Rembrandt, Antiques Sales Warm Up Winter
March 2007
WINTER ANTIQUES SHOW
This much-awaited fair at the Park Avenue Seventh Regiment Armory did not disappoint. The definition of “antiques” here went well beyond furniture and furnishings to include such rare delights as Eskimo art, literary autographs and even guns, swords and medieval armor. The crowds were dense, with attendance estimated at 25,000, and dealers reported brisk sales.
American specialist Leigh Keno sold more than 70 percent of his booth, including a 1760 Newport, Rhode Island, mahogany chair for $410,000 and an unusual African-American yellow-pine pictographic desk from a Mississippi plantation, dated in the 1870s. Pre-Columbian and photography dealer Spencer Throckmorton had a Late Classic Maya rain-dancer statue in his booth at an asking price of $100,000. As the fair ended, three museums were considering acquiring it, with the Met getting first dibs and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Dallas Museum of the Arts back in line. An Aztec stone jaguar figure sold for $40,000 to a private collector. Gallery director Kraige Block says, “It was a terrific, record-breaking fair for us, the best we’ve ever done.”
Philadelphia dealer Elle Shushan, who specializes in portrait miniatures, sold a double miniature of English kings (and brothers) George VI and Edward VIII as young boys, as well as one by John Wood Dodge depicting two New Orleans Creole girls from 1843—both for between $20,000 and $30,000. More remarkably, Shushan also sold the booth itself—a miniature copy of a 1750 room from historic house in Westover, Virginia. A customer made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and the replica is headed for “the playroom of a 6- or 7-year-old girl,” says Shushan, who adds, “I never heard of anyone doing that before.”
On opening night, Fred Giampietro of New Haven sold an Indian tobacconist trade figure for $295,000 and a life-sized, cast-iron stag for $135,000. David Schorsch and Eileen Smiles of Woodbury, Connecticut, sold an 1825 tavern sign from Maine for a huge $750,000, and Asian art dealer Joan Mirviss sold two important Japanese woodblock prints, one by Suzuki Harunobo and the other by Hiroshige. John Alexander Ltd. sold a drop-leaf center table by Sir Frank William Brangwyn, circa 1930, which the dealer called “the single best piece the gallery has ever owned.”
This much-awaited fair at the Park Avenue Seventh Regiment Armory did not disappoint. The definition of “antiques” here went well beyond furniture and furnishings to include such rare delights as Eskimo art, literary autographs and even guns, swords and medieval armor. The crowds were dense, with attendance estimated at 25,000, and dealers reported brisk sales.
American specialist Leigh Keno sold more than 70 percent of his booth, including a 1760 Newport, Rhode Island, mahogany chair for $410,000 and an unusual African-American yellow-pine pictographic desk from a Mississippi plantation, dated in the 1870s. Pre-Columbian and photography dealer Spencer Throckmorton had a Late Classic Maya rain-dancer statue in his booth at an asking price of $100,000. As the fair ended, three museums were considering acquiring it, with the Met getting first dibs and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Dallas Museum of the Arts back in line. An Aztec stone jaguar figure sold for $40,000 to a private collector. Gallery director Kraige Block says, “It was a terrific, record-breaking fair for us, the best we’ve ever done.”
Philadelphia dealer Elle Shushan, who specializes in portrait miniatures, sold a double miniature of English kings (and brothers) George VI and Edward VIII as young boys, as well as one by John Wood Dodge depicting two New Orleans Creole girls from 1843—both for between $20,000 and $30,000. More remarkably, Shushan also sold the booth itself—a miniature copy of a 1750 room from historic house in Westover, Virginia. A customer made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and the replica is headed for “the playroom of a 6- or 7-year-old girl,” says Shushan, who adds, “I never heard of anyone doing that before.”
On opening night, Fred Giampietro of New Haven sold an Indian tobacconist trade figure for $295,000 and a life-sized, cast-iron stag for $135,000. David Schorsch and Eileen Smiles of Woodbury, Connecticut, sold an 1825 tavern sign from Maine for a huge $750,000, and Asian art dealer Joan Mirviss sold two important Japanese woodblock prints, one by Suzuki Harunobo and the other by Hiroshige. John Alexander Ltd. sold a drop-leaf center table by Sir Frank William Brangwyn, circa 1930, which the dealer called “the single best piece the gallery has ever owned.”
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