Palm Beach Show Beckons Sales

By: Doris Goldstein

April 2007

PALM BEACH—Despite an unseasonable cold snap, a record 6,000 people attended the February 16 preview of the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show (Feb. 16–20), and during its four-day run, more than 50,000 streamed through the dealers’ booths in the Palm Beach Convention Center.

Getting off to a quick start, M.S. Rau Antiques of New Orleans sold a pair of early 19th-century English globes for $175,000. TK Asian Antiquities of Williamsburg, Virginia, and New York reported multiple sales, including a massive Tang Dynasty unpainted pottery lokapāla for little more than $100,000, as well as several blue-glaze figures from the same period that were also in the six-figure range.

First-time exhibitor Lillian Nassau of New York, who specializes in Louis Comfort Tiffany works of art, sold a floral table lamp in the low six figures and a selection of late 19th-century silver hollowware and desk set pieces. Fine art dealers saw steady traffic, as an attendee bought “Wild Horse Creek,” a 1949 landscape by Birger Sandzen, for $125,000 at William A. Karges Fine Art of Beverly Hills. New York’s Godel & Co. sold the 1921 “Spring,” by American Impressionist Williard L. Metcalf. “It’s one of the best art and antiques shows in America, with a good mix of dealers and cross section of price points,” says gallery president Howard Godel.

Jewelry is always a Palm Beach favorite, and two Art Deco pieces—a Cartier diamond jabot and sapphire and diamond bracelet ($25,000 and $30,000, respectively)—sold quickly at Betteridge Jewelers of Greenwich, Connecticut.

Due to its growing success, the Palm Beach Group, producers of the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show, moved to an expanded facility in Lake Worth, Florida, where the new 23,000-square-foot space will house a staff of 20. The company, which acquired the Baltimore Summer Antiques Show in 2005, is currently exploring additional venues, with Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas under consideration.