copies of the Russian Enamels catalogue are available at www.hillwoodmuseumshop.org.

Visit Jackson’s International online at www.jacksonsauction.com.

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PHILADELPHIA (ACNI) – A mass-manufactured symbol of suburban living, the lawn and garden sprinkler has moved from the tool shed to the collectors cabinet. Like many other products of late 19th and early 20th century industrial design, the well-turned sprinkler is now appreciated as a piece of sculptural and cultural beauty.

Andy Durham, of Annandale, Va., has a collection of more than 80 sprinklers, mostly steel and iron watering implements made from the late 1800s to the 1950s. The joys of collecting were instilled in Durham as a boy, when he’d visit his grandfather, a collector of holly trees, fluorescent minerals, and books on Quaker history.

Durham’s first obsession was horticultural books. Then, about 15 years ago, he picked up a metal sprinkler for $5 at a garage sale, and used it to keep his lawn green. “It dawned on me one day that this is an antique,” and he began searching a new marketplace called eBay for other early sprinklers, a logical collecting progression for Durham, a landscape architect.

He learned that sprinklers were an offshoot of the first pressurized water and fire-suppression systems invented in the 1870s. They were initially used in buildings and utilized public water systems and individual water tanks. They moved out to agricultural use, and then to the growing landscape and public park movements. As the front lawn and home garden became an important component of the middle-class suburbs, the sprinkler industry saturated the market.

In the early 1880s, Durham explained, the designs were practical, intended to do a job on a farm or lawn. “There was a burst of creativity in the first decades of the 1900s. There were many manufacturers involved, and that allowed for expression of styles and shapes.”

Durham appreciates a wide range of sprinklers stylistically, he said, but is most interested in the heavy, detailed metal pieces, some of which boast beautiful scrolls and lion claw feet. One of his favorites was made by the White Showers Company of Detroit. It has a brass piston and carefully crafted cast iron parts. White Showers went into operation before the Great Depression, made a limited number of sprinklers, and went out of business after the market crash.

The 1940s saw the introduction of Bakelite, the early plastic, in sprinkler design. Exciting space age designs were launched in the 1950s. But the manufacturers incorporated aluminum and cheaper plastics, as the well-crafted metal sprinklers became too expensive to produce and ship.

Durham said collectors can find smaller examples for as little as $20, and “nicer ones in the hundreds of dollars.” Finding sprinklers at garage sales, flea markets or even antique shops has become a challenge, “but if you click on eBay you can still find dozens,” he said.

Durham’s collection includes examples of how sprinklers were portrayed in advertising, from postcards used by traveling salesmen, to full-size pages in 1940s Life magazines, capitalizing on the mail-order trend.

One of the popular collecting categories is figural sprinklers. The Firestone Rubber Company featured a line of upright, silk-screened figures on sheet metal that included the Sambo character, a clown and monkey, explained Durham.

A highly sought figural sprinkler is the Cowboy, a 30-inch-high figure whose lasso spins around and drops down as he waters the lawn. There were fewer than 100 made, Durham said, and may sell for as much as $4,000 now.

Figural sprinklers are the focus of John and Nancy Smith, of Barnesville, Md., whose more extensive collections include banks and doorstops. “We love figural cast iron,” explained John, “and lawn sprinklers really lent themselves to figural designs.”

But not very many were made in cast iron. The Smiths count 18 different figural sprinklers in that medium. “And searching for those with great original paint was a challenge. They were used, so they had a tendency to rust,” John Smith said.

The Smiths began collecting cast iron sprinklers in 1971, and made their first purchase – a wood mallard – for $35. Today, that duck can bring up to $2,000. One of the most graceful sprinklers, the Mermaid, has gone from $200 in the 1970s to $8,000 now.

“What happened,” John Smith explained, “is that they have a folky look, so folk art dealers are buying them. They are commanding a great deal of money these days. The Monkey sprinkler sold at auction recently for $9,000. A folk art collector bought that one.”

The cast iron figurals were mainly produced in the 1920s and 30s, Smith said, by some of the same foundries that made the doorstops he and his wife collect. “The 20s and 30s were tough times, and they created the sprinklers to make some extra money.”

The early cast iron sprinkler companies included the English manufacturer Nuydea, National Foundry of Massachusetts, and Grey Iron of Mount Joy, Pa. Nuydea produced the Frog on Globe, as well as sprinklers with ducks and cardinals in the 1920s. Other companies made turtle and alligator models and a two-faced man.

“Bradley and Hubbard, one of the ‘Cadillac’ casting companies, made tremendous forms on sprinklers, including a wood duck and mallard,” Smith said.

While Andy Durham can find his objects of desire online, the Smiths hunt for figural sprinklers at antique shows and auctions and through dealers of figural cast iron. “But in the condition we like, they are getting very difficult to find. They’re starting to get rare.”

Visit John and Nancy Smith’s website to view their collections and sale items at www.castirononline.com.

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Copyright 2011 Auction Central News International. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

 

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An estimated 2.7 million guitars are purchased in the U.S. every year, many of them by aspiring rock idols and guitar heroes.

A small percentage of the instruments that change hands are older examples going to self-described “guitar junkies” like Pete Prown, gear editor for Vintage Guitar magazine and a collector for 25 years. According to Prown, this is an excellent time for collectible guitar buyers, and the market has been active.

In October, actor Richard Gere raised $936,000 for humanitarian charities by selling off his 107-piece collection, including solidbody Gibson and Fender models owned by blues legend Albert King and reggae artist Peter Tosh. Individual guitars by other rock icons have gone much higher. Eric Clapton’s instruments have sold for a half-million dollars each at charitable auctions, and a Jimi Hendrix guitar can go for a cool million.

Even if you can’t afford an axe wielded by Hendrix, “it’s a great time to be a buyer in the vintage market,” Prown says. Classic rock guitars had soared to astounding prices in the last decade, but the bubble burst around 2007. The benchmark electric guitar is the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which had attracted bids of up to $500,000. In recent years, these Les Pauls have dipped to $150,000 or less. A solidbody 1960 Les Paul went for $98,500 in the Gere auction.

And there are many more affordable choices for those who don’t have a movie- or rock-star budget.

Prown, a Philadelphia-area collector, began by pursuing products of an “underground upstart” company called Ibanez Guitars, based in Bensalem, Pa., when he began playing in the late 1970s. He chose his quarry from the 1978 Ibanez catalog, which became the bible for a particular group of collectors. “There’s definitely a cult for Ibanez that has grown over the years – almost all are guitarists of a certain age when the light went on. We wanted something weird looking and different from the traditional-looking Fenders and Gibsons of the previous generation.”

Among his first acquisitions was an electric-acid-green, limited edition Ibanez Jem endorsed by Steve Vai, a hard rocker who played with David Lee Roth and Frank Zappa. Prown also has an Ibanez Professional, a.k.a. the Bob Weir Guitar because it was played by the Grateful Dead musician. “It has the vaunted Tree of Life mother-of-pearl inlay,” Prown says of the decorative neck.

One of Prown’s “blue chip” underground guitars is a 1987 Paul Reed Smith Custom 24, a gorgeous mahogany guitar with a “flamey” maple top. Smith started his business while he was in high school in the 1970s in Annapolis, Md. He operated out of a tiny shop until 1985, when he opened the first or several factories on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

“He’s like the Henry Ford of recent guitar markers,” Prown says of Smith, “a very personable, down-to-earth guy, and a complete guitar junkie.”

Prown has accompanied Smith to the company’s “body blank shop,” where he’s seen the guitar maker pull out slabs of wood from the racks, tap on them, and determine which will make a fine instrument.

“They take a chunk of mahogany and glue a piece of maple on top, so you have this big rectangular sandwich. But it’s a sculpture, and inside it is a guitar,” Prown explains. The blank is inserted into a box, where a computerized router will carve the precise specifications entered by the designer.

The Paul Reed Smith guitars are known for their excellent construction, but also for their detailed handwork. Inlaid mother-of-pearl Chesapeake Bay seabirds fly between the frets of the Smith guitars. “He’s the Chesapeake guy,” Prown says.

On a recent trip to the Chicago Music Exchange, one of the high-end guitar boutiques, Prown added an acoustic 1948 Epiphone Spartan to his collection. An archtop with “f holes,” like those found in a violin, the Spartan was a standard design for jazz guitars of the postwar period.

“One of the reasons why this guitar sounds so good is because it’s old. You can make the wine metaphor – it ages. The more you play it, the more the wood vibrates and resonates and opens up,” Prown says. “Which is another reason why old guitars are desired: they sound good.”

So there’s the look and the sound that make the guitars desirable. The third criterion is the “vibe,” Prown says. “What does it evoke?”

Prown’s taste has mellowed from ’70s hard rock to ’50s jazz and blues. “But you don’t want to play old jazz on a crazy electric guitar,” he says as he pulls out a “real blue chipper,” a 1956 Gibson Les Paul Custom “Black Beauty.”

Les Paul, who died last year, became one of the preeminent guitar stars of the ’50s by bringing the worlds of jazz and pop together. “He was one of the first electric guitar players and probably the first guy whose name was on a solidbody electric guitar as an endorsement.”

With its black finish mahogany body, white trim, ebony fingerboard, and gold hardware, the Black Beauty was the perfect complement to the tuxedoed jazz musician. Prown flips the guitar over to show proof of its aged pedigree: belt-buckle scratches. “Old guitars have belt-buckle wear.”

The Black Beauty sold for as much as $40,000 seven years ago; it can be found for $25,000 today.

Besides shops like the Chicago Music Exchange, collectors can buy great instruments from like-minded dealers at the Great American Guitar Show, a twice-yearly gathering in Oaks, Pa., or at the shows in Arlington, Texas, and other cities around U.S., Prown says.

He also directs collectors to Vintage Guitar magazine, which provides dealers’ price lists and an annual price guide.

Boston-based Skinner Inc. Auctioneers & Appraisers offers high-quality guitars at its sales. David A. Bonsey, Skinner’s director of fine musical instruments, explained that the auction house tends to deal in mainstream manufacturers, like Fender, Gibson and Martin, but Paul Reed Smith products are also mainstream these days.

While guitar prices at auction “have not gone down at all,” Bonsey says, “there is not as much of a feeding-frenzy mentality as there was before 2007.” Up until that year, the vintage guitar market rose steadily. “When the economy hit the skids, the instruments were not devalued – they are still what they are – but prices did undergo a self-correcting market change. On average, prices dropped 25 percent.”

Gibson acoustic guitars appeal to a more conservative clientele and the prices have been “less volatile,” Bonsey says. “There are so few of the really great ones. And the acoustic guitars may have more of a magic about them, more mystique. I haven’t seen prices fall for them, but sales have slowed down for mid-range guitars.”

For collectors looking for what’s around the corner, Bonsey suggests archtop electric guitars. “People are not buying a lot of them, maybe because they don’t identify with their smooth jazz sound.”

There has been a surge of interest in “roots-type guitars” made by Silvertone, Harmony and Kay, Bonsey says. “There may be a certain cheese factor. Some of these old guitars have become very attractive as visual objects and for their funky appeal.” Those mid-range guitars that have gone for a couple of hundred dollars are now commanding over a thousand.

Bonsey also has seen renewed taste for lap-steel guitars. “Musicians are coming up with new sounds, sort of the next generation of what Duane Allman was doing – these hyper-technical guitar licks. That market will continue to grow,” Bonsey says.

Prown, too, has watched young musicians steer the vintage guitar market. “All of today’s younger bands like this kind of vintage rock look, the Beatle-y kind of guitars, and yhey’re weaving it into modern rock. They’re not playing Beatles stuff on it, but to them it’s kind of cool and ironic” to use a 1960s instrument in a new way.

Prown has seen another big change in the evolution of guitar collecting. The Les Paul that cost $300 in 1971 and is worth 10 times as much now is rarely seen on stage or in studios. “It used to be a guitar you played; now it’s a museum piece.

“The bittersweet thing is, people are buying guitars that never get played. Unlike some collectibles, a musical instrument is a practical antique. It’s meant to be played, to make music, not to squirrel it away.”

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John Rogers (1829-1904) was that rarest of all phenomena, a successful artist. He sold over 80,000 sculptural compositions, mass-produced in painted plaster, during the second half of the 19th century. While only the wealthiest families could afford marble or bronze works of art, middle class households could purchase a graceful “Rogers Group” for $10 or $15.

More people became aware of fashions in home décor through the new medium of photography. Books appeared with recommendations for tasteful interior design. The accompanying photos of parlors and dining rooms always included sculpture—large or small—carefully arranged on pedestals, mantels and sideboards.

Born in Salem, Mass., Rogers’ skill as an artist emerged when he was working as a mechanic and draftsman in his twenties. He had begun modeling in clay and was further inspired by the sculpture he saw at an international exposition in 1853. Following the course of many aspiring artists, he set sail for study in Paris in 1858.

While studying abroad, he realized that neoclassicism was not his style. When he returned to the United States the following year, he began to achieve success by producing genre scenes from everyday life, a specialty he would make his own.

The genre tradition in painting had been established by artists such as William Sidney Mount and George Caleb Bingham. An excellent sculptor, Rogers was able to produce the same effect in three-dimensional figural groups. In 1863, he was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design where he often exhibited his compositions.

The New-York Historical Society has organized a traveling exhibition, “John Rogers: American Stories,” which includes many pieces from their permanent collection. The exhibition is on display at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens in Memphis through Oct. 9. The final venue will be in New York City at the newly renovated New-York Historical Society building Oct. 19, 2012 through Feb. 17, 2013.

Collectors will enjoy the wealth of information provided by the accompanying catalog, which features a timeline of the artist’s career. In the opening essay, Michael Leja writes, “The middle decades of the 19th century marked a watershed in the development of a mass market for images in the United States, and Rogers was more influential than any of his contemporaries in bringing sculpture into this new marketplace.”

“He was, in other words, a key player in the invention of a mass visual culture, and his oeuvre reveals the technical and aesthetic challenges entailed in this momentous remaking of art. To our present vantage, when the hyperproduction and instrumentalization of images continue to rise to new levels, Rogers’ career presents an illuminating historical case study.”

Roger’s subject matter is often sentimental or humorous, as was often the case with Victorian art works. In a popular group from 1875 – Checkers Up at the Farm – a young man laughs as he beats an older relative at the game, while a young mother and child look on. Consumers would recognize the familiar scene and take it home with a smile.

Rogers also reproduced scenes from Shakespeare and popular fiction of the day. Courtship in Sleepy Hollow: Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel dates to 1868. You are a Spirit, I Know; When did you Die? is a four-figure group from King Lear made in 1885.

The beginning of Rogers’ career coincided with the Civil War years, and the artist from the North was a staunch Abolitionist. Many of the groups simply recorded daily life on the front – The Picket Guard of 1861 or Wounded to the Rear: One More Shot from 1864 – and were popular with veterans and their families.

Other themes had more political overtones. An 1868 photo of the parlor of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s home in Galena, Ill., contains two Rogers Groups. The Council of War depicting Grant at President Lincoln’s side stands near the window. On the mantel is a family composition titled Union Refugees (1863) which shows a young couple and their child fleeing the South because of their loyalty to the Union.

Today, Rogers is particularly celebrated for his accurate and heroic depictions of African-Americans in the war years. One of the artist’s earliest groups, The Slave Market of 1859 shows a defiant black father being sold apart from his grieving family.

The most groundbreaking group, however, is Wounded Scout: A Friend in the Swamp (1864), which presents a black freedman helping a wounded soldier through difficult terrain. Modern eyes, accustomed to multicultural sculptures, such as The Soldiers by Frederick Hart at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., may not realize how radical the Rogers’ image was in its day.

Ellen Daugherty, associate professor at the Memphis College of Art, recently lectured in conjunction with the traveling exhibition. She said, “The thing that Rogers does so well is create a little moment, a visual anecdote in time. He tells some of the story and you’re allowed as the viewer to weave the rest of it, to decide how to complete the narrative. He opens up his potential audience rather than shutting them down.”

Daugherty is an expert on the portrayal of African-Americans in 19th and early 20th century art. In discussing the Wounded Scout, she noted, “Any type of art that depicts the humanity of African-Americans at this time period is rare. This black man is kind, helpful, and someone the wounded soldier can lean on in times of trouble.”

“The thing that makes it quite powerful is the touch – the way that Rogers puts the two figures together. The black man holds the soldier’s arm so tenderly; he exhibits characteristics of nobility, humanity and concern for his fellow man.”

Collectors can still find affordable examples of Rogers’ “Sculpture for the People” for sale in the antiques marketplace. Fontaine’s Auction Gallery in Pittsfield, Mass., will offer a one-owner collection from the South of about 55 groups in their Sept. 10 sale. Among the lots offered will be Civil War themes such as The Council of War and Union Refugees, theater scenes, and depictions of home life.

Jim O’Brien at Fontaines says, “It is wonderful for us to have the opportunity to sell such a large and diverse collection. We typically only see two or three groupings in the course of a year; so to see many of the rarer groupings all at once is a treasure.”

“Rogers’ studio in New Canaan, Conn., has been designated a National Historic Landmark. John Rogers is credited with being a pioneer in the making of elastic molds for works of art. He patented many of his works, displaying the dates on the base of the sculptures.”

O’Brien adds, “Rogers’ sculptures are very popular among collectors. When looking at any given piece, you can really get a feel for what life was like in the 1800s. The realistic qualities of his works are amazing; Rogers was an expert in not only duplicating realistic features of his subjects, but he also was a master at capturing movement and intimate scenarios in everyday life.”

Starting bids on the Fontaine lots start as low as $200. Note that condition affects value for the easily damaged plaster groups. Rogers also made durable master bronzes to use as his models. Many of these are included in the New-York Historical Society exhibition, but they rarely appear on the market.

Certain groups were copied by 19th-century English potteries in Parian porcelain. These were apparently not authorized by Rogers, but they are attractive and often bring four-figure prices at auction.

 

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Steampunk – a term used as a noun, an adjective, and a verb – may mean different things to different people. In interior design, it denotes a twist on turn-of-the century industrial pop culture. Innovative collectors repurpose and transmute basic elements of 19th-century technology – gears, boilers, windup mechanisms – in a way that integrates modern amenities with a Victorian period environment.

Inventors become involved in the process, because no one can buy a “steampunk antique.”

Vintage elements are the basic material, but it takes creativity to turn a pump organ into a computer workstation. Craftsmen often specialize: view Roger Wood’s fantastic timepieces – for example, his “Nemo’s Steampunk Clock/Electrostatic Voltmeter” – at www.klockwerks.com.

Philadelphia inventor Jack Zylkin of USB Typewriter adapts old-fashioned manual typewriters for use as keyboards on any USB-capable computer. He says, “I wouldn’t call myself a steampunk – I don’t dress up with a monocle and a bowler hat – although I think that kind of fashion is cool. For me, it’s about the spirit of industriousness and inventiveness. I think people respond to it because it’s not mass-produced. What I do is high tech, but it’s a personal kind of high tech.”

For adventurous dressers, Steampunk can become an elaborate masquerade, where participants turn themselves into fully costumed avatars with an alternative lifestyle.

Devices and interiors become the background for a distinctive Victorian fashion aesthetic that mixes lush fabrics with Goth accents and military gear. Websites like Steampunk Emporium have sprung up to supply everything from monocles and pith helmets to corsets and lace-up boots.

Fashion designers like Philadelphia’s Nikki Cohen of MayFaire Moon Costumes & Corsetry find their creations in demand. She says, “In the last two or three years, Steampunk has been one of the major movements in the alternative world. I’ve always loved Victorian costuming. Moving on from very strict historical accuracy to you-can-do-whatever-you-want has been wonderful. It’s like being handed a whole new box of crayons.”

Costumed neo-Victorians network through websites like www.thesteampunkempire.com, which is subtitled “The Crossroads of the Aether.” Events cited range from museum exhibitions to art shows to conventions. A Season 3 episode of the hit television series Castle featured a Steampunk costume party.

Last year’s PhilCon, organized by the venerable Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, included a Steampunk Ball.

At its heart, Steampunk attempts to use Victorian technology for projects never actually realized during the 19th century. The insightful entry in Wikipedia says in its introduction: “Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Specifically, steampunk involves an era or world where steam power is still widely used – usually the 19th century and often Victorian era Britain – that incorporates prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy.”

“Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians may have envisioned them; in other words, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, art, etc. This technology may include such fictional machines as those found in the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne or real technologies like the computer but developed earlier in an alternate history.”

As this explanation indicates, Steampunk influence has long been present in literature and film, even though the term may not be directly employed. Doctor Who, a popular BBC television character who moves through time and space, has often made forays into the Victorian past. The interior of the Tardis – his home base cum time machine – has a lot of steampunk detail. The successful 2009 film interpretation of Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law also played fast and loose with 19th-century tech, and a sequel is on the way later this year.

Collectors may read up on the movement and even dress up in the clothes, but questions remain. Where do I get the stuff? And how do I adapt it? Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum remodeled the kitchen of their 1901 Sharon, Mass., house. Later, when people began to admire their stylish modifications, they realized they had been steampunking unawares.

In 2007, the Rosenbaums founded their website www.modvic.com, where viewers find images of their projects and links to articles and events. The couple built a steampunk kitchen at the Stella Pier Show in New York City last March. Bruce pointed out, “We’re looking at it as a creative design solution. For people who love the Victorian period and the Industrial Age but want to live in today’s world, this is where we come in. We blend the best of both worlds.”

As a source for vintage material to steampunk, Kamelot Auctions in Philadelphia has offerings that go far beyond the usual industrials and architecturals. Some are easy to repurpose – for example, a fabulous Victorian warming stove with cast-iron masque feet sold in April for $738. Others are nifty gizmos and gadgets just waiting for a new life. In the same sale, a vintage electrostatic machine with glass disc and tole canister, circa 1910, sold for $600.

Joe Holahan, a partner in Kamelot Auctions with Jeffrey Kamal, says, “What’s interesting about Steampunk is that historically – from a dealer perspective – the kind of dealer who would buy Victorian and the kind of dealer who would buy industrial have nothing in common. It’s interesting to see the two different profiles come together. I’ve never walked into a shop that called itself a steampunk store, but it’s cool stuff. I’ve been in the business for 25 years, and I’m always thinking, what’s next? So this makes sense – it’s stuff that’s been done, but it’s being reinvented in a new form.”

Jeffrey Henkel, Kamelot’s resident furniture and decorative arts specialist, says, “I happen to like all aspects of design and many different genres. Steampunk is something that’s been around for a long time and then the term became attached to it. The beginning of us going into steampunk was with metal vitrines made around 1900-1910. Those have been so popular for us; we’ve done very well with them.”

“Urban Outfitters began to buy them – that really was the beginning – they were usable objects in store for display. People would go in and buy a bohemian blouse and want these vitrines for their houses. We tried to develop a clientele that bought more unusual objects, and we’ve been fairly successful doing it.”

He concludes, “We’ve got the stock – we get things from all over the world. All the factories that closed over the years were full of all sorts of fabulous, crazy things, and we’ve been lucky enough to have them in our auctions. There’s a market for these objects, and it’s great. Young couples are buying these things as everyday useful objects.”

Watch for Kamelot’s Oct. 22 event which will offer a perfect mix of architecturals, industrials, and Victoriana. Catalogs of past and future sales can be found at www.kamelotauctions.com. The auction house is located at 4700 Wissahickon Ave. in Philadelphia: for more information, call 215-438-6990.

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UPPER SADDLE RIVER, N.J. – “Sold!” the auctioneer calls out. This is the very moment when title legally changes hands from the owner (or consignor) of the property being sold. to the bidder who won the item.

The “bids” (the offers to purchase the item being sold) are the essential elements in any successful auction. These incremental bids by those who raise their paddles indicate to the auctioneer that they are making an offer to purchase the item.  

The process of incremental bidding, i.e., a method by which bids are increased according to pre-determined increments, should be as simple as it sounds, and often is. This article deals with both the standard, everyday incremental bidding at an auction, as well as some of the vagaries of the process. It also deals with some things that bidders need to be aware of.

The numbered bid paddle (or card, or in some cases even a paper plate with a number written on it) is provided to the bidder once he or she has registered at the auction house. Registration is the process by which you supply the auction house with your identification, and any other required information, so they know who you are. Often, this requires a valid driver’s license.

Once registered and supplied with a bid paddle, bidders are given, or have the option of purchasing, a printed catalog that should include the auction’s Terms and Conditions of Sale. Read them carefully. The catalog usually contains the listing of all the items being sold, the lot number assigned to each item, detailed descriptions of the property being offered and sometimes condition reports that describe such things as repairs, breaks, etc.  

The catalog may also contain an estimate of each item’s value. These values are based on the auction house’s research of historical selling prices of similar items. These estimates are often represented in ranges such as $200-$300, $400-600, etc. Most items eventually sell in or near these estimate ranges.

Now that you’re armed with your bid number and catalog, you have everything you need to move along to the next step of the process, the all-important pre-auction inspection, or preview. As you go from item to item and identify those pieces that may interest you, the catalog is an excellent in-hand reference. Refer to it frequently, as it may supply you with information you might not be aware of. Many buyers also use the catalog to circle items of interest, jot down their maximum bids (how high they are willing go), general notes, etc.

Once you take your seat and the actual auction begins, the paddle is used to indicate to the auctioneer that you are making an offer to purchase, or bid. The auctioneer will often begin by asking for a low opening bid from the audience, often one-half of the low estimate of the item being sold. Once someone’s paddle is raised into the air, the bidding process begins, and it continues to progress until the item is deemed “sold.”

For example, an opening bid of $100 is often followed with a subsequent bid of $125, then $150, and so on, as the bidding process continues. The advances in the bids usually follow pre-determined bidding increments. At Leighton Galleries, as an example, the increments are published in the catalog, and range from $10 bid increments for items selling for $10 to $100, to $100 increments for items selling for $1,000 to $5,000.  

If the auctioneer opened an item by asking for a $100 bid, and you raised you paddle, the auctioneer would acknowledge your bid and, in the same breath, start looking for $125 from someone else. Then, if that someone else were to raise their paddle, the auctioneer would acknowledge that bid and almost certainly look right back at you for the next bid, now at $150. If you were to bid again, he would look back at the other bidder (called the underbidder) for the next bid, and so on, until one of you stops bidding. The sale happens when no additional bid, or advance, is made beyond the last and final bid. At that point, the auctioneer calls “Sold!” and moves on to the next item, repeating the entire process.

Sometimes in the heat of the auction, a bidder will call out a bid in excess of the bid that the auctioneer is asking for. Say the auctioneer is trying to get a bid for $225, and a bidder raises his paddle and yells out “$300”, this is referred to as “jumping” the bid. This is an aggressive move on the part of the jump bidder, an attempt to intimidate the underbidder into capitulating. This move sometimes works, but sometimes it can also fuel unintended competition.  

Another bidding tactic used by determined buyers is to raise their paddle into the air, and leave it there, holding it up through the entire bidding sequence. The motivation to bid in this way varies from person to person, and for a variety of reasons. At our auctions, I personally appreciate this type of bidder since it helps to move the sale along. However, for those who might consider bidding in this way, be forewarned. Unscrupulous auctioneers might see this “paddle-in-the-air” bidder as an easy mark, as it indicates a relentless bidder who will not stop bidding until he wins the item.

I’ve seen this illegal practice myself, many times. Bidding in this manner opens the door to a dishonest auctioneer “bouncing” bids (taking nonexistent bids from the floor, the back of the auction hall, out of the air, etc.) and running up the price to the detriment of the paddle-in-the-air bidder. This bouncing will continue until the paddle comes down or the bidder shows some hesitation. Then, and magically, the “underbidder” stops bidding and the paddle-in- the-air buyer wins the item, ultimately paying far more than the real bidding justified.

One victim at a particular auction, who was bidding on a reproduction Tiffany lamp, happened to be a long-time customer of Leighton Galleries. I didn’t even know he and his wife were there until I looked around to see who was bidding so high on this reproduction lamp. As an auctioneer myself, I’ve developed a keen eye for picking bids out of an audience. A blinking eye here, a tipped catalog there, the nod of a head – I have seen them all. I stood at the front of the auction hall and believe me, there wasn’t another bidder is the house – except my customer and his wife.  Not one!  

This buyer grossly overpaid as a result of a dishonest and greedy auctioneer. I immediately told my customer. I cautioned him that he could bid that way at MY auction without any apprehension, but to be careful at THIS auction because he was the only bidder on the lamp; the others were phantom bids. I later learned that this particular auctioneer had been arrested and his auction business closed down for similar indiscretions.

Finally, bidders should be aware that they may find themselves competing with legitimate bidders who aren’t physically present in the auction gallery. For a long time, now, telephone bids have been a staple at auctions. Essentially the bidder on the other end of the phone is bidding just as if they were in the hall, with the auction staff communicating with them on the phone and bidding on their behalf.  

Absentee bids, or bids left with the auction house, are fairly common as well. Absentee bidders are folks who can’t attend the auction due to scheduling conflicts, geography, or just not wanting to spend the evening waiting for a few items to come up for bid. In this case, they fill out a form and tell us how high they want to bid. The auction house then bids on their behalf in a competitive fashion.

Most auction houses impose minimum-bid requirements on absentee and phone bidders to justify the extra time their employees must invest in handling the bids. For instance, if a phone bidder wants to bid $100 on a sapphire ring of obviously greater value, most auction houses will not take the bid. A $1,000 bid on a bronze is a completely different circumstance.

The Internet has shaken up the auction business in recent years in ways never before imagined. These days, buyers can sit at their computer at home, in their office, or anywhere in the world for that matter, and participate by entering bids through their computer [or, if using LiveAuctioneers.com, also via apps downloadable to their iPhone, iPod Touch or Android phone; absentee only through BlackBerry]. They can leave bids just like a traditional absentee bidder, and we bid on their behalf. The Internet also allows bidders to bid in real time through the Internet, as though they were right there in the hall or on the phone. As the item comes across the screen on their computer, all they have to do is click on a BID button, and voila. Internet bidding has become so popular that in most of our auctions, more than 35% of the items sell to the Internet.

If you are new to auctions and are thinking about attending one, find a local auction, register if you choose to do so, or simply take a seat and watch. Alternatively, learn the ropes by monitoring an auction through LiveAuctioneers.com. It’s absolutely free to watch any sale in progress on LiveAuctioneers. The process is so simple, you’ll catch on quickly. Within a few minutes of watching an action, you’ll be ready to jump right in with confidence.

Auctions are an excellent way to buy everything and anything from jewelry to antiques to collections of all kinds. You decide what you’re going to pay, and it’s fun too!

John Merowski
Owner/Auctioneer – Leighton Galleries Inc.

Leighton Galleries is a full-service Auction House advocating Buyer Awareness in the matters of art, antiques, auction houses and appraisal practices. Watch for Leighton Galleries’ auction catalogs and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

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