Antique Porcelain, French and Italian antiques, Fine Art, and collectables Estate Sale

Antique Porcelain, French and Italian antiques, Fine Art, and collectables estate sale. You are welcome to bourse our exclusive invitation only estate sale. This is the home of a collector of fine porcelain, fine art and curiosities.

Included in this sale will be a wonderful collection of Royal Vienna, Meissen, Dresden and other fine 19th century porcelain. There are oil paintings by listed artists, numerous small vintage figurines, silver and silver plated items, wonderful French and Italian showcases and parquetry inlayed vitrines, an Italian Sofa Parlor set, Chippendale dining room table with 6 chairs, wonderful Victorian bedroom set and French Louis 16th revival bed set, vintage clothing, old violins, flatware, late 18th century tea table, Victrola Phonograph, fine linens bedding, fine Louis 16th chairs, and many whimsical collectables too numerous to list. Dealers are welcome!

May, 2015
Studio City, CA 91604
Times: Closed

Estate Sale of Jimmy Z

This is the Estate Sale of Jimmy Z who was a popular bodybuilding promoter. Jimmy had excellent taste and his house is furnished with a nice mixture of quality furniture, artwork, collectables and household items.

The furniture includes the following: Mid Century Italian style glass display cases, Teal green sofa, loves seat and ottoman, Bamboo dinette set with four armchairs, Bombay dresser, antique Mission oak Grandfathers clock case, rustic fireplace mantel, Travertine marble coffee table and fancy side tables, office desk and dresser, German tea cart, very cool 60’s vintage Lucite screen, Chinese screen, bar, newer full size bed with mattress, small dresser, lamps, media cabenet and quality vintage patio furniture, etc.

Artwork includes works by Roy Lichtenstein, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and original Mid Century abstract oil paintings, antique and vintage prints and Egyptian papyrus art.

There are women’s and men’s clothing and shoes; plus designer and vintage costume jewelry, vintage mannequins, vintage electric fan, 48” flat screen TV and electronics, stereo speakers, office supplies, etc.

Other items include a nice mid century china set for 12, Dorothy Thorpe glassware, crystal, Asian items, books, records, CDs, VHS tapes of body building, some memorabilia, miscellaneous collectables, etc.,

There are a lot of kitchen items, pot and pans, small appliances, washer and dryer, apartment size refrigerator, bedding and bath items plus a full garage. Too many things to list!

Burbank, CA 91506
Times: Closed
March 21/ 22 2015

2/ 14-15, 2015
Northridge, CA

This is the sale of the personal effects of a retired Police Sargent from Downey. They include a large collection of pocket knives, like new in the original boxes, mens wrist watches, less than a year old sports and active mens wear from Big Five and Cabelas and other clothing. There are kitchen items, many unused and still in their original boxes, glassware, mugs, utensils and flatware, plus novelty items, tools and exercise equipment. There is furniture like a desk, bunk bed, shelves, end tables, chairs, coffee tables, a bamboo bar with bar stools, grandfather clock and art. The clothing is mostly men’s sizes large and extra large, shirts, Tee shirts, jackets, sweaters, pants size 36 to 38, plus men’s shoes size 9. This is good quality clothing at very affordable prices! Prices are very cheap! $1. – $10.00. Will sell in bulk or one at a time! Other antiques and collectables are for sale too! Come on over and see. Check back for updated photos and descriptions.

Studio City Estate Sale – January 31, 2015

Studio City, CA

1/31 2015

This is the Estate Sale of a lady who worked for the studios as a secretary.

We have added to the sale more items from storage.

The house was occupied since the early 1960’s and has 50 year old or older furniture and quality household items. She was also a Golf enthusiast and has numerous golf related items. She loved Hawaii and collected many Monkey Pod wood and has a Tiki Bar, oak Tall Case clock,. There is vintage women and men’s clothing size large, lots of handbags and shoes; plus designer jewelry by Swarovski, lladro plates and vintage costume jewelry, meas watches, etc.

The furniture includes the following: Traditional Mid Century solid Maple Colonial revival bedroom sets, a nice sofa, mirrors, Two antique French Louis 16th arm Chairs, Nice side tables, Queen size bed, two twin beds, Solid Maple vanity dresser, an upright piano, lamps and quality patio furniture, etc. There are a lot of bedding and bath items, kitchen items and small appliances, books, records, some memorabilia, etc., many things too numerous to list!

Granada Hills Estate Sale – January, 17, 2015

Estate sale, many items moved off site from an estate in Downey, Ca.

1/17 2014

It is chocked full of Mens clothing and antiques, fine art, collectables and curiosities.

These are the personal effects of a Police sergeant who lived in Downey and spent 30 years on the force.

Included in this sale will be vintage oil paintings, a huge amount of mens clothing sizes large to extra large with shoes size 9, most have only been worn once or never worn at all. A 1960’s Bamboo Tiki bar and matching stools, Chess gaming table, unusual vintage speakers, vintage George Nelson for Howard Miller wall clock, late 18th century antique drop leaf table, fine 19th century Louis 16th chairs, early English 17th / 18th century antique Jacobean or Elizabethan oak hutch and chair, vintage Tiffany style stained glass lamps, quality glassware and china, some kitchen items, many whimsical collectables too numerous to list.

The sale is concentrated in the yard and garage of the house, nothing inside the house is for sale. Everything is bargain priced and dealers are welcome!

Family inherit old building and unearth amazing vintage shoe store that was locked up for decades

…and all the footwear is in perfect condition (albeit a little dusty).

An American family have unearthed an Aladdin’s cave of mint-condition vintage shoes in an old building they inherited from their grandparents.
The building operated as a shoe store from the 1940s until the 1960s, but the doors had been locked for decades. Until now.

One of the family members posted the rare find to online noticeboard Reddit recently, but stopped short of revealing the location, so as to prevent any break-ins.

Original Story

The historic collection is likely worth a small fortune.

All the shoes appear to be completely untouched and are at least 50 years old.
Despite some dust they are practically good as new.

The store closed when the grandmother fell ill and the family, too busy to manage it themselves, decided to close it, the blog Messy Nessy Chic reported.

‘I have no idea how profitable (the business) was, perhaps that was a factor (in it closing),’ the user, Oktober75, posted on Reddit.

‘My grandparents were known for hoarding. My guess is they went with the mentality ”it will be worth something some day”.

‘That day came and went.’
However the user reiterated that the location will remain a secret, for security reasons, until the family is ready.

‘When we’re ready to draw attention, I’d be happy to share more details,’ the user wrote.

Revealed: Eerie new images show forgotten French apartment that was abandoned at the outbreak of World War II and left untouched for 70 years

Eerie new images have emerged of a French apartment abandoned at the outbreak of World War II and left untouched in the seven decades since.

Other than a thick layer of dust covering the furniture, the room looks exactly as it would have done 70 years ago when its occupants fled Paris for the south of France as the Second World War erupted in Europe.

With Germany devising the Fall Gelb – a military sub-campaign later known as the Manstein Plan, with an objective conquering Northern France – the owner of the chic apartment decided that leaving the capital was the only way she could guarantee her safety.

JOHN HALL Author Biography Thursday 16 May 2013
independent.co.uk
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Woodland Hills Estate Sale – Nov 7 – 9, 2014

Woodland Hills

11/7 – 11/9 2014 closed

This is the moving sale of a celebrity 4-time Grammy winning music producer.

 The entire house is filled with high-end Ashley furniture, with fine art and quality household items. There are designer woman’s clothing, handbags and shoes; plus designer jewelry by Tiffany and Co., Vanessa Mooney, Heather Gardner, Alisa Michelle, NA Hoku, “Spell and the Gypsy”, Jennifer Zeuner, CC Sky, House of Harlow, Georgina, Marc Jacobs, Michael Kores, Jucy Couture, etc.

The furniture includes the following:  Traditional Mahogany dining set, fine leather sectional sofa, leather love-seat, Lazy-boy, Rafferty Sofa Table – Signature Design by Ashley T382-4, A huge floor mirror by Bassit – 90″ inches tall by 70″ long, beveled glass with a silver gilt frame, Norcastle Round End Tables – Signature Design by Ashley T499-6, Office Desk by Home Meridan, Century “Queen Anne” 5 drawer dresser, Two French Shield-back Louis 16th style Dining Chairs, Four “pillared” poster King canopy bed, Queen size Iron four poster canopy bed, Queen size bed, Victorian vanity dresser, art deco high boy dresser, antique oak hall tree, Edwardian wardrobe closet, media dressers and CD cabinets, quality patio furniture, etc.

Also there are over 700 CD’s (no CD dealers please!) flat screen TVs and fine audio equipment, a guitar, important music memorabilia, an original oil painting by Garth Benton, Andy Warhol Playboy Bunny Offset Lithograph, Bronze Seated Cupid by Formile, candlesticks, touchier floor lamps, a large gilded neo Egyptian “water girl” statue, whimsical fountains, fine bedding by Ralph Lauren and rugs by Cynthia Rowley, kitchen items and small appliances, etc., many things too numerous to list!

Please review the photos, as we will be updating this sale as we continue to stage it. Check back for additional information and photos.

 

 

Bunny Mellon’s Keen Eye Is a Boon to Sotheby’s

Orginal article- New York Times

UPPERVILLE, Va. — Few people have ever visited Oak Spring Farms, the grand home here of Rachel Lambert Mellon, better known as Bunny. If they had, they would have seen a Pissarro, unframed like a flea market find, above the living room fireplace. Upstairs, a still life by van Gogh hung above her bathtub. Antique porcelains — cabbages, asparagus, artichokes — were artfully arranged on practically every surface.

Mrs. Mellon was the matriarch of an American dynasty whose fortune and art holdings rivaled that of the Fricks, Carnegies and Morgans. But perhaps most notably, she was a passionate collector of a bygone era. She didn’t pay attention to what was in fashion; she didn’t think about future financial returns. Instead, she had understated and original taste, buying what she loved, free from the dictates of decorators and investment consultants.

Rachel Lambert Mellon, right, with her husband Paul, and Lady Bird Johnson at the National Gallery of Art.Rachel Mellon, an Heiress Known for Her Green Thumb, Dies at 103MARCH 17, 2014
A hardy orange tree flanks Oak Spring’s library, designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes.The Eloquence of SilenceJUNE 12, 2014
“Bunny was part of a generation that no longer exists today: an amateur collector with a sure eye, great taste and upper-class refinement, who bought across the board, from expensive jewelry and paintings to trinkets,” said John Wilmerding, an American art scholar and trustee of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

She was also fiercely private and rarely opened her home to visitors. So when Mrs. Mellon died in March at the age of 103, no one knew the full extent of what she left behind. It turns out there are thousands of objects — paintings, drawings, jewelry, handbags, baskets, even a fire truck — most of which will soon be up for auction at Sotheby’s. It estimates her collection could bring in over $100 million.

Sotheby’s plans a nine-day extravaganza, starting on Nov. 10, eventually turning over the galleries on all 10 floors of its New York headquarters to display what was on the walls and in the cupboards of the five homes she shared with her second husband, Paul, the son of the financier Andrew W. Mellon.

With estimated prices from $200 (a 1940s hooked rug) to $30 million (a painting by Mark Rothko), Sotheby’s hopes to draw not just wealthy buyers but also anyone eager for a small piece of Mrs. Mellon’s legacy.

The sale comes at a critical time for Sotheby’s, which has been battered by tepid spring auctions and a board battle. It is surely betting that its estimated prices will be eclipsed by buyers bidding wildly for, say, a cast-metal bunny (estimated price: $1,000 to $1,500).

In 1996, when Sotheby’s held a similar sale of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s estate, people waited in line for hours to glimpse John F. Kennedy’s golf clubs and her 40-carat diamond ring from Aristotle Onassis. Those auctions, over four days, raised $34.4 million, more than six times its estimate.

On a visit to the Mellon estate here in July, everything had been assembled, tagged and organized like a perfectly planned military operation. Sotheby’s specialists in areas like English furniture, Chinese porcelains, American paintings and contemporary art had combed through more than 20 buildings on the property and documented every one of some 4,000 objects, tagging every teacup and fork.

Continue reading the main story
“We felt like interlopers moving into a notoriously private and protected world,” said Elaine Whitmire, a vice chairman at Sotheby’s who oversees major estate sales.

Clearing everything out has been a herculean effort, involving 3,000 feet of Bubble Wrap and more than 500 packing boxes for the decorative objects and books alone. Even those who knew Mrs. Mellon well didn’t foresee the scale of the project, said Jane MacLennan a lawyer for the estate. “She never threw anything out. All her correspondence exists.”

So, it seems, does every pair of gardening shears she ever bought. A self-taught horticulturalist, Mrs. Mellon designed the White House Rose Garden and, of course, the gardens surrounding her own houses, too. A lot of 27 pieces — two bentwood pitch forks, three watering cans, four pruning shears, a hoe, nine umbrellas, three shovels, three walking sticks, a bamboo walking stick concealing a saw — is estimated to sell for as much as $600.

In its building, Sotheby’s plans to showcase an 1880s octagonal cupola that Mrs. Mellon never installed. (Price: $3,000 to $5,000.) There will be Christian Dior handbags with clasps of gold and lapis lazuli, created for her by the French jeweler Jean Schlumberger. There are sets of antique china and glass that could entertain hundreds. (Although not on view, a 1950s fire truck, Oak Spring I, is estimated to sell for as much as $25,000.)

And then there is the art: more than 400 paintings and drawings, including Picassos, Seurats, Hoppers and Homers.

Before the auctions, prominent collectors tried to buy the best paintings privately. The estate quietly parted with several canvases including two by Rothko and a Diebenkorn, said Alexander D. Forger, her friend, lawyer and an executor. “It seemed prudent to take advantage of the offer,” he said. “We’ve got estate taxes to pay by December.” He declined to name the buyers or the prices, which dealers said totaled around $300 million.

Auction houses also jockeyed for the estate sale. Sotheby’s and Christie’s prepared elaborate presentations with mock catalogs, simulations of the gallery installations and worldwide marketing plans.

From the start, Sotheby’s had the inside track. “Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s came in with the same financial arrangement,” Mr. Forger said. “But we knew Sotheby’s better.”

Mr. Forger had been an executor of Mrs. Mellon’s great confidante, Ms. Onassis, and selected Sotheby’s for that sale.

But his choice was not based on familiarity alone. While neither he nor Franck Giraud, the art adviser to Mrs. Mellon, would discuss specifics, both said that she was angry with Christie’s owner, François Pinault. In 2002, she agreed to sell him three Rothko paintings for around $25 million. They had been on loan to the National Gallery since the early 1970s, and Mrs. Mellon parted with them only after Mr. Pinault contractually promised to exhibit them in what was to be his foundation for contemporary art on the Île Seguin, in Paris.

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But when his plans for the space in Paris fell apart, Mr. Pinault moved the project to the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, where the works were on view only once. Two years ago, he sold one of the paintings, “Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown),” from 1952, to Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire, for more than twice what Mr. Pinault paid for all three paintings, according to dealers familiar with the transaction. Last year, he sold a second, “Yellow and Blue” from 1954.

Nazanine Ravaï, Mr. Pinault’s chief of staff, said that the Rothkos were to be displayed in Paris, but that they did not fit with the programming in Italy, and there was no permanent place to house them. Mr. Pinault, she said, plans to keep the third Rothko.

Space was not an issue at Oak Spring, a working dairy farm. There was the stone cottage where the Mellons lived, stables for prizewinning thoroughbreds, a pool house designed by I. M. Pei and the Brick House, a Georgian-style mansion. A building was devoted just to Bunny Mellon’s collection of baskets: Shaker, Native American, florist shop generic, and antique discoveries.(The property also includes one of the country’s earliest private airstrips.) Oak Spring itself was put on the market last month for $70 million.

What could be left?

“Every book had to be shaken to make sure there wasn’t a drawing or love letter tucked inside,” Ms. Whitmire said.

To raise as much money as possible for Mrs. Mellon’s foundation, the executors decided putting her property up for auction would be the best approach.

Deciding what to give back to the family — Mrs. Mellon’s son, Stacy B. Lloyd III, and his two children, as well as Mrs. Mellon’s two stepchildren, Catherine Conover and Timothy Mellon — was a delicate balancing act. “Sometimes, things are just too personal,” Ms. Whitmire said. Among other things, family members selected a Pissarro painting from her bedroom, one of Mrs. Mellon’s Givenchy gardening hats, furniture that she designed, and a picture frame by Schlumberger that contained family photos.

While Ms. Whitmire and others culled through the buildings, a few discoveries were made: One of Joseph Cornell’s famous box assemblages was unearthed in a bathroom cabinet; a Magritte watercolor was found in a rarely used room.

“When I walk through the buildings for the last time, I’m terrified that something will be forgotten,” Ms. Whitmire said. “You only get one chance.”