Topping the sale at $36,000 was this 93½-inch-tall Italian bureau cabinet that was from the Nineteenth or Twentieth Century. Of considerable interest was its provenance to heiress Doris Duke, from whose 2004 collection the Hilfigers acquired it for $41,000. A new local buyer, bidding in the room, prevailed ($10/20,000).

Review by Madelia Hickman Ring

BEVERLY, MASS — One of the taglines for fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger is “Fashion is fleeting; style is forever”; that saying could apply to how he and his first wife, Susie, decorated their historic Nantucket home. Kaminski Auctions is selling the contents of “Point of View” across four days and offered the first round on September 6-7 (the second part — about 900 lots — will sell September 20-21). The 902 lots on offer were divided evenly between both days and with only a few lots failing to find buyers from the podium, the sale had a sell-through rate of nearly 99 percent. Frank Kaminski told Antiques and The Arts Weekly the sale generated a total of approximately $1 million.

“There was so much interest, and we were getting such incredibly high prices, that it took awhile to sell: I sold for 9½ hours straight on Saturday, and another 11 hours on Sunday,” he shared. “We knew it would do well, but we were surprised at how well it did, and the sellers are very pleased. These celebrity sales are a lot of work but also a lot of fun.” He acknowledged the sale brought in a lot of bidders who had never bought from Kaminski Auctions previously, noting, “we had one new buyer from Dallas whose invoice was more than $100,000.”

The provenance to famed heiress Doris Duke undoubtedly helped boost interest in a Nineteenth or Twentieth Century Italian bureau cabinet that was painted blue and white and realized $36,000 from a new Massachusetts buyer bidding in the room. The catalog noted that the Hilfigers had acquired it from the Doris Duke sale, which Christie’s conducted in June 2004. At the time, they’d had to pay $41,000 to win it.

In second place at $30,000 was this Nineteenth Century Regency octagonal mahogany tilt-top dining or breakfast table that a “prominent buyer” won ($2/3,000).

The provenance wasn’t provided on a Nineteenth Century English Regency octagonal mahogany table that carried a $2/3,000 estimate, but a determined “prominent buyer” liked it enough to win it for $30,000.

It was not clear if the “prominent buyer” was the same one or a different one who paid $10,200 for a set of eight green painted Nineteenth Century English chairs that was the highest price realized on the first day of the sale. The same price was also realized for a 197-piece Royal Copenhagen porcelain part dinner service in the Blue Fluted Half Lace pattern also won by a “prominent buyer.” If they were the same buyer, they also acquired, on the second day, for $8,400, a chinoiserie decorated secretary described as “exceptional.”

Of slightly earlier vintage — early Nineteenth Century — a 45-inch-tall carved and giltwood mirror that retained its original mirror plate and was decorated with stylized dolphins finished in third place at $14,400. It will be going to Dallas with another successful bidder who was making their Kaminski Auctions debut.

More first-time buyers — this time from Greenwich, Conn. — took a political folk art album coverlet, that had at one time sold at Bonhams, to $11,400. The same new buyer from Greenwich won for $8,400 a set of 12 Nineteenth Century Chinese dinner plates that were in the green Fitzhugh pattern.

Though the earlier Bonhams sale date was not specified in the catalog, it was included in the provenance for this folk art needlework President Grover Cleveland and Benjamin F. Jones political album coverlet. A first-time buyer from Greenwich, Conn., sewed up the bidding at $11,400 ($1/2,000).

More first-time buyers were successful in the sale. One from Towson, Md., outlasted bidders on a 1956 Nantucket basket cocktail purse made by Jose Formoso Reyes (1902-1980) that came to auction with an estimate of $1/1,500 but sold for $9,000.

Interest in the sale reached at least two new buyers in Minnesota. Flying to $8,400 from a $2,5/4,500 estimate was a set of six hand-colored engravings of parrots by Eighteenth Century Italian physician and botanist, Saverio Manetti (1723-1784). A note in the catalog indicated they had been purchased from the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair in London, no date provided.

Also going to the Land of 10,000 Lakes was a set of nine miniature sailor valentines won for $5,700 by a new buyer in Deep Haven, Minn.

Long-time buyers were also winners and some of the top lots of the day were sold to existing clients around the United States. A Dallas buyer purchased a pair of Eighteenth or Nineteenth Century English Rococo giltwood mirrors for $9,600, the same price realized by a 13-by-20-inch Nineteenth Century China Trade painting that found a new home with an existing client in Boston.

A West Palm Beach, Fla., client paid $7,200 for a set of 10 Nineteenth Century Chinese watercolor on pith paper botanical drawings that measured 21 by 17 inches each.

Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as quoted by the auction house.

For further information, 978-927-2223 or www.kaminskiauctions.com