SubscribeA 2nd look at red lips (0)
9/03/10 •
I was nonchalantly perusing the shelves of glassware at one of my favorite auction houses yesterday when something stopped me. There on a middle shelf were five head vases, all with red lips. This grouping caught my eye because I had written a blog post earlier this week about how red lips had been used [...]
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Awesome table lamps (0)
9/02/10 •
This week, one of my favorite auction houses had one of its modern design sales. I don’t normally pay much attention to them because they consist largely of modern furniture – which does not go with my décor at home. More importantly, though, the prices for many of the items – designer names you’d see in [...]
Black Americana cookie jars (0)
9/01/10 •
I was a little disappointed as I took a seat inside an auction in progress last weekend. The pieces I had come to see – the black cookie jars – had already been sold. I wasn’t going to buy any – most were ”mammy” images – but I was curious about how much they’d sell for. [...]
Beyonce rewrites the ‘red lips’ stereotype (0)
8/31/10 •
I was watching television one night recently when on screen popped Beyonce in a L’Oreal Paris commercial. Her lips were fire-red, and the lipstick seemed to be applied thickly, as if smeared on. Did her lips look large, too, the better for us to see them? The commercial was a bit disconcerting because I had [...]
No friends among bidders (0)
8/30/10 •
I heard a regular bidder say recently that there are no friends at auction. In other words, it was every man or woman for himself or herself. If you saw something you wanted and another auctiongoer wanted it, too, well too bad. There’s nothing wrong with that. We know that each person in the auction [...]
I started going to auctions to fuel my love for African American art – but at a bargain. I love the old masters: Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee-Smith. I wanted to find their works and discover other veteran artists whose works may have been hiding in an attic or basement, and forgotten.
