TEHACHAPI, Calif. – Government Auction’s Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012 auction is brimming with original art, precious gems and other treasures. Antique gold coins, diamond necklaces and a fine oil-on-canvas painting by renowned California Impressionist Granville Redmond (1871-1935) are among the top highlights in the sale. Most of the 1,300 lots have $2 starting bids and will be available to bidders worldwide through LiveAuctioneers.com.

The Granville Redmond work, titled “Sunny Stubblefield,” is a 9½ by 12½-inch landscape that features a slumbering ranch house surrounded by turquoise skies, old oak trees and blades of California sage grass. The label on verso reveals provenance from “Schussler Bros., Art Dealers, 285 Geary St., San Francisco.

Redmond is regarded as one of the first tonalist painters of the California school. As a child, he was deaf due to a bout with scarlet fever. He attended a school for the deaf where he was taught painting, and went on to study in San Francisco and Paris. He is best known for landscapes featuring poppies, trees and mountains.

“Usually paintings of this caliber are snatched up by a high-end auction house such as Christie’s or Sotheby’s. We are truly pleased to have acquired the Granville Redmond oil on canvas through a California estate sale,” said Government Auction’s chief auctioneer Paul Sabesky. The work is expected to realize $25,000-$30,000.

Among the top pieces of fine jewelry to be auctioned is a stunning 26-carat diamond necklace. The 14K white gold eternity necklace measures 17 inches and is styled as a flexible “ribbon” with 59 graduating round-cut brilliant diamonds that terminate in a concealed clasp with twin safeties. Also included within the multitude of elegant jewelry pieces is a 51.28-carat tanzanite and diamond necklace. Measuring 18 inches long, it is 14K white gold with 22 oval-cut natural tanzanite surrounded by round-cut diamonds having a total weight of 7.39 carats. Those diamonds are in addition to the main gemstones, which weigh 51 carats. In total, the necklace weighs 60.30 grams.

Leading the watch category is an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore men’s watch. Audemars Piguet is known as the master of precision in watch manufacturing. The watch is comprised of a black leather band with a copper case that encloses a white face and black dials. Another luxury timepiece in the sale is a 14K gold ladies’ Rolex with gold serpentine band and octagonal gold case with white face and gold numbering.

A much larger timekeeper highlights the antiques section of the sale – a 3-piece Ansonia clock set estimated at $2,250-$4,500. The Ansonia Clock Company was a major 19th-century American clock manufacturer based in New York. The firm crafted thousands of clocks in a wide variety of styles that are as popular with today’s collectors as they were with families of more than a century ago.

Gold coins have become a staple at Government Auction event, and based on the excitement and number of bids placed on them in the California company’s recent auctions, it’s obvious that collectors are pursuing them aggressively. A special entry in the Oct. 28 auction is an 1883 $10 Liberty gold coin. Also known as the “Coronet,” the coin was designed by sculptor Christian Gobrecht. The Coronet features Lady Liberty wearing her hair in a loose bun with a coronet on her head inscribed with the words “Liberty.” An American Eagle is shown with the words “United States of America” and motto “In God We Trust.” The composition of the coin is 90% gold and 10% copper, which accounts for its beautifully warm, golden hue. Another numismatic treasure to be auctioned is a $5 Indian Head gold coin.

Last but certainly not least, a 2001 Bentley Azure stands ready to transport some lucky bidder to their home or other destination. Equipped with a ‘Special S’ package, the black with black interior luxury vehicle is in excellent condition and has only 17,000 original miles on its odometer. Estimate: $300,000-$600,000. Note: This car must be picked up from Government Auction’s premises in Techachapi, California.

Government Auction’s Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012 auction event will commence at 6:30 a.m. Pacific Time/9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. For additional information on any lot in the sale, call Debbie on 661-823-1543 or e-mail info@governmentauction.com.

View the fully illustrated catalog and sign up to bid absentee or live via the Internet at www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

About Government Auction:

Government Auction is one of the most reputable jewelry and gem clearinghouse companies in the United States, with more than 20 years of experience. The Southern California-based firm works closely with agencies and individuals, including the IRS, bank and trust officers, and estate and bankruptcy trustees to liquidate confiscated assets such as fine jewelry, luxury vehicles, gold coins and artworks.

If you have a “History Buff” on your gift list for the upcoming season, consider John J. Astor, Historical Hotel Astor, and Titanic related items to be great gifts for the holidays.

John J Astor, John Jacob Astor IV (July 13, 1864 – April 15, 1912) was an American businessman, real estate builder, investor, inventor, writer, lieutenant colonel in the Spanish-American War and a member of the prominent Astor family. In April 1912, Astor earned a prominent place in history when he embarked on the ocean liner RMS Titanic, which sank four days into its maiden voyage after colliding with an iceberg. Astor was among the 1,514 people on board who did not survive. He was the richest passenger—aside from J. Bruce Ismay—aboard the Titanic.

Hotel Astor was a hotel located in the Times Square area of Manhattan; in operation from 1904 through 1967. The former site of the hotel, the block bounded by Broadway, Astor Plaza, West 44th Street, and West 45th Street, is now occupied by the high-rise 54-story office tower One Astor Plaza.

As a popular meeting place and New York City landmark, the Astor had a place in popular culture for decades, from the extended double entendre song “She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor”, to its appearance in the 1945 film The Clock, which provides a good view of the wartime-era lobby (although reconstructed in Hollywood). Among many other musicians, the swing era bandleader Tommy Dorsey appeared regularly on the rooftop bandstand, and it was there that Frank Sinatra made early New York appearances with Dorsey’s band from 1940 to 1942. In 1947, the exterior of the hotel was climbed by stuntman John Ciampa as part of a publicity stunt for the Sunblock Rodeo and Thrill Circus. On a 1947 post card, Hotel Astor claimed “1000 rooms, 1000 baths” and as “The Crossroads of the World.”

These collectibles covers many works, post cards, silver, China, menus and many others items all priced from a few dollars and up, something for every budget and area of collecting. These are cross over items covering American History, the golden age of fine hotels, finance and YES the Titanic.

These can be seen at;

http://stores.ebay.com/Candlewood-Yankee-Fine-Arts/_i.html?_nkw=astor&submit=Search&_sid=645563163

James Stow & Anthony Yau

Candlewood-Yankee Fine Arts

“Old Master” is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An “old master print” is an original print (for example an engraving or etching) made by an artist in the same period likewise for an “old master drawing.”  In theory   an Old Master should be an artist who was fully trained, was a Master of his local artists’ guild, and worked independently, but in practice paintings considered to be produced by pupils or workshops will be included in the scope of the term. Therefore, beyond a certain level of competence, date rather than quality is the criterion for using the term.

Keep in mind, etching as referred in the Art Field developed from engraving on metal by goldsmiths and other metal-workers in order to decorate metal items such as guns, armour, cups and plates has been known in Europe since the Middle Ages at least, and may go back to antiquity. The elaborate decoration of armour, in Germany anyway, was an art probably imported from Italy around the end of the 15th century—little earlier than the birth of etching as a printmaking technique.

The earliest process as applied to printmaking is believed to have been invented by Daniel Hopfer (circa 1470–1536) of Augsburg, Germany. Hopfer was a craftsman who decorated armour in this way, and applied the method to printmaking, using iron plates (many of which still exist). Apart from his prints, there are two proven examples of his work on armour: a shield from 1536 now in the Real Armeria of Madrid and a sword in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum of Nuremberg. An Augsburg horse armour in the German Historical Museum, Berlin, dating to between 1512 and 1515, is decorated with motifs from Hopfer’s etchings and woodcuts, but this is no evidence that Hopfer himself worked on it, as his decorative prints were largely produced as patterns for other craftsmen in various media. The switch to copper plates was probably made in Italy, and thereafter etching soon came to challenge engraving as the most popular medium for artists in printmaking. Its great advantage was that, unlike engraving which requires special skill in metalworking, etching is relatively easy to learn for an artist trained in drawing.

Albrecht Dürer (21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528) was a German painter, print maker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since. His vast body of work includes altarpieces and religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, and copper engravings. His woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series (1498), retain a more Gothic flavor than the rest of his work. His well-known works include the Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age when Dutch Golden Age painting, although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative.

Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, Rembrandt’s later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters. Rembrandt’s greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity.

It was the innovations of Jacques Callot (1592–1635) from Nancy in Lorraine. He developed the échoppe, a type of etching-needle with a slanting oval section at the end, which enabled etchers to create a swelling line, as engravers were able to do.

He also seems to have been responsible for an improved, harder, recipe for the etching ground: one using lute-makers’ varnish rather than a wax-based formula. This enabled lines to be more deeply bitten, prolonging the life of the plate in printing, and also greatly reducing the risk of “foul-biting”, where acid gets through the ground to the plate where it is not intended to, producing spots or blotches on the image. Previously the risk of foul-biting had always been at the back of an etcher’s mind, preventing him from investing too much time on a single plate that risked being ruined in the biting process. Now etchers could do the highly detailed work that was previously the monopoly of engravers, and Callot made full use of the new possibilities.

He also made more extensive and sophisticated use of multiple “stoppings-out” than previous etchers had done. This is the technique of letting the acid bite lightly over the whole plate, then stopping-out those parts of the work which the artist wishes to keep light in tone by covering them with ground before bathing the plate in acid again. He achieved unprecedented subtlety in effects of distance and light and shade by careful control of this process. Most of his prints were relatively small—up to about six inches or 15 cm on their longest dimension, but packed with detail.

One of his followers, the Parisian Abraham Bosse, spread Callot’s innovations all over Europe with the first published manual of etching, which was translated into Italian, Dutch, German and English.

The 17th century was the great age of etching, with Rembrandt, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and many other masters. In the 18th Piranesi, Tiepolo and Daniel Chodowiecki were the best of a smaller number of fine etchers. In the 19th and early-20th century the Etching revival produced a host of lesser artists, but no really major figures. Etching is still widely practiced today.

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PHILADELPHIA – An important artwork by Prince Twins Seven-Seven (Nigerian, 1944-2011) not only co-headlines Material Culture’s 450-lot Oct. 14 auction, it also inspired the event’s title: “The Spirits of My Reincarnation Brothers and Sisters.”

Deeply mystical and immediately identifiable, the works of Prince Twins Seven-Seven have spurred a new level of interest in the marketplace since Material Culture offered several exciting multimedia paintings by the artist in their May 5 auction debut. The self-taught Prince Twins Seven-Seven expressed his boundless imagination in themes that blended esoteric imagery with a vibrant, traditional West African color palette. The 65 by 58-inch batik dye, watercolor, acrylic and oil-on-cloth painting featured in Material Culture’s Oct. 14 sale was purchased directly from the artist in 2007 and is one of seven of his works entered in the sale. It is expected to realize $5,000-$7,000.

Other self-taught artists represented in the October offering include Vojislav Jakic, Kwame Akoto a k a Almighty God, Purvis Young and Felipe Jesus Consalvos, a Cuban-American (1891-1960) who worked as a cigar roller but whose natural talent as an artist was not widely known until after his death. Consalvos created visually stunning modernist collages that incorporate cigar bands and cigar-box paper with photographs, postage stamps and magazine images. His mixed-media collage titled “Let Dreams Come True” was created around the second quarter of the 20th century. It measures 10 x 8 inches (15¾ x 13¾ inches framed) and comes with provenance from the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery. Estimate: $1,500-$2,000.

The auction will showcase a selection of items from the Bill Liske collection of early Chinese and Tibetan textiles, carpets and ethnographic artworks. Material Culture’s first offering of articles from the Liske collection – auctioned on May 26 – was enthusiastically received, said owner George Jevremovic, a cultural arts dealer of 30+ years.

“The Liske collection is special because it reflects the impeccable eye of a collector who lived and worked as a mountaineering guide in the Himalayan region for three decades. Textile dealers in the area taught him how to identify pieces that were genuinely exceptional,” said Jevremovic.

Liske’s expertly chosen collection has appeared at the History Museum in Denver, the Krimsa Gallery in San Francisco, the Shaver-Ramsey Gallery in Denver, and in Hali magazine.

A premier artwork in the Liske collection is a powerfully rendered early Thangka scroll painting depicting the deific reincarnation known as Vajra Varahi in Sanskrit and Dorje Pakmo in Tibetan. Dating to 14th-16th century Tibet, it is valued at $3,000-$4,000.

Another auction highlight is the Michaelian Meshed (31 feet by 47 feet), a circa-1900 Persian carpet originally custom-woven for the prestigious Union League Club in New York City. It remained in the club for decades until its purchase in the 1950s by Frank Michaelian of Michaelian and Kohlberg. Suitable for a discriminating owner with a palatial space, it will be offered for sale publicly for the first time in its history on Oct. 14, with an auction estimate of $60,000-$90,000.

An outstanding 19th-century Syrian silk and gold judge’s tunic from the collection of Samy and Sara Rabinovic, Philadelphia, was the blue-ribbon exhibition winner at the 1996 International Conference on Oriental Carpets, and is expected to fetch $3,000-$4,000. Also up for auction is a rare pre-Columbian funerary headband made with a knotted-pile technique, valued at $1,000-$1,500; and a 19th-century Tibtetan or Bhutanese bull-headed Buddhist dance mask of meditational deity Yamantaka. The mask’s vivid red hue was achieved by applying pigment to a papier-mâché of laurel or mulberry. Estimate: $3,000-$4,000.

Other categories of artifacts include an outstanding group of 17th-18th century Mughal columns and arches from northern India, 16th- to 19th-century Ottoman, Central Asian, Asian, African, Continental and pre-Columbian textiles, 17th-19th century Oriental Carpets, African, Himalayan and Oceanic Tribal Arts, antiquities from the Near East, Americas and Asia; 18th- to 20th-century folk art from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas; and 100+ lots of vintage Navajo jewelry from a private Pennsylvania collection assembled in the 1970s.

“From the beginning it has been our goal to present pieces of diverse origin that would present collecting opportunities for every level of buyer, from beginners to advanced collectors and interior designers. In addition, we take the position that it is better to have around 400 items of very good to excellent quality – from consignors who have realistic expectations – than to create a more-specialized sale with a few stars and lots of filler,” said Jevremovic, explaining his company’s mission.

“This is an age in which corporate auction departments seek to maximize their bottom lines with million-plus-dollar items or high-profile sales that have more to do with celebrity and fashion than quality or connoisseurship. We believe some of the best collecting opportunities – particularly for younger buyers worldwide – exist in the areas we are presenting in our October 14th sale: self-taught, folk, ethnographic, decorative and traditional arts,” Jevremovic said.

Material Culture’s Sunday, Oct. 14, 2012 auction will commence at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. Preview: Oct. 10-12 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Oct. 13 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The gallery is located at 4700 Wissahickon Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19144. All forms of bidding will be available, including phone, absentee or Internet live bidding through LiveAuctioneers.com. For additional information on any lot in the sale, email expert@materialculture.com or call 215-438-4700. Visit the company online at www.materialculture.com.