A UK trade buyer topped off this Meiji bronze or doki inlaid palace urn at $47,000, well ahead of its $4/8,000 estimate. It was the highest price in the sale.
Review by Madelia Hickman Ring
MARION, MASS. — “The sale started at 10 am and we didn’t finish until around 6:30 pm. We had a very nice group of new bidders: more than 50 percent of our online bidders were new,” Nick Taradash reported following Marion Antique Auctions’ Holiday Classic Sale II on December 6. “I think it was because we had a very diverse group of quality things that attracted a broad range.” He confirmed the auction tallied $705,000, with more than 95 percent of lots finding new homes.
The auction’s top lot was a 30-inch-tall Meiji bronze or doki inlaid palace urn made by Kanamori Soshichi (Japanese, 1821-1892), who the sale’s catalog noted was an award-winning metalwork artist based in Takaoka, Japan. Weighing nearly 120 pounds, the impressive vessel achieved $47,000 and sold to a trade buyer in the UK.
A private collector in the Midwest prevailed to win, for $40,960, a fall landscape by John Joseph Enneking (American, 1841-1916). Helping boost interest were two exhibition labels that indicated the work had been shown at both the Ogunquit Museum of Art (2001) and the Cahoon Museum of American Art (2003).
John Joseph Enneking’s fall landscape, oil on canvas, 19 by 23 inches in a period carved and gilded frame measuring 31 by 35 inches, had been in two museum exhibitions and hit the sale’s second highest price of $40,960, from a Midwest private collector ($4/8,000).
A second painting that had also been exhibited at the Cahoon museum — one of water nymphs by Arthur Spear (American, 1879-1959) — rounded out the leaderboard. It will be going to another private collection, this time in New England, with a buyer who took it to $16,000.
“The Mary Yancey vase came to us from a client who was originally from Iowa; their family member had a gift shop in Iowa that sold ceramics,” Taradash said, explaining how a circa 1920s earthenware vase made at the Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa, ended up at coastal Massachusetts auction house. A trade buyer bidding for a client took it to $14,720.
The Old Dartmouth Historical Society in nearby New Bedford, Mass., consigned a fair quantity of things to the sale, several of which finished in the highest lots. The highest price of the group was realized by a group of 15 bisque-head dolls that dated to the Nineteenth Century. A trade buyer paid $14,080 for the group; it was the highest price of nearly two dozen doll-related lots.
This group of 15 Victorian bisque-head dolls from the Old Dartmouth Historical Society charmed bidders and sold for $14,080 to a trade buyer ($1/2,000).
Also deaccessioned by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society was a pine mustard-yellow painted slantback open cupboard that brought $12,480, a significant improvement over its $300/500 estimate. It found a new home with a private collector.
A private collector in Colorado got fired up for a Colt Army percussion revolver with detachable stock. Taradash noted that the serial numbers matched and were low. The third-highest result for a piece deaccessioned by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, it fetched $11,840.
Texas is the end destination for an Eighteenth Century polychrome decorated powderhorn that descended in the Maryland and Washington, DC, families of Isaac Duhamel. Interest pushed it beyond its high estimate for a $7,040 finish.
Marion Antique Auctions’ next sale will be in early April, date TBA.
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, 508-748-3606 or www.marionantiqueauctions.com.
