* Christie’s London/October 17, Post-war and Contemporary Art Day SaleThe sale total was £3.5 million. The top lot was Anselm Kiefer’s Baum mit Panzer that sold for £169,250 (estimate £70,000-90,000). Other top lots were Martin Kippenberger’s Self-Portrait that sold for £139,250 (estimate £18,000-22,000), and Wim Delvoye’s Last Port that sold for £109,250 (estimate £50,000-70,000). * Skinner Boston/October 17, Asian ArtThe …
Editor’s letter, October 2009
A few months ago Eleanor Gustafson and I spent a day as guests of Historic New England. We had wanted to see what I like to think of as the bookends of that organization’s historic houses—the 1938 Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, with its spare, modernist decor and bracing use of industrial materials, and the rambling, mysterious Beauport in Gloucester, …
This Week’s Top Lots: September 26 – October 2
* Skinner Boston/September 26, American Indian & Ethnographic ArtThe top lot was a tie between a 19th century carved Maori figure of a man (estimate $30,000-50,000) and a 19th century carved wood triple-blade gunstock club (estimate $25,000-35,000) that each sold for $35,500. Another top lot was a pre-Columbian carved limestone figure that sold for $29,625 (estimate $6,000-8,000). * Christie’s New …
This Week’s Top Lots: September 21 – 25
* Christie’s New York/September 22, Impressionist and Modern ArtThe sale total was $1.6 million, 112 of 142 lots sold. The top lot was Jean-Pierre Cassigneul’s Elisabeth à Deauville that sold for $122,500 (estimate $50,000-70,000). Other top sales were Cassigneul’s La nappe à carreaux that sold for $62,500 (estimate $40,000-60,000), and David Burliuk’s Flowers that sold for $52,500 (estimate $40,000-60,000). * …
Editor’s letter, September 2009
One of the things I admire about Electra Havemeyer Webb was her instinctive sense that the cultural designations of high-, low-, and middlebrow were silly. I do not mean to suggest that Webb was a prophet of late twentieth-century multiculturalism or that she could have argued for the relative merits of a beautifully carved duck decoy vis à vis a …
Collecting Notes: 20th century lighting design
Although Louis Comfort Tiffany stills commands the lion’s share of the market for 20th-century lighting design, many collectors have eschewed these opulent art lamps for mass-produced lightning by international, often anonymous designers—embracing the functional as well as the aesthetic value of their designs. Several dealers have carved a niche in this specialized field, and I recently visited a few New …
This Week’s Top Lots: August 24 – 28
* The August 24 and 25 sale of Australian art at Sotheby’s in Melbourne totaled over 6.8 million AUD. The top lot was Jeffrey Smart’s The Painted Factory, Tuscany that sold for 870,000 AUD (estimate 600,000-800,000 AUD). Other top sales were Sidney Nolan’s Burke and Wills Exhibition that sold for 552,000 AUD (estimate 450,000-550,000 AUD), Ivon Hitchens’s Flowers in a …
This Week’s Top Lots: August 15 – 21
* The top lot of the August 15 & 16 sale of marine, China trade, and sporting art at Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, New Hampshire was Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait’s A Check-Keep Your Distance that sold for $381,000 (estimate $100,000-200,000). Other top lots were a 19th-century carved figurehead of a woman attributed to John Rogerson that sold for $183,000 (estimate $120,000-180,000), …
This Week’s Top Lots: July 25 – 31
* The top lot of the July 25 auction of science, technology, dolls and toys at Skinner Boston was a circa 1865 walnut astronomical clock by E. Howard that sold for $195,525 (estimate $175,000-200,000). Other notable sales included a pair of Newton library globes that sold for $74,063 (estimate $30,000-40,000), a miniature carved and painted wooden ship’s figurehead that sold …
Elinor Gordon, 1918-2009
Elinor Gordon of Villanova, Pennsylvania, the premier antiques dealer in Chinese export porcelain, died on Wednesday July 22, at her vacation home in Osterville on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She was ninety-one years old and had been in the business for more than half a century, helping to build some of the best public and private collections of China trade porcelain …
