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DESIGNED BY ARCHITECTS
Furniture, lamps and objects designed by important international architects
July 1st, 2010
More than 200 furniture, lamps, carpets, objects, architectural drawings, photographs and books from Art Nouveau, Bauhaus, design of the 50-70ties until the present day.
Auction June 23rd & 24th 9:30am
Preview June 22nd
Jackson Rooms sessions include American, Continental, English and Asian Antique and Semi-Antique Furniture including bookcases and dining tables.
America’s favorite new TV show launched its first episode of Season 2 on June 7th. A staggering 4.3 million viewers tuned in to follow Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz on their next great picking adventure.
Mike & Frank are once again on the hunt for more – Rusty Gold – digging through barns, salvage yards, and a burned down storage facility in search of forgotten treasures.
The first episode we watch Mike get taken advantage of by Buddy the Booby Trap man. Had he only listened to Frank! I couldn’t help but whistle the theme to “Sanford and Son” while watching them climb around some the broken down bus filled to the brim with junque. It would seem like they have to pick many a pile before striking gold.
Finally, they get a lead on a property with a few cars. Over the years I have managed a few car collections, and have found a few great cars in barns myself. It never ceases to amaze me how one day you pull a car in a garage, and then it is left to sit for 10-20 years. At the end of the day, the 1950 Studebaker they managed to score was a well earned reward.
So it’s no mystery I like this show. I love what it represents; two guys who have a passion for adventure, and who get excited every day with the thrill of the hunt. That aside, I wanted to know more about these guys. I wanted to really know how deep their passion runs for this stuff.
I emailed Frank a few weeks ago, alas his taping schedule has kept him tied up, and I don’t think he spends as much time on email I do – so I hit up Mike for an interview. I have to say it’s really weird interviewing someone. It is usually me in the hot seat. I thought about a lot of questions that have been asked to me over the years and then trashed the list and decided to “free style”.
Poor guy sounds exhausted when I first get on the phone with him. He’s been on the road up to his ears in rotted hams and dust bunnies. I really felt bad about taking some of his downtime away for my interview, but don’t you know as soon as we started talking about picking, he completely came back to life.
I learned we had a good bit in common. He started Kindergarten at the age of 4, and so did I. He was raised in a single family home, so was I. He had a thing for bikes at the age of 4. At 4 I was racing my bad-ass red tricycle around the house with my mother’s sunglasses on narrowly missing the wall as I took the corners at amazing speeds.
Seriously, Mike’s passion for collecting did start at the age of 4. One day on his way to school he saw a few bikes in the trash at someone’s home. He ended up cutting school and took them all back to the garage at his home. This is where the similarities stop, because I didn’t start cutting school until like 10th grade.
His interest in vintage items didn’t end as a kid. In later years, he wanted to decorate his home with vintage things, and to this day, he still has a passion for bicycles. I must sadly admit I never kept that red trike, or the bubblegum pink Huffy I had.
I know earlier I said I decided against the standard reporter questionnaire, but I did want to know one thing. Did he have a Fine Arts degree, or any formal schooling for the world of antiques? I get asked that question a lot. In case you are wondering, the answer is no – and I was betting that was going to be his answer as well. Sure enough, he had learned from the school of hard knocks; trial and error; experience. I personally think you learn more that way in this business.
The conversation came to a serious note at one point when we talked about picking. He noted the level of thrill he gets from being first to pick things. He expressed how he did not want to be the middle man, or have an item sold to him that had been sold a few times around. There is a simple old school joke that explains it all; “There were two antique dealers on a deserted island…business was good!”
In the world of collecting, items are often picked, then sold to a dealer, then another dealer and maybe even a third dealer before finally going to a collector. Wolfe has no interest in being on the receiving end of a phone call from a dealer offering their newly polished prize up for sale.
Mike & Frank have been in this business for quite some time. With all they have seen, I had to know what would be the ultimate pick. Mike, the ever passionate bike guy gave me not one, but two answers; First, was anything Harley Davidson, pre 1910. Second would be a Blackhawk motorcycle. Apparently this bike was made not far from his home and a complete model has never been found.
So any of you reading that happen to have one of these in your backyard and you want to be on TV, you know who to call.
In the meantime I’ll be watching to see if the antique Gods smile upon you and grant that wish. However, may I note that I’m pretty sure the oil lamp you were looking at in the first episode of Season 2 is called an Aladdin lamp. Perhaps you could have rubbed it and made a wish!
Happy Hunting guys!
Reyne
Discovery Auction – June 18th 10am
Great Estates Auction – June 19th 12pm
Furnishings by Gustav Stickley, L&JG Stickley, Charles Stickley, Stickley Bros, Limbert, Roycroft, J.M. Young, Plail.
Pottery, Ceramics, metal and Glass by Rookwood, Grueby, Newcomb, Ohr, Fulper, Marblehead, Saturday Evening Girls, North Dakota School of Mines, Wheatley, Hampshire, Peters & Reed, Van Briggle, Kipp, Heinrichs, WMF, Heintz, Tiffany Studios, Steuben, Durand, Weller, Roseville, Dow. American Art pottery by Grueby, Fulper, Volkmar, Marblehead.
Market Preview going on now, 12PM to 7PM until July 10 & 11 when the market time changes from 9AM to 4PM for our Grand Opening.
WHO WE ARE:
200 SELECT VENDORS VEND FOR ***FREE*** OUR GRAND OPENING WEEKEND:
ABOUT THE MARKET AT THE PIAZZA:
WEEKEND BOOTH RATES:
HOW TO BECOME A VENDOR:
The Piazza at Schmidt’s
2nd & Germantown Avenue, Below Girard
Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, PA 19123
215-467-4603 – vendor@towerdev.com
www.marketatthepiazza.com
AUSTIN, Texas – The stellar Whit Hanks collection of European antiques and Vietnamese French Catholic religious relics serves as the centerpiece of Austin Auction Gallery’s June 26-27 East Meets West cataloged Estates Auction. A total of 600 lots will be offered, 350 coming from the Hanks collection.
Owner of a high-profile antiques center located in Austin’s original Coca-Cola bottling plant, Whit Hanks is also a real estate developer known for rescuing and relocating two complete 19th-century Vietnamese churches to a country property in Dripping Springs, near Austin.
“Mr. Hanks is an antiques icon in Austin and always ahead of the next collecting trend,” said Austin Auction Gallery associate Chris Featherston. “He owns the city’s premier multi-dealer gallery and is known for his impeccable taste in European antiques and Mexican religious art, which he bought and sold for nearly 30 years before discovering the colonial treasures of Vietnam.”
French 8½-foot-tall gold leaf mirror with a carved putto and wolves’ heads. Austin Auction Gallery image.
Initially drawn to antiques after inheriting his grandfather’s lavishly furnished New York apartment in the 1970s, Hanks made dozens of trips to Europe in pursuit of architectural antiques. “He would bring back spectacular stained glass and monumental mirrors, similar to the 8½-foot-tall gold leaf mirror with a carved putto and wolves’ heads that’s included in the June sale,” said Featherston.
The auction’s inventory list is also rife with evidence of Hanks’ attraction to offbeat items that aren’t standard fare in an antique gallery – things like the 30 to 40 antique terra-cotta olive jars acquired in northern Spain, each of substantial heft and standing 3½ feet tall. “If Mr. Hanks saw something he knew was special and there was a shipping container large enough to accommodate it, he would buy it,” Featherston said.
Whit Hanks’ appreciation for religious icons began in the 1980s, Featherston said, and some of his purchases were made at sales conducted by Austin Auction Gallery. “At that time, we’ve been told that it was possible to buy retablos in Mexico, six for $10. The interest in these objects was not all that great back then, but now those same retablos may be valued at $2,000 to $3,000 apiece.”
In 2007, while visiting his son who lives in Asia, Hanks discovered and made an immediate connection with the French-influenced religious antiques and architecture of Vietnam. He began to buy the relics with the same fervor that spurred his earlier trips to Europe and Mexico. Now headed to auction, the Asian collection includes more than 40 antique French colonial statues up to 45 inches tall, several relief-carved religious panels – one of them after a 15th-century Italian painting – carved altar adornments and stone heads; and a compartmented Vietnamese marriage box with lacquered faux-tortoiseshell lid. These beautiful artworks would find a fitting home in either of the two French religious cabinets to be auctioned.
An extensive selection of carved Chinese and Japanese ivories will be auctioned. Shown here is a tripodal censer with dragon motif. Austin Auction Gallery image.
The sale also features property from several distinguished estates, including art and ivory from the Marshall estate, formerly of New Orleans. Thirty pieces of Chinese and Japanese ivory will cross the auction block, including an extraordinary chess set whose “kings” each measure 12 inches tall, a profusely carved censer on tripod feet, and other fine carvings featuring deities and elders. A walking cane collection includes examples that are entirely of ivory as well as some that feature carved-ivory heads of dogs and other creatures.
A small but highly select collection of swords includes an early 19th-century showstopper of Indo-Persian origin. The sword’s decorative gilt grip and guard terminate in a three-dimensional horse-head form with jeweled ruby eyes. A foliate-decorated scabbard completes the regal presentation of this connoisseur’s edged weapon.
In the fine-art section of the sale, one of the most sought-after names in Texas regional art, Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922), is represented by a signed, oil-on-canvas landscape painting of a quintessential Hill Country scene. Handsomely framed, the artwork titled Springtime II, Texas, Bexar County measures 11¼ inches by 8½ inches and is additionally signed and titled on verso.
The furniture category is led by a circa-1880 Eastlake bedroom suite with marble-top dresser, a Victorian half-tester bed, and numerous pieces of French furniture, including a large oak vasselier.
American half-tester bed. Austin Auction Gallery image.
An Italian crystal chandelier of near-diamond shape has a drop length of 38 inches and a width of 34 inches. Another lot expect to light up the gallery on auction day is the late-19th-century bronze chandelier with six lights on arms formed as winged griffins.
Additional items of note include a pair of marble lions that formerly guarded the entrance to a palace in India, 2-ft.-tall Murano millefiori glass eggs converted to lamps, several 18th-century French clocks, a pietre dure table, a circa-1900 Ernst Plank (Germany) magic lantern with 23 colored-glass slides, and a selection of Native-American art highlighted by a circa 1200 A.D. to 1350 A.D. Southwestern pottery bowl. An actual cage-style elevator from a Paris building would be a guaranteed conversation-starter in any home.
All forms of bidding will be available for Austin Auction Gallery’s June 26-27 East Meets West sale, including live via the Internet through LiveAuctioneers.com. For additional information, call 512-258-5479 or e-mail info@austinauction.com. View the fully illustrated catalog online and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet at www.LiveAuctioneers.com. Visit Austin Auction Gallery’s Web site at www.AustinAuction.com.
Auction: June 19th, 2010
Preview: June 14th – 19th
The Collection of Douglas S. Cramer & Hubert S. Bush III
Dogwood Farm
Roxbury, CT
Exhibition – June 11th – 26th, 2010
Just when we thought all of the great toy collections have been unveiled, along came the Michael O’Hearn collection, which will be auctioned at Morphy’s on July 16 and 17. Mr. O’Hearn is a retired San Francisco Bay Area architect renowned for his visionary use of “green” technology and insistence on retaining original appointments in the more than 30 Victorian homes he restored at a time when most of their type were destined for the wrecking ball.
Over the last three decades, Mr. O’Hearn also quietly built one of the finest mint/boxed antique toy collections we have ever seen. It serves as the featured collection in Morphy’s sale, which also includes a spectacular selection of antique advertising. A highlight is the grouping of monumental Art Deco-era storefront neon signs discovered in a warehouse in Duluth, Minnesota.
Contemparary Art, Photographs, Design
Auction – June 30th, 2010 10am
London
