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A portrait of young Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1776-1834), and his elder sister, Princess Sophia (1773-1844) of Gloucester, by American painter Benjamin West (1738-1820) was recently installed in the McGlothlin American Galleries at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond. The portrait was acquired ... (Read More)
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(Auction)
Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut
41 degrees, 21 minutes, 20 seconds North by 71 degrees, 57 minutes, 50 seconds West. This is the global "address" of Mystic, Connecticut. Many of us know, from reading Dava Sobel's 1995 best-selling book Longitude, that finding Mystic was not so easy for ship captains before John ... (Read More)
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(Auction)
Mebane Antique Auction Gallery, Mebane, North Carolina
Photos courtesy Mebane
On December 4, 2015, Alfreda Evans met the man who bought her great-uncle's 1937 Gibson Nick Lucas guitar. The encounter represented an important closure for Evans. She had never met her Uncle Ben. The amateur guitarist was killed in a robbery at ... (Read More)
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Allyson Bradley of Michaan's Auctions in Alameda, California, and Matthew S. Wilcox of Freeman's in Philadelphia have been elected to the board of directors of the Foundation for Appraisal Education (FAE), a Chicago-based organization founded in 2002 to raise scholarship funds for professionals seeking aid in the field of personal ... (Read More)
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I question the morality of selling gravestones, as seen in a recent auction report in M.A.D. The gravestone sold was broken, yet it still held clues helpful to determining the identity of the person for whom it had been made. The name on the gravestone appeared to be either "Hannah" ... (Read More)
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(Issue Story)
Auction Law & Ethics
Sometimes all you can do is scratch your head and ask, "What the heck?"
Between September 2014 and September 2015, I wrote 13 columns covering the major aspects and issues of consigning to auction and offered numerous insights and tips for consignors. The same month that the 13th ... (Read More)
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Artist Jean Phineas Losier, 41, of Wellington, Florida, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for conspiracy to deal in counterfeit Federal Reserve notes. A federal jury in Jacksonville convicted him in June 2015. Losier also faces counterfeit manufacturing charges in the Southern District of Florida.
According to court documents, ... (Read More)
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In 1731, when Benjamin Franklin founded what is now America's oldest cultural institution, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Madeira was already the rage. In 1786, when Madeira importer Henry Hill built Hill-Physick, his house at 321 South 4th Street in Philadelphia, Madeira was the wine of choice. In 1895, when ... (Read More)
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(Auction)
Garth's Auctions, Delaware, Ohio
Photos courtesy Garth's Auctions
Paint played a pivotal role during the 55th annual Thanksgiving Americana sale held by Garth's Auctions on November 27, 2015, in Delaware, Ohio. Not that anyone was surprised. Garth's is known for great pieces in early paint, and on Black Friday color was king.
Topping ... (Read More)
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(Fragment)
The Frick Collection's Center for the History of Collecting has awarded its biennial $25,000 book prize for a distinguished publication on the history of collecting in America to The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in association with Yale University Press, New ... (Read More)
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