Fanning in every direction, the June Fine Wines & Rare Spirits auction covers a broad scope of far- reaching distilleries, producers, and vintages. A wide array of single and small lots makes collecting from this auction especially varied, approachable and exciting. The online-only auction opens for bidding on Wednesday, June 21 at 10AM and lots begin a rolling close on Wednesday, June 28 at 2PM. The auction presents vintages that span over decades: from a bottle of Conterno Monfortino Barolo Riserva 1958, to the 2013 and 2014 releases of the much sought-after Screaming Eagle three packs in original wood cases. The geographical range is similarly broad. Wine specialist Anna Ward points to “an incredible selection of rare bottlings of Italian producers from a bygone era including Mastroberardino Riserva Taurasi 1968.” And the singular Vega Sicilia Unico 2004 from Spain is available in two original wood three packs (Lot 1500, Estimated between […]

Pre-Auction Wine Tasting Wednesday, June 21  | 6:30PM – 8PM RSVP ONLINE Please join us for an after hours summer solstice wine tasting of highlights from the Fine Wine auction and chance to meet experts from Skinner’s Fine Wines department on Wednesday, June 21 from 6:30PM-8PM at Lower Falls Wine Company. Limited availability, please RSVP.             2366 Washington Street Newton Lower Falls MA Contact Us: finewines@skinnerinc.com  

  Jewelry’s Power Couples A Lecture by Toni Greenbaum THURSDAY, JUNE 22 | RECEPTION 5PM | LECTURE 6PM RSVP ONLINE Art historian Toni Greenbaum will discuss several notable modern and contemporary jewelers who are married to one another. Each captivating couple has a different story to tell of how they met and forged their respective careers, as well as what – if any – collaborative practices guided their oeuvres. Beginning with Sam and Carol Kramer, who offered “fantastic jewelry for people who are slightly mad” at their post-war Surrealist-inspired Greenwich Village shop, and ending with current “jewelry anarchists” Karl Fritsch and Lisa Walker, Greenbaum will discuss such international luminaries as Toza and Ruth Radakovich, Gijs Bakker and Emmy van Leersum, David Watkins and Wendy Ramshaw, Otto Künzli and Therese Hilbert, and David Bielander and Helen Britton. Rich with anecdotes along with information, Jewelry’s Power Couples is a light-hearted look at […]

BOSTON, MA  – Skinner, Inc. presents its second Fine Jewelry auction of 2017 on June 27th in Boston. The auction will feature over 400 lots of diamonds, colored stones, and antique and period jewelry. Diamonds Leading the collection of diamonds is a 10.65 carats, emerald-cut diamond graded by the GIA as a J Color, VS2 clarity (Lot 402, Estimated between $100,000-125,000). Diamond highlights also include a Fancy Intense Yellow oval diamond ring weighing 4.09 carats by Oscar Heyman (Lot 401, $30,000-50,000), a solitaire set with a 4.33 carats pear-shape diamond (Lot 400, $50,000-60,000), and a cushion-cut 5.01 carats diamond in a Taffin mount (Lot 399, $75,000-85,000). The auction also features a wide range of diamond solitaires ranging in size from 1 carat to over 5 carats. Diamond offerings also include several impressive pieces of diamond jewelry including a pair of 12.39 carats diamond earclips (Lot 398, $20,000-30,000), a 33.13 carats […]

TUESDAY, JUNE 20 | 10AM – 3PM Skinner’s Fine Jewelry Department is inviting consignments for the September 19th auction. Meet with Department Director Victoria Bratberg at the Westport Historical Society for a complimentary auction evaluation and consignment of your Fine Jewelry. Appointments required. Please register and a member of our team will contact you directly for an appointment time. REGISTER ONLINE Westport Historical Society 25 Avery Place Westport, CT Contact us: Fine Jewelry Department vbratberg@skinnerinc.com 617.874.4305

More than 500 lots comprising paintings, sculpture, photographs, and works on paper and representing a wide range of periods, styles, and subject matter were offered in Skinner’s May 19 auction. Robin S. R. Starr, Director of American and European Works of Art, notes that the stand-out successes of the auction were major works by renowned artists. Their enduring appeal and well-documented provenance resulted in prices that, in many cases, exceeded pre-auction estimates. Auction highlights included: Alexander Calder’s Standing Mobile brought the highest price of the sale. The work is small—at less than 6 inches across, about half the size of the Calder standing mobile that headlined Skinner’s January Fine Art auction. But the diminutive sculpture has all the wit, energy and originality that are hallmarks of Calder’s works of any size. As Starr puts it, this small but mighty creation was “full of spunk and whimsy; the red curl of […]

The African art offered in the online auction which runs from June 15 to June 23 is from the collection of Gordon Lankton of Clinton, Massachusetts. An engineer by profession, long-time CEO of a major plastic injection molding company and founder of the Museum of Russian Icons, Lankton is also a life-long collector. His extensive holdings of African art are the culmination of a wide-ranging collecting career that has included coins (American pennies with an example for every year back to 1794); World War II posters; cast-iron toy cars; and the largest private collection of Russian icons in the country. These are housed in their own museum in Clinton. “There is always something new out of Africa.” The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder made that comment in the first century A.D. and it remains true today. African art has been a source of fascination and inspiration for centuries, never more […]

  Fine Jewelry Preview | New York City Join the Fine Jewelry Department in New York City to preview highlights from the June 27 Fine Jewelry Auction. Private preview times are available by appointment only. WEDNESDAY JUNE 14 | THURSDAY JUNE 15 REQUEST APPOINTMENT Skinner New York 415 Madison Ave, New York Contact us: vbratberg@skinnerinc.com 617.874.4305  

Papermaking, calligraphy, illumination, paper marbling, and gold-tooled goatskin bindings define fine bookmaking and are generally associated with western and continental books. However, mastery of these book arts was transmitted to Europe through the Middle East during the Middle Ages. Although the Chinese pioneered papermaking and printing with movable type, in Medieval times, all roads from China to continental Europe passed through the Middle East and North Africa. These societies of the Near East were rooted in ancient Greek, Roman, and Hellenic learning and were hungry for any emerging technologies related to books, especially those that emphasized beauty and glorified the written word. In our current Books & Manuscripts online auction we are privileged to offer fourteen examples of Arabic and Persian manuscripts produced between 1461 and 1852. This group of text manuscripts, collected in Iran during the mid-20th century, represents the important branches of Arab and Persian learning of the time. Here […]

Richard Kenworthy, Former Professor of Architecture at Auburn University in Alabama and Asian Art expert discusses collecting with Melanie Mitcheson, Skinner’s Auction Coordinator. What are the Asian countries represented in the current auction? Primarily China and Japan. We do have a very unusual piece from India:  a dark wooden valuables chest with decorative straps around it—in the right space, it would be very dramatic (Lot 1520).  There is also a Tibetan thangka of very fine quality (Lot 1550) from the estate of Dorothy Braude Edinburg. Do you collect anything currently that is represented in the auction?  If so, when did you start and what sort of pieces do you own? I collect Scholars’ rocks (which we actually do not have in the current sale).  These, of course, are naturally occurring stone sculptures:  ideally, they have been untouched by human hands, although this is in fact rare.  Different types of stone […]

A skilled and inventive frame maker, admired by artists and collectors for his ability to create frames that corresponded perfectly to the style and intention of the canvases they surrounded, Charles Prendergast (1863-1948) did not begin working on his own artworks in earnest until he was in his fifties. After having spent years as a woodworker and craftsman, he created his painted panels, like Lot 382 in our upcoming Fine Paintings and Sculpture auction, with many of the same materials and techniques he had used for his frames. He first applied a layer of gesso (a mixture of chalk and glue) into which he incised the outlines of figures and forms; then, he colored the image with tempera paint. Finally, he added gold or silver leaf to highlight certain areas and burnished the decorated surfaces to achieve a weathered effect. He often finished his panels by creating simple frames using the […]

Two bronze sculptures by Rodin will be offered in our May 19th American & European Works of Art auction. Both were conceived by the artist as parts of larger works, and can therefore be considered fragments, but both also stand as unique and expressive works of art in their own right. Tête de la Luxure (Head of Lust) (Lot 385, Estimate $8,000-12,000) was first created as the head of the figure Crouching Woman, one of Rodin’s favorite compositions, likely originally dated to 1881-82, and one of the earliest figures Rodin modeled for the Gates of Hell.  Crouching Woman has been compared to Michelangelo’s Crouching Youth for its vigorous modeling and vitality. Later the fragment of the head of Crouching Woman was issued separately as Head of Lust, created in plaster in two sizes, the smaller measuring 5 ¾ inches high, and the larger measuring 15 1/3 inches high.  Bronzes were then […]