Kovels Antique Trader Debut Issue – August 2023

Thrifty Threads…Archival Fashion…Lamps and Lighting…Catalin Radios…’70s and ’80s Toys…Magic Memorabilia…John Dillinger & Gangster Memorabilia…Fruit Salad Jewelry…Thrift Shop Tourism…Ceramics Marks…Collector’s Gallery      

Sculptural Chandelier is a Work of Art

Giacometti chandelier lights up auction. In the 1960s, painter John Craxton saw an interesting-looking bronze chandelier at an antiques store in London. Its six arms were paired like long, straight branches with spiked ends, and a hollow sphere with large, round cutouts dangled underneath. Craxton immediately recognized it as a piece commissioned in the 1940s by art collector Peter Watson, Craxton’s patron early in his career. The chandelier was the work of sculptor Alberto Giacometti, known for his cast metal sculptures of long, thin, exaggerated human forms. Like many 20th-century designers, Giacometti made furniture and decorative arts as well as fine art. Craxton bought the chandelier for £250, equal to about $700 in U.S. dollars, which would be worth a little over $7,000 today. That same chandelier sold at a recent Christie’s auction in London for £2,922,000 (including buyer’s premium)—about $3.5 million!

Nicola Tesla Letter

A Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) letter discussing his place among America’s greatest inventors sold for $341,295 at RR Auction of Boston. Tesla was an inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system. The four-page letter on monogrammed letterhead is signed “N. Tesla, February 19, 1901.” The handwritten note to New York Sun editor Paul Dana reads, “The telephone will remain forever useful and so, probably, will my invention for it permits the use of the sun’s energy in the simplest and most economical manner and also because it is hard to imagine a simpler machine than my motor with an armature driven without mechanical and electrical contact. But the incandescent lamp will soon be doomed and Edison’s work in the field will have only of historical value.” Tesla writes about his place among Edison and Bell, stating, “The telephone means convenience, the incandescent lamp comfort but power means bread and butter.”

Photo: RR Auction

Colorful and Minimalist Scandinavian Lighting

Scandinavian lighting devices are functional and have minimalist, clean designs. A recent Wright auction in Chicago featured Scandinavian designed furniture and furnishings, including nearly 40 lots of lamps and other lighting. Top price was a set of six brass-plated aluminum and plastic ceiling lamps designed by Hans-Agne Jakobsson of Sweden in 1965 that sold for […]

Lighting Mid-1920s to the 1960s

From about 1925 through much of the 1930s, art deco designers created lamps that softened the light cast by electric bulbs. They replaced colored-glass shades with frosted, opaque, and smoked glass and designed uplights, indirect lighting with bulbs that shone upward. Stained glass went out of favor, and bronze, painted metal, alabaster, marble, lacquer, chrome, […]