The appraiser looked a bit tired and seemed indifferent. He watched as I approached the table but he didn’t lean forward in a welcoming gesture. It was closing in on 12 noon, and the “Antiques Roadshow” had been…
Auction Finds Posts
1950s Fred Press glasses that I didn’t know I had
Posted in Art, collectibles, Glassware, and Home
I kept the glasses in my kitchen cabinet for several years, thinking that I would someday take them out, serve iced tea or lavender lemonade in them, and marvel at their beauty. They were 1950s glasses with single stalks…
Early Native American monument that never materialized
Posted in Architecture/Buildings, and Native Americans
It was a foggy and humid Friday in 1913 when a ship carrying the president of the United States and his party headed to a site in New York Harbor for a momentous ceremony. In another…
Sale items symbolize Saint Katharine’s calling
Posted in African American women, Auction, Figurines, and Religion
The auction at the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament’s building started at 9 a.m., and I sat through a long tedious online sale and five rooms of an on-site sale. That’s how bad I wanted…
Old wagon revives memories of a man’s childhood
Posted in Advertising, Asian, and travel
I’d seen the dealer at this auction house many times before. I never found him very friendly, but lately he had begun to nod or offer a quiet hello to me. I knew that he…
It took me a moment to realize that the charred bricks on the auction table were not what they seemed. They were arranged in three rows and looked like the scarred ruins from a fire. As I…
First, I saw the beige quilt with the red and tan pattern. It was much lovelier than most quilts I’d seen at auction. It was folded on top of furniture at the auction house and surprisingly, no…
A collection of Lefton porcelain angels
Posted in collectibles, Figurines, and Music
The porcelain angels and other figurines in the box at auction were actually quite cute. There were so many of them that someone was obviously giving up a collection – or the pieces were being…
Augusta Savage is one of those great unknown artists. That’s not surprising given that she was both black and female. The art world – heck, the world on a whole – has never fully valued…