ST. PAUL, MN — Best remembered as the American ‘father of the winter landscape,’ Walter Launt Palmer (1854-1932) rendered this stunning seascape capturing a pivotal moment for a sailboat in 1892 while at the peak of his career. The signed and dated oil on canvas received major attention at Revere Auctions July 24 as a star lot in its Aesthetic Devotion sale, garnering dozens of competing bids from LiveAuctioneers bidders and the floor.
In the end, the floor won out, with the Palmer hammering for a staggering $60,000 and selling for $78,000 with buyer’s premium. The unusual nature of the work, combined with Palmer’s branding as a winter landscape specialist, had to be a driver in such an unusual performance.
MANCHESTER, NH — It was 1956, and Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler was in France traveling with her children Kenneth and Barbara. While shopping, she came across a tall, comically proportioned plastic doll named Bild Lilli. Based on a popular comic character appearing in the West German Bild tabloid newspaper, Bild Lilli had been licensed by Bild to the West German toymaker Greiner & Hausser, which debuted the toy in 1955.
Handler purchased three Bild Lilli dolls, gave one to Barbara, and took the other two back to Mattel’s Los Angeles headquarters, where designers copied it for a new product line ultimately named Barbie, after Handler’s daughter. Mattel would purchase the rights to Bild Lilli in 1964, likely to avoid international litigation for industrial copycatting.
Denise Ryan Auctions brought two original 1950s-era Bild Lilli dolls to market July 29 as an innocuous $300-$500 lot in its Vintage & Antique Coins & Collectibles sale. Given that Bild Lilli dolls routinely sell for four figures in sales held through LiveAuctioneers, the estimate only served as chum in the Lilli collecting waters. When it was all over, the pair hammered for $3,900 and sold for $4,797 despite lacking any attire, far eclipsing the routine three-figure sums paid for vintage Barbie dolls.
CHICAGO — Potter & Potter on July 26 achieved an amazing result for a four-volume, 1883-1884 hardbound set of books containing then-contemporary images of some of America’s most celebrated homes of the Gilded Age, built for the era’s captains of industry and finance.
Estimated at $4,000-$6,000, the set, entitled Artistic Houses Being a Series of Interior Views of a number of the Most Beautiful and Celebrated Homes in the United States, hammered for a whopping $26,000, or $32,500 with buyer’s premium. It was number 234 of 500 copies and was inscribed ‘Presented to The Builders & Traders Exchange by J. B. Sullivan & Bro’.
Published by Sullivan and authored by George William Sheldon (1843-1914), the volumes contain hundreds of homes belonging to the likes of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Ulysses S. Grant, J. Pierpont Morgan, W. H. Vanderbilt and many other luminary names. The photos reveal the grandeur and often gaudiness inherent in the tastes of the period, a time when industrialization was radically changing the American landscape and way of life.
ST. MICHAELS, MD — An ‘extremely rare’ feeding black duck decoy with a slightly turned head and a downward-looking pose took top honors at Guyette & Deeter’s July 26 Decoy and Sporting Art sale. The 18in decoy was estimated in typical territory for Elmer Crowell (1862-1951), at $80,000-$120,000, but the final hammer was $215,000, or $268,750 with buyer’s premium.
Brought to market from the Alan and Elaine Haid collection, the decoy appears in Elmer Crowell: Father of American Bird Carving by Stephen B. O’Brien Jr and Chelsie W. Olney.
LOS ANGELES — Harold Van Doren (1895-1957) was an American industrial designer who worked on a wide variety of projects, including the Skippy Airflow pedal car for American National, Philco appliances, and what he’s best remembered for by collectors today, the Air King line of radios.
In the era before thermoplastics, manufacturers used a range of substances to mold modern forms. Many relied on the same phenolic resins, but suppliers preferred to use trademarked names to brand theirs. Thus, Bakelite, Catalin, and Plaskon all became household words, and are now strongly identified with vintage table radios.
Plaskon was the brand belonging to the Libbey Owens Ford Glass Company of Toledo, Ohio. Van Doren and his manufacturing partner, John Gordon Rideout of Toledo, went with their hometown supplier for their Air King Radio line when it debuted in 1933. Iconic for their skyscraper-inspired designs, Air Kings became nationwide best sellers and came in a variety of striking colors.
Bonhams brought an Air King 66 model to market as part of the dispersal of the Richard Balsbaugh collection of vintage radios. Balsbaugh was a radio network titan, buying struggling stations and turning them around with fresh formats and talent. He sold the firm a number of years back for $300 million, and had been a dominant name in the vintage radio collecting community, known for his demand for impeccable-condition examples.
Estimated at $20,000-$30,000, the Air King 66 in striking red Plaskon netted $45,000, or $59,400 with buyer’s premium at the July 25 sale.
