The Magazine Antiques

The Market | By Staff

This week's top lots

January 22, 2010  |  
What: Punch bowl mark of Cornelius Kierstede, New York, 1700-10
Where: Sotheby's New York (January 22, Important Americana)
Estimate: $400,000-800,000
Sold For: $5.9 million

This punch bowl—the largest known example of early 18th-century American silver—descended in the family of Commodore Joshua Loring of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. It was brought to London after Joshua Loring Jr., who fought with the British army in the Revolutionary War, reunited with his parents, who had previously fled to England. The punch bowl was  stored in the family's bank vault for over 230 years, and only came to light in England last year. It has been suggested that the punch bowl's original owner may have  Col. Abraham de Peyster, Mayor of New York City from 1692 to 1694, as most of Kierstede's patrons were wealthy and prominent New Yorkers. About thirty-two pieces by Kierstede are known today and most are in museum collections.
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The Market | By Eleanor H. Gustafson

Dealers bring biggest & best to the 56th Annual Winter Antiques Show

January 22, 2010  |  There is no arguing with the idea that the Winter Antiques Show, which opened last night at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, is the BIG one. Now in its fifty-sixth year, its seventy-five dealers from around the world are showcasing some of the very best in the decorative arts, painting, and folk art. There is a lot to see, and some of it is huge. We've picked out a few that are hard to overlook. You really can't miss James and Nancy Glazer's majestic copper elk right inside the entrance. Standing ten feet high, it was made about 1903 by the W. H. Mullins Company of Salem, Ohio, and originally topped the Elks Club in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Across the aisle, Todd Prickett of C. L. Prickett has an exceptional Boston block-front chest-on-chest (c. 1775) that's almost eight feet tall-and was included in Luke Vincent Lockwood's seminal Colonial Furniture in America of 1913.

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It might seem that Gerald Peters Gallery has only five objects on offer, they are so enormous, but there are several smaller pieces as well. The centerpiece, of 1914, is a fourteen thousand-pound, nine-foot-tall urn carved by Paul Manship from a block of Tennessee marble with a neoclassical frieze of Indians hunting buffalo and engaged in intertribal warfare. On the booth walls hang Manship's Four Elements, four of eight parcel-gilt bronze reliefs he did for façades of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's old headquarters in downtown Manhattan (the other four are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art). All eight were detached during AT&T's removal from the building in the 1980s. Considerably smaller but equally powerful is the gallery's collection of British Championship Animals, modeled by Herbert Haseltine in 1925.
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The Market | By Staff

This week's top lots

January 15, 2010  |  
What: German turquoise ground porcelain snuff box, 18th century
Where: Christie's New York (January 12 & 13, Interiors)
Estimate: $1,500-2,000
Sold For: $8,125

This gilt-metal snuff box is the epitomizes the rococo taste—the delicate turquoise color imitates porcelain made for Louis XV, and it has been formed in an organic shell-shape that is emblematic of the style. The interior depicts a mother pug and her three puppies—one of the most popular dogs in the 18th century that were depicted in numerous works of art during the period including a painting of Louis XIV and his heirs by Nicolas de Largillierre, and numerous portraits by Boucher.
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The Market | By Paul O'Donnell

Dealer profile: Titi Halle

January 14, 2010  |  The precious textiles and clothing sold at Cora Ginsburg have as much charm, beauty, and depth as any other category of antiques, but like the firm itself, you may have to look for it. Tucked into two cozy rooms on the third floor of a nondescript residential building on Manhattan's East Seventy-fourth Street, the gallery is as sparely furnished as a designer boutique, and many of its choicest items are not on display but must be retrieved from a back room and unrolled for viewing. At which point the owner, Titi Halle, is liable to hand you a magnifying glass so you can understand what it is you are looking at.

Halle is as unimposing and intimate a presence as her shop. One of a select group of dealers in a field that requires knowledge of goods from all over the globe spanning three or four centuries, she has a command of many disciplines—textiles, fashion, folk art, handcraft, weaving and printing technology, even the history of tangential matters such as Mummers' performances. On Antiques Roadshow she comes across as elegantly erudite. But in her gallery, with her shy smile, eyeglasses, and girlishly long hair, she might remind you of a favorite librarian. Spreading one piece of fabric on the floor for a recent visitor, she cheerfully exclaimed, "That's what floats my boat!"

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