Arts and artifacts in Antiques & Collectibles
A Federal era trifecta was achieved at Skinner’s American Furniture & Decorative Arts Auction last Sunday when a masterpiece of American furniture, a historical gold medal, and a silk needlework picture of George and Martha Washington were the top sellers, each for well above their estimates.
The top winning lot was a circa 1805-10 dressing table attributed to Thomas Seymour and probably also to his father, John Seymour, Boston’s leading cabinetmakers of the Federal era, which sold for $312,000, more than doubling the low of its $150,000- $200,000 estimate.
The second-place winner was the 18-karat gold medal commemorating the completion of the Erie Canal and which was given by the City of New York to President John Quincy Adams. It brought $156,000 or more than five times the low of its $30,000-$50,000 estimate, while the needlework picture of the Washingtons strolling the grounds of Mount Vernon went for $102,000 or more than five times the low of its $20,000-$30,000 estimate.
The 782-lot auction grossed
$1.8 million, just under its $1.9 million high estimate.
. . .
Five paintings by Christo Coetzee (1929-2000), the Johannesburg-born South African artist, whose work has been shown in Europe, Japan, and the United States, including a 1960 exhibit at the Swetzoff Gallery in Boston, are among the highlights of Phyllis O’Leary’s auction Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at the Masonic Lodge, 1101 Highland Ave., Needham.
The paintings are from the collection of the late Leo J. Reyna, professor of psychology at Boston University from 1950-76 and a founding member of the university’s African Studies program.
Reyna, who died last January at 93, met and became a close friend of Coetzee when he was teaching in the late 1940s at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, from which Coetzee graduated in 1950 with a degree in fine arts The paintings are accompanied by personal letters to Reyna from Coetzee and are conservatively estimated to bring in the $5,000-$7,000 range.
Another important offering is “Blue With Red,’’ a woodblock print by the California abstract expressionist Richard Diebenkorn (1922-93) from his Ocean Park series, which were instrumental to his achieving worldwide acclaim. It has a $12,000-$15,000 estimate.
Furniture offerings are highlighted by a “Bridge Table’’ by David Zelman, the New York designer who since the late 1900s has been creating sculptural works that function as furniture and pay homage to the creations of man, such as bridges, scaffolding, elevators, and wheeled objects. The table, which had been relegated for years to the basement of Brookline home, has a $2,000-$4,000 estimate.
Another unusual offering is a Nichols Chinese rug, one of the prized wool rugs woven in the 1920s and ’30s in Tientsin, northern China, with designs gleaned from old palace rugs, porcelains, and bronzes in factories owned by Walter A.B. Nichols, an American adventurer and entrepreneur. The rug, which is from a Chestnut Hill home, has a $2,000-$3,000 estimate.
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An early-19th-century Star Kazak, the rarest of Kazak rugs, has the starring role in Skinner’s auction of Oriental rugs and carpets Saturday at 12:30 p.m. at its Boston gallery. The 8-foot-6- inch by 4-foot-7 inch Southwest Caucasian rug with a star-shaped medallion is expected to bring $20,000-$30,000.
Another rarity is a torba ($10,000-$12,000), an example of the bags that the nomadic Salor of West Turkestan wove in various sizes and shapes and hung in their yurts or tent-like dwellings to store their belongings. The Salor were wiped out by the Tekke tribe in 1850 so this bag is more than 150 years old.
An unusual Armenian Marasali pictorial rug with two images, one of a woman and children, the other of an older couple, has a $5,000-$7,000 estimate, which also is the estimate for the oldest rug in the sale, a 17th-century 5-foot-7 by 4-foot-2 “Transylvania’’ rug made in West Anatolia, now Turkey.
Topping the 50 room-size carpets are a 13-foot-8 Fereghan Sarouk and an 11-foot-4 by 9-foot Serapi, both from Persia and each with $20,000-$25,000 estimates.
Several Kashmir shawls are also in the sale, including a mid-19th-century North India shawl with a $2,500-$3,500 estimate.
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An 1850s Bigelow Brothers & Kennard coin silver coffee service given by the owners of the American clipper ship Golden Light to the captain, officers, and crew of the British ship Shand will be offered by Boston Harbor Auctions at its Nautical Antiques, Decorative Arts & Furniture Auction Saturday at 11 a.m. at the Lannan Ship Model Gallery, 99 High St.
The coffee pot, sugar and creamer, which has a $2,000-$3,000 estimate, was given as a token of gratitude for the Shand’s rescue of passengers and crew from the Golden Light which burned at sea en route from Boston to San Francisco during the Gold Rush.
Other offerings of local interest include a cast bust of John Fitzgerald Kennedy ($200-$400) once displayed at Faneuil Hall, and a silver loving cup trophy for a New York Yacht Club and Eastern Yacht Club sponsored race ($8,000-$10,000). The winner in 1903 of the 58th annual cruise from New London, Conn., to Newport, R.I., was the schooner yacht Valmore owned by Boston-born William Hale Thompson (1869-1944), who served as mayor of Chicago from 1915-23 and 1927-31.
The 320-lot auction, which has more than 50 ship models, has estimates ranging from $60,000-$80,000 for a Napoleonic prisoner of war bone model of an English warship to $50-$100 for three US Navy silverplate serving spoons engraved with a fouled anchor and “USN.’’
Offerings are as varied as a 19th-century ship figurehead of a Roman slave ($10,000-$20,000) and a Royal Navy ceiling light ($150-$300), a mahogany coffee table with a porthole top ($2,500-$3,000) and an 18th-century chart of Boston Bay ($400-$800).
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