SubscribeSeptember 2010
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. [...]
August 2010
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 [...]
Belle Kogan – a female first designer (0)
8/27/10 •
I didn’t see much that moved me on the box-lots table in the back room of one of my favorite auction houses recently. Not until I spotted a light beige vase interspersed among some small junk on one tray. I turned the vase over, looking for the maker and saw the words “Red Wing.” I recognized [...]
A wedding dress on the cheap (0)
8/26/10 •
The two wedding dresses were lying on top of a box under a back table at the auction house. I was surprised to find them because it’s not often that I see new – and very clean – wedding dresses at auction. Usually, they are vintage wedding gowns, a little faded from storage, their colors [...]
Why no one wants my dark-skinned doll (0)
8/25/10 •
She has sat through several flea markets, this dark-complexioned wooden doll I got at auction a few years ago. She has watched as her companions – two light-colored fabric dolls in dresses with Asian script – were sold. So what that they were sold cheaply, but at least someone wanted them. But not this doll. She [...]
They remind me of Big Mama (0)
8/24/10 •
Every now and then when I’m at auction, I see a piece of furniture or some other item that reminds me of my grandmother. Things that belonged to her and represented who she was to me. Annie Lee didn’t have a lot of material things, but she had a lot of children. She lived at [...]
Playing around with doll furniture (0)
8/23/10 •
The woman peered into the little white paper bag, not sure of what she’d find inside. “Is this doll furniture?” she asked. Yes, it is. She then picked up the bag and began taking out the plastic pieces: Fireplace mantle. Bed. Upright phonograph. Dresser and mirror. Kitchen cabinet with sink. Refrigerator. Sofa. High chair. About 25 [...]
Clowns the size of my thumb (0)
8/20/10 •
“Did you see all of those clowns,” my auction buddy Janet said to me. “What would you do with them?” From where we sat at the auction house, she motioned to a long row of miniature clown figures that looked as long and as colorful as a parade. I had basically ignored them because I [...]
How we ‘wear’ our faith (0)
8/19/10 •
The New York street seller had already snookered one of my friends into buying a booklet of photos of the World Trade Center attack. So, when he accosted us again after we’d toured the exhibit at St. Paul’s Chapel and another across the street, I wasn’t too hyped to listen to him. There was something [...]
Postcard for “Sugar Ray’s” café (0)
8/18/10 •
A half-century ago, Sugar Ray Robinson owned Harlem. He was good-looking, owned a pink Cadillac convertible, had plenty of money, and was a boxing champ. He was loved and admired and fussed over. He was the man. So when I saw a vintage postcard at auction recently from his old restaurant, Sugar Ray’s, I knew [...]
That first buy – a Carl Sorensen bowl (0)
8/17/10 •
Recently, I was talking to the sister of a regular auction-goer who had tagged along with him to the biweekly auction. She had joined him at other auctions, but she had never bought anything. This time, she did. “I’m sure I paid too much for it,” she said. I understood her feelings. Even us veteran auction-buyers [...]
Discovering a Singer building in Soho (0)
8/16/10 •
I was visiting New York last weekend with a friend’s daughter, and we were just enjoying ourselves in Soho when she mentioned the word Singer. “Where?” I asked. She pointed to the building we were about to pass on Prince Street near Mercer Street. I stopped, looked up and saw the words “The Singer Manufacturing [...]
Mystery of a Virginia poem (0)
8/13/10 •
At auction this week, I got a box lot with two postcards. One was a linen postcard, unused, celebrating the state of Virginia. The images included a train traveling through a countryside and two covered wagons on a dirt road. Between these two images was a poem, titled “Virginia,” that began: “The roses nowhere bloom [...]
Vintage motorcycle helmets (0)
8/12/10 •
Guy things. That’s the way one of my auction friends describes tools and other items that men tend to buy. In fact, at auction this week, I heard one guy excitedly tell another about a John Deere riding mower in the back furniture room at the auction house. Just outside the front door, one table held [...]
To wear fur or not (0)
8/11/10 •
I’ve never been a fur coat kind of woman. Stoles and long mink coats never really appealed to me, and I never understood the attraction. Some years ago when I was a newspaper recruiter, I joined a friend on a visit to Neiman Marcus during a break at a journalists’ convention. We ended up in the [...]
Your Boomer childhood in one email (0)
8/10/10 •
My auction buddy Janet sent me one of those chain emails that urges you to pass it on to other people. She apologized, noting that she doesn’t usually forward these but she couldn’t resist because this one was oh-so-true. It was titled “Your entire childhood in one email.” I usually delete these chain letters, [...]
When cigarettes were king (0)
8/09/10 •
I watched the TV show “Mad Men” for the first time last night. The mother of a friend loves the show, and I’d been meaning to check it out. I found the episode plodding and not very engaging. But one of the things that struck me about it was the main character’s penchant for lighting [...]
Johnnycakes, hoecakes or journey cakes? (0)
8/06/10 •
A couple years ago, on the last day of a trip to a garlic festival with friends in upstate New York, we stopped at a Goodwill (or maybe it was a Salvation Army) to see what treasures had been deposited there. Okay, maybe most of what we found was junk, but what keeps me stopping [...]
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.
