My Word Spring 2018
129 Days until the Allan Stone Auction
The Antiques Roadshow has now completed four of its scheduled 5 city tour having shot at Ringling brothers in Sarasota, Florida, the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Churchill Downs in Louisville, and Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. Next week we shoot at Meadow Brook Hall (Home of Matilda Dodge Wilson widow of automobile maker John Dodge) in Rochester, Michigan. It has been a fascinating three months with challenging shoots that will bring a new edge to Roadshow that I believe you will enjoy.
With six months (129 days) to go until the Allan Stone Tribal sale at Rago Auctions in New Jersey we are well underway preparing the catalog and photographic materials for our promotional visit to Santa Fe in August. I will be in Santa Fe from August 9th and August 18th to answer questions and look at objects for future sales. Note the article in this issue of the Newsletter.
We are pleased to be working this summer with new intern Emily Duffy who has been a great addition to the gallery. Her expertise has been appreciated in purging old files, working on our Historic Pueblo Pottery project, and helping on the Spring newsletter. Emily will be with us at least until the end of the summer. Our kudos to the University of Dallas intern program for all the great candidates they have proposed over the years.
Kim Kasten is no longer with the gallery having left to start her own appraisal business in March of this year. While the departure was disappointing, the subsequent re-structuring of the gallery has been very positive in allowing us to focus entirely on the sales, appraisal, authenticating and cataloging of tribal art. No offense to my good friends in fine art, but it was a distraction from what we built over the past 44 years since we opened in 1974. We are very excited about the opportunity to focus on our core services in the coming years.
Many of us were convinced that Christies lost its mind with the offering of the Pre-Columbian Prigogine collection of Mexican stone objects. The market is nuts, the sale was a great success and I humbly eat my words. As appraisers and catalogers, it is very difficult to know with certainty what will happen in any given sale. As the recent auctions proved, the only almost sure thing is top notch well provenance fresh material… and sometimes that doesn’t do what you think it will do.. JB
