NORWALK, Conn. (AP) – An interior designer has been sentenced to two years in prison for stealing nearly $140,000 from a Connecticut homeowner during a home makeover.
Forty-nine-year-old Shawn Mazzuca of Stamford and Saugerties, N.Y., was sentenced Thursday in Norwalk Superior Court.
Authorities say they arrested Mazzuca in August 2008 for stealing the money during a $209,000 renovation to a home in Westport. Prosecutors say he bilked the homeowner out of $139,500 that was intended for the purchase of antiques, designer rugs and furniture.
Police say Mazzuca admitted to his client, Jane Henderson, that he had charged her for items he hadn’t even ordered. Mazzuca’s lawyer said his client used the money for medical expenses.
Mazzuca was ordered to repay Henderson the money he stole.
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Victorian cream silk brocade wedding gown, circa 1877, offered together with matching bodice and a silk groom’s vest, sold for $475 + buyer’s premium on Dec. 14, 2006 at Skinner Inc. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Skinner Inc. DURHAM, N.H. (AP) – Visitors to an annual bridal show at the University of New Hampshire will be able to see what brides wore as they walked down the aisle many years ago.
An exhibit of antique wedding dresses from the Irma Bowen Textile Collection at the University of New Hampshire Museum will be shown at the annual WERZ bridal show at the Whittemore Center on Sunday.
Bowen taught textile classes, including in the history of fashion and dressmaking techniques, at UNH from 1920 to 1947. During that time, she collected more than 600 samples of women’s and children’s clothing from the 1700s through the early 20th century.
The items on display include a wool designer gown covered with hand-stitched lace and netting and a burgundy long-sleeve silk taffeta. Both dresses are circa 1890.
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Marble vase designed circa 1914 by Paul Manship and weighing 14,000 pounds, to be transported to the Park Avenue Armory for the Winter Antiques Show. Image courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery. NEW YORK (AP) – A marble vase weighing 14,000 pounds will be carefully moved Saturday to a New York City armory for display at the upscale Winter Antiques Show.
A moving team will use a heavy duty rigging machine to carry the crated vase into the Park Avenue Armory. The massive 9-foot tall artwork title Urn will be gently lowered onto a bronze pivot attached to a marble base.
Alice Duncan, director of Manhattan’s Gerald Peters Gallery, says the vase by American sculptor Paul Manship, who also created Rockefeller Center’s famed Prometheus, has a $6 million price tag.
The pink Tennessee marble vase was commissioned in 1914 by Ohio industrialist William Mather for his estate outside of Cleveland.
The Winter Antiques Show runs from Jan. 22 through Jan. 31.
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Marvel Comics #1, 1939, provenance Mile High Collection, features superheroes The Human Torch, The Angel and more. Sold for $130,000 + buyer’s premium on Feb. 26, 2009. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers Archive and Heritage Auction Galleries.
DEKALB, Ill. (AP) – The art of comic books will go on display in the Northern Illinois University Art Museum next week.
Lynne Thomas, head of NIU Libraries’ Rare Books and Special Collections department, will curate the exhibit, titled Heroes, Villains and the American Zeitgeist. The pieces in the exhibit were selected to show the internal struggle of comic book heroes and the pop cultural evolutions of the different types of comics in general.
The exhibit is chronological and touches on the history and evolution of comic books within the American cultural landscape. Beginning with the “Golden Age” of comics in the 1930s, the exhibit features several original Detective Comics issues. The exhibit then leads into the “Modern Era,” which Thomas describes as anything from the ’80s or later.
“What I sort of did was trace this history mostly of heroes,” Thomas said. With the exception of Superman, Thomas said, comic book heroes have traditionally been very dynamic characters, with consistent internal conflicts and personal struggles.
“The other thing I wanted to demonstrate is that diversity goes back (to the ’70s and ’80s),” Thomas said. “That was a really important thing for the comics industry.”
Thomas also spoke of the changes in readership the comic book industry has reckoned with over the years. From a mainstream product primarily aimed at children to a niche product geared more toward hobbyist adults, Thomas did her best to portray the complex evolution of the comic book industry.
“Comics were sort of a universal thing in the way TV or the Internet is for us,” Thomas said of the way comics originally were included in American culture.
The exhibit culminates in the rise of independent and self-published comics, and also the graphic novel format, in the ’90s and on through to today. There also are specific displays highlighting the works of comic book icons Frank Miller and Alan Moore.
Jo Burke, director of the NIU Art Museum, said she asked Thomas to produce this exhibit partly because she finds it unique that NIU Libraries even has such pop culture materials as comic books that date back to the first half of the 20th century.
“I don’t even know if people realized we even had (comic books) in the collection,” Burke said. “There’s just so many resources over there at the library.”
Heroes, Villains and the American Zeitgeist is one of three installments featured in the NIU Art Museum’s current popular culture suite. Other exhibits include Cannonball Press, a collection of wood block prints and Midwestern BLAB! 2,’ which features comic art, illustration, painting and printmaking.
There is a public reception for the three exhibits at 4:30 p.m. Jan. 21 at the NIU Art Museum. The exhibits will be on display until March 13.
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Autographed photo of Abraham Lincoln taken by C.S. German, sold for $35,000 + buyer’s premium at Cowan’s Auctions, June 7, 2007.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Indiana State Museum officials said Wednesday that a fundraising campaign devoted to caring for a large collection of Abraham Lincoln artifacts, including the last portrait Lincoln sat for, raised nearly $7 million in its first six months.
Campaign co-chairman Ian Rolland said he and his colleagues were advised to wait until after the recession before asking donors for the $12.5 million deemed necessary to conserve, exhibit and endow a fund for the collection’s long-term maintenance.
Rolland said the fundraising response to date – $6.9 million in gifts or pledges from individuals, businesses and foundations from around Indiana – shows Lincoln “holds a special place in the hearts” of the residents of the state known as his boyhood home.
“Abraham Lincoln spent a good share of his early days here in Indiana and the acquisition of this collection gives Indiana its proper place in terms of the Lincoln history,” he said.
Nearly half the money pledged so far, $3 million, came from Lilly Endowment.
Museum officials said the collection, valued at about $20 million, was once the nation’s largest privately held collection of Lincoln memorabilia.
Lincoln National Corp., which moved from Fort Wayne to Philadelphia in 1999, began amassing the memorabilia of Lincoln’s personal and presidential life in 1928. It includes campaign materials, about 300 documents signed by Lincoln and 5,000 photographs – many of which belonged to the Lincoln family.
In late 2008, the company donated the collection to Indiana. The collection is housed both at the downtown Indianapolis museum and the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne.
Tom King, the state museum’s interim president and CEO, said that while the collection has been seen by many Fort Wayne residents and visitors to that city, it will be getting wider exposure at the museum.
“These remarkable treasures are just waiting to be discovered by the citizens of Indiana and visitors here,” King said during a news conference.
He said some of the fundraising campaign will be used to digitize the entire collection to make it available online to Lincoln scholars and anyone else who wants to see it.
Museum officials announced the campaign success with one of the collection’s choice pieces – the final portrait that Lincoln sat for – as a backdrop.
Lincoln sat for artist Matthew Wilson in February 1865, when the Civil War still was raging. Wilson finished the painting after Lincoln was assassinated two months later.
Rolland, who is Lincoln National’s former chairman, recalled that when the portrait was acquired in the 1980s he and a colleague never left the side of the crate carrying the painting, even taking it with them into the dining car.
Dale Ogden, the museum’s chief curator or cultural history, said the collection includes more than 30,000 objects, as well as about 220,000 newspaper clippings from the mid-1800s to the present about Lincoln.
Among its choice pieces are rare signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery, and the chair in which Lincoln sat for some of his most famous presidential photographs.
The museum will showcase some of the collection in an exhibit that opens Feb. 12. The same day, a traveling Library of Congress exhibit on Lincoln also opens at the museum.
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – A long-running antiques show in Memphis has been postponed indefinitely this year because of a lack of vendors.
The Madonna Circle Memphis Antiques, Garden and Gourmet Show has been held annually for 34 years. According to The Commercial Appeal, it has attracted garden, food and antiques lovers from throughout the Mid-South in the past.
Madonna Circle, the largest Catholic women’s association in Memphis, was unable to secure enough antiques vendors. Normally up to 65 such vendors came from as far away as New York, Canada and Europe.
The show had been scheduled for Feb. 25-28 at the Agricenter.
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Information from: The Commercial Appeal, http://www.commercialappeal.com
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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – A Florida man has been sentenced to just under two years in federal prison for trying to sell stolen artworks by Picasso and Chagall.
Marcus Patmon of Miami was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Delaware on Wednesday to 23 months behind bars and ordered to pay restitution. He pleaded guilty in October to mail fraud, attempted wire fraud and the interstate transport of stolen goods.
According to court papers and attorneys, Patmon was inspired by an episode of Antiques Roadshow to steal and resell art to regain the lifestyle he lost after a 2001 assault conviction.
Patmon admitted selling a Chagall lithograph and Picasso etching he stole from a Washington gallery in 2007. When he tried to sell Picasso etchings from a Palm Beach, Fla., gallery, a dealer notified police and a Delaware-based federal agent posed as the dealer’s employee.
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Information from: The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal, http://www.delawareonline.com
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) – Polish police say they have found a painting by French impressionist Claude Monet that was stolen from a museum in western Poland in 2000.
Poznan police spokesman Romuald Piecuch said Wednesday that officers detained a 41-year-old man in the southern city of Olkusz after the painting, Beach in Pourville, was found in his possession.
Piecuch says the suspect and the painting were being transported to Poznan.
The picture was stolen in September 2000 from the National Museum in Poznan. It was valued at $1 million at the time.
The thief cut the painting from its frame and replaced it with a copy painted on cardboard.
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Leaded-glass panel from Tavern on the Green’s Rafters Room, crafted entirely from Tiffany workshop glass, $32,940. Image courtesy LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Guernsey’s.
NEW YORK (ACNI) – Potential bidders, including a scattering of celebrities, encountered long registration lines for yesterday’s opening session of Guernsey’s sale to liquidate the luxe contents of New York’s Tavern on the Green. One of New York’s best-known dining establishments since its doors opened in 1934, Tavern on the Green filed for bankruptcy last year.
The restaurant’s majestic 1870 premises located at the western end of Central Park featured six elaborately decorated dining rooms, mirrored hallways and a glittering décor. The Tavern’s entire collection was consigned to Guernsey’s three-day sale, which continues on Thursday and Friday, Jan. 14 and 15. The auction also includes a number of items from Maxwell’s Plum and The Russian Team, which at one time also belonged to the Tavern’s former owner, the late Warner LeRoy.
Internet bidding through LiveAuctioneers.com proved to be a powerful adversary for those who attended the Jan. 13 auction session in person. Eighty-nine lots, or 24.5% of the inventory, sold to online participants.
A clear preference was shown for Art Nouveau-style art glass light fixtures. The top three lots purchased via the Internet in yesterday’s session were made from glass that had been crafted in the Tiffany Studios workshop.
One of two floral-motif leaded-glass panels from the Rafters Room displayed distinctive Tiffany features, including mottled and “confetti” glass, thick and textural rippled glass, square frogs’ backs, and circular jewel pieces. The panels were fabricated especially for the Tavern by Franz Meyer Workshop, based on a design by Warner LeRoy and the restaurant’s design director Jeffrey Higginbottom. The 66-inch by 36-inch panel, which was estimated at $10,000-$50,000, attracted 827 visitors to the electronic catalog and sold through LiveAuctioneers for $32,940.
An Art Nouveau-style leaded-glass ceiling lamp crafted from Tiffany workshop glass, with a square “frog’s back” jeweled border, opalescent glass and marbleized glass measured 38 inches in diameter. A dazzling mélange of red, blue, purple and yellow tones, it flew past its $3,000-$6,000 estimate to settle online at $32,940.
Another Art Nouveau-style leaded glass ceiling lamp comprised of Tiffany workshop glass featured oval cartouches, white daisy-like flowers, and amber stones on the shade’s edge. The 32-inch (diameter) fixture had been estimated at $5,000-$10,000 but nearly tripled expectations with an online winning bid of $29,280.
The auction continues Thursday and Friday, Jan. 14 and 15, with Internet live bidding through www.LiveAuctioneers.com. View the catalog and sign up to bid live via the Internet through LiveAuctioneers.com.
ATLANTA (AP) – Simple line drawings aren’t what most art lovers think of when people mention Henri Matisse, who’s better known for his vivid, colorful paintings.
The artist produced dozens of drawings and etchings as illutrations for the work of French poets Stephane Mallarme and Pierre Ronsard. Matisse’s drawings appeared alongside the poems in his Florilege des Amours de Ronsard and Poesies collections, published in the 1930s and ’40s.
Sixty-three of the illustrations will be on display at the Museum of Art at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta from Jan. 17 until May 9.
“There is a sensual, lyrical line he creates,” said museum director Lloyd Nick. “I wouldn’t be surprised if after seeing the exhibit, people feel like dancing.”
The pieces include couples wrapped in each other’s arms, women lounging on beds and lush flowers. They also include familiar images, such as a sketch of the frolicking figures from his vibrant painting, The Dance.
Other pieces are more complex: a woman clothed in a patterned dress standing in a forest or a nude woman bathing in a stream flanked by vines.
The works in the exhibit are part of the estate of French publisher Albert Skira, who worked closely with Matisse on both works. It will appear again in 2011 when it goes to Los Angeles, said curator Reilly Rhodes.
Matisse, who died in 1954 at the age of 84, created art in various media throughout his career – from collages of thick pieces of painted paper to bronze sculpture. He is best known for his vivid paintings of rounded blue nudes, a slain Icarus falling through a starry blue sky and cloud-like flowers and plants.
