A courtly 17th-century amber and ivory casket

Editorial Staff Art

Because the Detroit Institute of Arts had no works sculpted in amber, I have as the curator been keen to acquire a significant object in this precious material once called “the gold of the Baltic.” Long regarded as having mythical origins and medicinal and magical powers, northern European amber is ancient fossilized resin that was primarily found floating on the …

Doyle & Doyle decks the halls

Editorial Staff Art

The Aurora Borealis, twinkle lights, and tinsel. The best parts of winter always involve a bit of sparkle.  With that in mind New York City jewelry shop Doyle & Doyle, founded by sisters Elizabeth and Irene Pamela Doyle in 2000, recently hosted its annual holiday party—where guests were offered stylings with pieces from the store’s collection of antique baubles. Revelers …

This week’s top lots

Editorial Staff Art

What: Pair of chairs, late 19th centuryWhere: Rago Arts (December 5, Estate Sale) Estimate: $500-700 Sold For: $390,400 This pair of American Aesthetic Movement chairs, which were inherited by the daughter-in-law of a Philadelphia-area couple and reportedly stored in a boiler room for forty years, are believed to be the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany or an associated firm. What: …

Ralph D. Curtis: A nineteenth-century folk artist identified

Editorial Staff Art

November 2009 | In 1973 at an auction in Ellenville, New York, an early nineteenth-century portrait of a woman wearing a lace bonnet, holding a red book, and seated in a high-back chair sold for what was then an unusually high price of nine thousand dollars. The picture, painted on tulipwood, was unsigned and is believed to have come from …

Stampede

Editorial Staff Art

Texas is full of cattlemen, but few with the style and panache of Derrill Osborn, whose “herd” was offered at the Dallas Auction Gallery in October. Best known for shaping decades of men’s fashion—he headed that division at Neiman Marcus for more than twenty years—Osborn has been a “cattleman” ever since his great-grandfather whittled him a little wooden cow when …

Lalique up close at Heritage Auctions

Editorial Staff Art

Starting tomorrow, December 5, New Yorkers will have a chance to see up close over one hundred examples of art glass by René Lalique—one of the leading names in the decorative arts—when Heritage Auctions begins the preview for its inaugural 20th century design auction in Manhattan. For those that can’t make the sale in person, we’ve gathered a slideshow of …

American paintings at auction

Editorial Staff Art, Exhibitions

On the horizon are the fall sales of American paintings, drawings, and sculpture at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York. Among the highlights to be offered at Christie’s, on December 2, is Andrew Wyeth’s 1960  Above the Narrows, a painting the New York Times art critic Roberta Smith once referred to as “bleak” and “inexplicably barren,” featuring a young boy …

Multiple modernisms on exhibit in New York

Editorial Staff Art, Exhibitions

Early twentieth—century modernism-particularly that of Austria and Germany—seems to be all over New York this fall, with two exhibitions at the Guggenheim—Kandinsky, and Gabriel Munter and Vasily Kandisnky 1902-14: A life in Photographs—one at the Museum of Modern Art—Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, and yet another at the Neue Galerie: From Klimt to Klee: Masterworks from the Serge Sebarsky Collection, …

Elbert Hubbard: An American Original

Editorial Staff Art

Premiering tonight on PBS (check here for local listings), Elbert Hubbard: An American Original offers a sweeping profile of the arts and crafts visionary and founder of East Aurora, New York’s Roycroft community. Charting the controversial and often contradictory course of Hubbard’s personal and professional lives, this documentary film by Paul Lamont includes wonderful archival footage as well as interviews …