BOSTON, Mass. – www.skinnerinc.com – Skinner, one of the nation’s leading auction houses for antiques and fine art, today announced it will host an auction of Fine Oriental Rugs and Carpets at its Boston gallery, located at 63 Park Plaza, on Saturday, May 9th at noon. More than 300 lots, including 50 room-sized carpets, will be offered with palates, patterns and prices to suit every kind of buyer. Persian rugs Featured Persian rugs include a number of weavings from the Northwest such as two Serapis (lot 115, est. $8/10,000 and lot 139, est. ... Read the full story

Marquis de Montesquiou, the celebrated Armagnac house, achieved groundbreaking results with their 1865 vintage at an April 25 Christie’s auction in New York. The vintage, which sold for an impressive price of 8,400 USD, was the top single-bottle within the lots offered and marks an auction record as the most expensive bottle of Armagnac sold by Christie’s North America. “We are extremely satisfied with the superb results of the auction,” says Jean-Francois Collobert, International Director for Pernod International. “The final ... Read the full story

Sotheby’s May 12, 2009 evening sale of Contemporary Art in New York includes key examples by celebrated artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jeff Koons, Alexander Calder, David Smith, Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ellsworth Kelly and Andy Warhol. It also features an exciting group of property comprising important works by artists who rarely appear at auction. Led by Martin Kippenberger’s self portrait from 1988, Untitled, the evening sale will also include works by Robert Gober, Jeff Wall, Charles Ray, Christopher Wool, Yayoi Kusama and ... Read the full story

Sotheby’s 19th Century European Paintings sale on Wednesday, June 3, 2009, features a choice group of 15 works by some of the most representative Spanish artists of the time: Hermenegildo Anglada-Camarasa, Santiago Rusiñol, José Maria Sert, Joaquín Sorolla and Ignacio Zuloaga. The Bathing Hour, a striking canvas by Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) is the highlight of this section as it has never before been seen in public and has always remained in private collections. The Bathing Hour will be exhibited for the first time ever at Sotheby’s Madrid on May ... Read the full story

Sale to feature works by Matisse, Picasso and Dalí, as well as a strong collection of Middle Eastern art BOSTON, Mass. – www.skinnerinc.com – Skinner, Inc., one of the nation’s leading auction houses for antiques and fine art, today announced that its upcoming American and European Paintings sale will take place on Friday, May 15th in its Boston gallery located at 63 Park Plaza. More than 500 lots of paintings will be offered. This sale will feature one of the auction house’s most impressive offerings to date with works from Pablo Picasso, ... Read the full story

Eastern Michigan Auto Fest 2009 Classic Car Auction || Saturday, May 9, 2009 Phone bidding will be available! Greg Rowden, Auction Mgr. 810-417-2065 live webcast Classic Car Auction Eastern Michigan Fairgrounds, Imlay City, MI Petroleum Items – 10:00 AM Classic Cars – 12:00 PM Classic & Collector Cars – including: 1927 Roadster w/ 350 Built Chev. motor 1941 Willy’s Coupe, 1969 Chevelle SS 396 Private Collection of Petroliana – including: Texaco porcelain sign – round, Sohio Tokheim 300 porcelain pump, Vintage Coca-Cola ... Read the full story

The top lot of Swann Galleries’ Thursday, May 14 auction of Photographic Literature & Fine Photographs is a complete set of the 20 lavishly illustrated text volumes of Edward S. Curtis’s magnum opus, The North American Indian. It took Curtis nearly 25 years—from 1907 to 1930—to complete his work documenting the “vanishing race” of Native Americans. This set was originally in the collection of railroad magnate James J. Hill (estimate: $250,000 to $350,000). There are also more than 20 individual photographs by Curtis in the sale, among them ... Read the full story

A rare Triumph 1800, similar to the one used in the popular detective series Bergerac, goes under the Charterhouse hammer in their Bank Holiday weekend sale at The Bristol Classic Car Show at The Royal Bath & West Showground in Shepton Mallet on Sunday 3rd May. “These Triumph’s were highly regarded in their day, with an Autocar road test achieving 75 mph and a 0-60 mph time of just 34 seconds which was pretty good in its day.” Commented Matthew Whitney. “Today, they are fine cruisers for classic car enthusiasts and having a bench front seat which ... Read the full story

Sotheby’s London will offer in its forthcoming Travel, Atlases, Maps and Natural History sale, to be held in London on Thursday 7th May 2009, a magnificent pair of 17th century terrestrial and celestial globes by the eminent globe-maker Vicenzo Coronelli (lot 121, est. £150,000-200,000), inspired by those he created for Louis XIV. Sale highlights also include unique and highly personal first-hand accounts of voyages, discoveries and exploration – among which is the final journal of the commanding officer of Charles Darwin’s HMS Beagle (lot 230, ... Read the full story

Rediscovered Historic Object Estimated $60,000 to $80,000 BOSTON, Mass. – Skinner, Inc., one of the nation’s leading auction houses for antiques and fine art, announces it will auction a 1947 Kentucky Derby 14 kt Gold Winner’s Trophy and Commemorative Mint Julep Cup, won by the American thoroughbred racehorse Jet Pilot, owned by Elizabeth Arden. The trophy will go on the block in Skinner’s June 7th auction of American Furniture & Decorate Arts. It is estimated at $60,000 to $80,000. Skinner is expecting interest to come from racing ... Read the full story

The art of horology will be elegantly expressed on Tuesday, May 12, when Heritage Auction Galleries hosts its Signature Timepieces Auction at its’ uptown Dallas headquarters. This gathering of fine wristwatches and rare pocket watches marks the deepest Heritage watch auction to date, with top names – Patek Philipe, Audemars Piguet and Rolex, to name a few – and prime examples across the board, a significant portion of which are rarely seen on the market. “The variety and quality of offerings in this sale are certainly going to create ... Read the full story

(Newton, MA) – Jonathan Fairbanks, The Katherine Lane Weems Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Emeritus, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Vice President of Research at Artfact, was recently honored at The Decorative Arts Trust Spring Symposium at The Winterthur Museum in Delaware. Jonathan was given The Decorative Arts Trust Award for Excellence for Distinctive Contributions in the Field of the Decorative. Bruce Coleman Perkins, who succeeded Jonathan as President of the Trust upon Jonathan’s retirement last year, presented the award at a ... Read the full story

Clarke’s Sixth Fine Art Auction of May 4, 2009, one week from today, will feature 300 lots of paintings, sculpture, signed prints, artist books, and antique frames. The Rare Rare works include the second John Beigel to appear at auction in the past 150 years; a John Henry Foley 1849 Famine sculpture found in a Larchmont basement; a 52″ x 40″ 1941 Jean Xceron oil; an 1870 EA Lanceray bronze; a large 19th C. Orientalist oil of Cairo; Antonio Lopez Garcia’s 1968 nude; an Elmer Gandy oil; an original Henry Major oil; a signed 1879 ... Read the full story

The 1954 William Dargie Portrait of H.M. Elizabeth II will go on sale at Bonhams Australian and International Fine Art Sale in Melbourne on 6th May, where it is expected to fetch between £25,000-35,000. In 1954, Dargie was by then a seven-time winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture. For this, his most significant commission, he arrived in London on Tuesday 19 October 1954 and stayed at the home of Sir Neil and Lady Hamilton Fairley at 81 Duke Street, Grosvenor Square: Speaking about his first meeting with her Majesty he said: “The Queen was ... Read the full story

Bonhams sold one of Atkinson Grimshaw’s finest paintings, a view of Headingley in Leeds, on 22nd April in a sale of 19th Century Paintings and Drawings at their Bond Street salerooms. The picture, `Autumn Afterglow’, was estimated to sell for £120,000 to £180,000 but outstripped that to make £240,000. John Atkinson Grimshaw is perhaps Leeds’s best-known and best- loved artist. Born in 1836, he was a self-taught painter who created a market in twilight dock scenes, views of Leeds, and lanes dominated by rarely-identifiable grand Headingley homes. ... Read the full story