Ruby Lane founder Tom Johnson…Fright Night Fun…Sporting Art…Gustav Stickley Furniture…Swatch Watches…Disneyland Memorabilia…Batman Toys…Gripoix Glass Jewelry…Gold Rush Country…American Porcelain Marks…Collector’s Gallery
Auction of Pop Culture Legends is a Royal Triumph
Diana, Princess of Wales, played a starring role in the “Legends of Hollywood and Royalty” auction presented by Julien’s Auctions and Turner Classic Movies Sept. 6-8. Showcasing pop culture wonders from film, fashion and royalty, it was Princess Di’s wardrobe that stole the show, with three of her gowns selling for more than $1.65 million.
Also shining brightly was a Givenchy couture pink evening dress worn by Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Blake Ewards’ 1961 film classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s that sold for $444,500. The eye-catching iridescent pink dress is a fashion confection that never loses its infectious sweet nature even more than sixty years after it was designed.
If glamorous gowns aren’t your style, the event also featured a maroon wool Starfleet command jacket worn by William Shatner as James T. Kirk in the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. It sold for $127,000. There were plenty of other costume pieces, props, scripts and more movie memorabilia available. Want to accessorize? A purple leather glove worn and signed by Jack Nicholson as the Joker in 1989’s Batman sold for $10,400.
The auction wasn’t all about what you see onscreen or at events. Some of its highlights came from the personal belongings of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. A heart-shaped locket, inscribed by Bogie to Bacall sold for $57,150, more than double its high estimate. Another gift from Bogart to Bacall, an engraved bracelet with a whistle charm (“You know how to whistle, don’t you?”) sold for $158,750, and their wedding rings sold for $190,500.
An evening gown custom made for Princess Diana by designer Bruce Oldfield was one of the auction’s standouts.
Just What the Doctor Ordered: Norwegian Metal Detectorist Unearths Gold Find of the Century
Earlier this year, Erlend Bore’s doctor told him he needed a hobby, anything to get the 51-year-old Norwegian man off the couch and moving. So Bore bought a metal detector – and promptly stumbled across Norway’s most stunning gold find in a century.
In August, Bore unearthed nine coin-like gold pendants engraved with rare horse symbols, along with ten gold beads and three gold rings on the southern island of Rennesøy, near the city of Stavanger, in one of the most amazing discoveries in Norwegian history.
On the advice of his doctor, Bore was out walking the mountainous island with his metal detector when he came across the treasure weighing more than 100 grams (approximately 3 1/2 ounces). Bore said his “heart was racing” when he realized the magnitude of his discovery.
“I had been searching along the shore but only found scrap metal and a small coin. So, I decided to explore higher ground, and the metal detector immediately started beeping,” Bore said. What he held in his hands was a clump of earth containing what looked to be gold coins. “At first, I thought I had found chocolate coins or plastic pirate treasure. It was surreal.”
According to Associate Professor Håkon Reiersen at the Museum of Archaeology, the gold pendants date from around 500 AD. The gold pendants – known as “bracteates” – resemble gold coins but were used primarily as jewelry, not for buying or selling goods.
“The nine bracteates and the gold beads would have formed an exceptionally splendid necklace, which was crafted by skilled goldsmiths and worn by the most powerful individuals in society,” Reiersen said. “Finding so many bracteates together is exceedingly rare. This is the first such find in Norway since the 1800s, and it’s also an uncommon find in a Scandinavian context.”
Per Norwegian law, the monumental discovery has been turned over to the government. All objects dating before 1537 and coins older than 1650 are considered state property and must be reported. The gold find is now with the Museum of Archaeology.
The gold treasure photographed immediately after Erlend Bore unearthed it with a metal detector.
Photo: Erlend Bore
Erlend Bore with his gold find and metal detector at the Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger. The discovery was delivered to the museum the day after it was unearthed.
Photo: Courtesy Anniken Celine Berger, Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger
Bought for $4, a Thrift Shop Painting Could be Worth $250,000 at Auction
A painting bought in 2017 for $4 in a Savers thrift shop in Manchester, N.H., and stashed away in a closet by the woman who bought it while looking for frames to reuse, could be worth $250,000 when it heads to auction later this month.
The long-forgotten painting is by N.C. Wyeth, the prolific Maine artist and patriarch of the Wyeth family of painters, according to an expert at Bonhams Skinner auction house. The painting, which highlights Bonhams Skinner “American Art” event Sept. 19, is one of four Wyeth completed for a 1939 edition of Helen Hunt Jackson’s book Ramona, originally published in 1884.
How the painting ended up in the thrift shop is anyone’s guess, but the anonymous buyer found it stashed against a wall along with damaged posters and prints, according to the auction house. After hanging the painting in her bedroom for several years, the antiques enthusiast eventually stored the painting in a closet in her home and forgot about it.
Last May, while doing some spring cleaning, the painting was rediscovered and images of it were posted on Facebook. Comments on her post suggested the painting could be something special. The woman was encouraged to contact Lauren Lewis, and art expert who worked with three generations of the Wyeths: N.C. Wyeth, his son, Andrew Wyeth, and his grandson, Jamie Wyeth. Lewis was “99% certain it was authentic” after seeing the painting, she told The Boston Globe.
“While it certainly had some small scratches and it could use a surface clean, it was in remarkable condition considering none of us had any idea of its journey over the last 80 years,” Lewis told the Globe.
The auction record for any member of the Wyeth family was set last year during the sale of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s collection at Christie’s New York, where Andrew Wyeth’s 1980 painting “Day Dream” sold for more than $23.2 million, more than seven times the high estimate of $3 million.
An N.C. Wyeth work, “Ramona,” was bought for $4 at a New Hampshire thrift shop. It could be worth $250,000 at auction.
Brothers Walter Elias Disney and Roy Oliver Disney found Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio on Oct. 16, 1923. Their studio is in the rear of a small office occupied by Holly-Vermont Realty at 4651 Kingswell Ave. near Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles. Rent is $10.
From this rather modest beginning, the march of Mickey Mouse to cultural supremacy has been as inevitable as it has been steady. Throughout 2023, the Walt Disney Company has been celebrating its 100th anniversary with an array of movies, cartoons, music, TV shows, articles and a wave of various collectibles.
In addition, readers will enjoy a peek inside five famous dollhouses of historic importance, including Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House built by more than 1,500 artisans and craftsmen between 1921 and 1924. The amazing house was gifted to Queen Mary for her dedicated presence in World War 1.
Of course, not every doll has it cushy. Just ask Ken, the beleaguered boyfriend of Barbie. Editor Paul Kennedy takes a lighthearted look at the perils of dating the world’s most popular doll and offers some man-to-doll advice.
This, and a wholelotmore, can be found in the September issue of Kovels Antique Trader.
Kovels Antique Trader September 2023
Disney at 100…Art Dealer Guilty…Barbie Dolls…Carnival Glass…Red Wing Stoneware…American Western Collectibles…Wedgwood…Five Historic Dollhouses…American Furniture Styles…Collector’s Gallery
Open Door Policy
Forget Barbie’s Dreamhouse, here’s a peek inside five famous dollhouses you would be proud to call home.
By Kris Manty
When we think of a dollhouse, we generally associate it with a toy for children. But dollhouses were traditionally built as works of art and served various purposes that had little to do with innocent playtime.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in Europe, wealthy households constructed luxurious dollhouses of valuable materials, including gold, silver and ivory. Affluent women displayed them as cabinets of curiosity to delight and amuse visitors—and to show off their extravagant tastes. Though they were generally not allowed to play with them, these opulent display cabinets also served as educational tools to teach young girls the domestic skills needed to run their households as adults.
It wasn’t until the mid-19th century, when dollhouse furnishings could be mass-produced inexpensively that children took over these houses and moved their dolls in, with Barbie’s Dreamhouse eventually setting the contemporary standard for these tiny homes.
Dollhouses can serve as historical records of decorations and furnishings throughout time, and the impressive feat of engineering needed to replicate homes and furniture at a fraction of their actual size is fascinating. Another source of fascination is the over-the-top luxury of some of the most famous dollhouses in history. Here is a closer peek inside five magnificently elaborate creations you might find yourself wanting to call home:
Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House
There was no such thing as being too extravagant when it came to British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens designing his miniature masterpiece of art and design literally fit for a queen. Considered the largest, most famous and most beautiful dollhouse in the world, Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House was built by more than 1,500 artisans and craftsmen between 1921 and 1924 and gifted to her by the people for her dedicated presence in World War I.
The elaborate 1:12-scale dollhouse is an intricate replica of an English country mansion, complete with every detail imaginable. It portrays how the aristocratic homes looked during the 1920s and is furnished with miniature versions of items found in Windsor Castle. The finest manufacturers and artisans of the time, including Cartier and Fabergé, contributed hand-embroidered furnishings, silver dinner services, marble staircases, and other decorations, including velvet-cushioned thrones and sparkling crowns made with expensive materials.
It has electricity, hot and cold running water, a fully stocked wine cellar, a garage with luxury vehicles and royal limousines with working motors, miniature shotguns that lock and load, flushing toilets, a garden, and elevators. The fully stocked kitchen includes pots, pans, tiny cakes, loaves of bread and Cadbury chocolates. The library has over 600 miniature books specially written for it, and each bottle in the wine cellar is filled with its appropriate spirits and wine, including five dozen bottles of Veuve Clicquot and 200 bottles of Chateau Lafitte 1875.
The most notable feature of the dollhouse is its expansive art collection: 700 leading artists created drawings, engravings, murals, paintings, prints and watercolors that adorn the house.
The hopes and dreams of Petronella Oortman, a 17th-century Dutch woman, are revealed in her eight-foot-tall dollhouse built circa 1686-1710.
Petronella, part of a small group of wealthy women who created elaborate dollhouses, spent a fortune commissioning artwork, furniture upholstered in real silk, and other furnishings from top artists, basketweavers, cabinetmakers, glassblowers and silversmiths for her magnificent structure that replicated her own home.
The exceptionally realistic dollhouse, built by a French cabinetmaker, is made of tortoiseshell decorated with a pewter inlay and displays a world of luxury. Oortman had every item fit to scale, and the amount of precision that went into the creation of the house and its artworks are impressive.
For the kitchen, she special ordered blue and white dishes from China nestled in a cabinet against the wall. The room is also stocked with exquisite tableware and utensils, and a hidden cellar within the kitchen floor is revealed when a drawer is removed. The house has a nursery featuring a gold-framed mirror, silk screens, and a wicker baby chair, a special laundry and linen room, and places for the maidservants to sleep, each with their own chair, chamber pot and different bed fabrics. Beautiful paintings decorate ceilings, including one in a marble-floored hallway of the Goddess of Dawn, Aurora.
This was not a child’s toy and was likely only opened at adult gatherings for guests to marvel at the stunning craftsmanship and Oortman’s wealth and creative vision.
Built from 1686 to 1710, Petronella Oortman’s dollhouse is exceptionally realistic, and all the contents have been made of authentic materials and in precise proportions.
Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum
Astolat Dollhouse Castle
Designed by renowned Colorado miniaturist Elaine Diehl between 1974 and 1987, Astolat Castle became the world’s most expensive dollhouse after it was appraised in 2015 for $8.5 million, nearly $11 million in 2023 dollars.
Diehl named and modeled the Castle in honor of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s 1833 lyrical ballad, The Lady of Shalott, which tells the tragic Arthurian tale of Elaine of Astolat, a young noblewoman who died of unrequited love for Sir Lancelot.
Built in a 1:1 scale with the help of miniature artisans and experts worldwide, the intricately detailed Astolat is nine-feet high, weighs between 815 and 890 pounds, and is a remarkable feat of art, engineering and mathematics.
It features seven levels and 29 rooms, including a kitchen, wine cellar, library, chapel, armory, music room, and grand hall. The top level also has a Wizard’s tower with telescopes and astrological signs. Rooms are decorated in seven different period styles, including 18th-century English, Spanish, and Victorian. Since its completion, it has continually been updated, and thousands of superb miniatures have been added. Collectively, there are 100,000 quality handcrafted pieces, including mosaic wood floors, fine rugs, fabrics, a marble bathroom, miniature gold jewelry, gold chandeliers and gold-framed mirrors, oil paintings, portraits, and rare mini books in the library. It is also equipped with a washer and dryer and has luxurious accessories like diamond and pearl jewelry and doll-size rhinestone sandals.
Collectors Dr. Michael and Lois Freeman acquired the Astolat in 1996 and moved it to the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn, N.Y. For more information, visit www.astolatdollhousecastle.com.
The world-famous Astolat Dollhouse Castle was designed and built by renowned miniature artist Elaine Diehl and other craftsmen, carpenters, glass blowers, goldsmiths, and silversmiths over 13 years. It features 29 rooms filled with 10,000 intricately detailed miniature pieces, including elaborate furniture, oil paintings, mirrors, fireplaces, gold miniature jewelry, and rare books.
This child’s bedroom features a frilly canopy bed and is filled with tiny toys, including a puppet theater.
Courtesy of Astolat Dollhouse Castle
The Stettheimer Dollhouse
You know a dollhouse is unique when there’s a gala held in its honor, attended by guests like acclaimed artist Georgia O’Keeffe.
Such was the case when the Museum of the City of New York hosted a housewarming party in 1945 for the lavish 12-room miniature mansion of affluent and artistic New York City socialite Carrie Stettheimer, who spent nearly 20 years meticulously hand-crafting intricate decorations and furnishings for the miniature wonder.
The circa 1916-1935 dollhouse of Stettheimer, the youngest of the city’s three famed Stettheimer sisters, exemplifies the sophistication and luxury of New York’s Gilded Age. Each room in the two-story, 28-inch-high dollhouse is decorated in different styles, but the furniture, fixtures and wallpapers are typical of the period after World War I. From the real crystal candelabra that lights up the salon and the Louis XV furniture to the ballroom with a powder blue piano and the Limoges vases in the Chintz bedroom, Stettheimer weaved her artistic sensibility into every detail.
But the one-of-a-kind treasure said to be worth millions is particularly notable for the tiny, avant-garde artworks many of Stettheimer’s renowned and trailblazing artist friends of the 1920s created that decorate the stylish rooms, including a three-inch replica Marcel Duchamp made of his famous painting, Nude Descending a Staircase.
Stettheimer’s sister Ettie donated the dollhouse to the Museum of the City of New York a year after she died in 1944. While it’s on permanent display, it is undergoing routine restoration and will be back on view in 2024. For more information, visit www.mcny.org/exhibition/stettheimer-dollhouse-0
Among the most outstanding features in the Stettheimer Dollhouse are the miniature works of art and sculptures that decorate the ballroom.
Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York; photo by Brad Farwell
Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle
Decades before Barbie stepped foot in her Dreamhouse, Colleen Moore, one of the premier American movie stars of her time, spared no expense in building her own dream home in miniature form.
A lifelong fan of dolls and dollhouses, Moore enlisted a contingent of her Hollywood colleagues to help construct the elaborate, magical castle for nearly $500,000—the equivalent of over $8 million in 2023. Between 1928 and 1935, during the height of Moore’s career, hundreds of designers and craftspeople worldwide poured a tremendous amount of work, imagination and ingenuity into the magnificent twelve-room fairytale creation—not to mention the finest materials.
Doors are made of ivory, floors of carved jade, ivory and rose quartz, there is a golden altar and floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows in the chapel, and a tiny pistol in the Great Hall fires silver bullets. Some objects are also antiques and genuine historical artifacts, including a 2,000-year-old Egyptian kohl jar and over 500-year-old Chinese royal gems made of jade and quartz.
The nine-square foot, eight-foot-high castle takes inspiration from around the world and features a mini version of King Arthur’s round table, paintings of classic fairytales on the ceiling of the Great Hall, three statues of the Egyptian goddess Isis that are more than 4,000 years old, an emerald-and-diamond Russian icon in the chapel, and a staircase inspired by the Spanish steps in Rome. The kitchen’s Royal Doulton dinner service was also inspired by one in Queen Mary’s dollhouse.
It has all the amenities its inhabitants could want, including running water in the alabaster bathroom, a drawing room, a library, an attic, a magical garden, and electricity that lights up tiny gold chandeliers embellished with precious jewels.
Approximately 1,500 miniature treasures furnish the castle, including tapestries by a master Venetian needleworker, an 1840 bible that’s the tiniest one ever written, a library of other little volumes signed by famous authors like Agatha Christie and John Steinbeck, beautiful murals, and original paintings, including one of Mickey and Minnie Mouse donated by Walt Disney.
During the Great Depression, the castle toured across America between 1935 and 1940 for children’s charities and is estimated to have raised approximately $650,000, more than $14 million today.
Actress Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle dollhouse at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago.
Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago/Getty images
Musical Knickknack from Western Germany
Q: This musical knickknack was in my grandparents’ house ever since I was a little girl. It was passed on to me. At first, I thought it was broken because it makes a clicking sound as it plays music, but then I realized when you hold it up to the light and look through the […]
The Sophisticated Appeal of Wedgwood
Collectors can thank Josiah Wedgwood for forever changing the realm of ceramics, going from simple earthen clay crocks and jugs to a wide range of sophisticated pieces. Part of a family of potters, Wedgwood was self-taught and a brilliant entrepreneur who redefined the industry around 1776. With a career lasting more than 40 years, Wedgwood […]
Hobé Flower Photo Brooch
Q: I received as a gift from a friend 17 years ago, a beautiful Hobe Flower Photo Brooch dated 1966. I have not been able to find this brooch on the Internet. I’m interested to know what the value of this lovely Hobe brooch might be. Can you help me? A: Once you’ve started looking […]
