and

Clasp illustrated: Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, Band XIV, April 1904-September 1904, p. 506 (see image attached)

MAHROKH BECK Munich, Germany

Stylized flower brooch c. 2005

Set in 18 K yellow gold with a large square cut citrine (approx. 40 carats TW) and a smaller square cut citrine (approx. 4 carats TW), 2 oval orange citrines, 2 oval yellow citrines, 2 oval sapphires and cognac diamonds

MARCELLO FANTONI (1915-2011) Italy

Starburst mirror 1950’s

Torched bronze and original white plaster painted finish.

Marks: Fantoni, Firenze, Italy (hand script)

***This mirror has great style and character.

Overall dimension: H: 26″ x L: 33″ x D: 4″
Mirror dimension: H: 12″ x L: 17″

Price: $17,500

Born in Florence on October 1, 1915, Marcello Fantoni registered at the Institute of Art at Porta Romana in 1927 to attend the course The Art of Ceramics, which at that time was taught by the ceramist Carlo Guerrini, artistic director of the Cantagalli factory. Other teachers also contributed to his artistic formation including Libero Andreotti and Bruno Innocenti in sculpture and Gianni Vagnetti in the figure. He graduated in ’34 as a ‘maestro’ of art, and began working as a ceramist. In 1936, after having worked for a few months as the artistic director of a factory in Perugia, he established himself at Villa Fabbricotti in Florence and founded the Fantoni Ceramic studio. It’s production of serial and unique pieces had remarkable success at the Florentine Arts and Crafts Exhibit in ’37, revealing itself in line with the most recent tendencies, so much so that at the beginning of hostilities his production had already received notable artistic and commercial attention in Italy and abroad. After the war years, when Fantoni was involved in the resistance, in ’46 he began the creative and productive fervor that will allow him to enlarge his company, reaching at the beginning of the next decade the impressive size of over fifty collaborators. Among his employees were many students who, in ceramics and other fields, would become excellent artisans and even famous artists. In the following decades, especially between 1950 and the 70’s, the success of his work continued to increase, his unique pieces of sculpture and sculptural work, characterized by a design in step with the contemporary artistic currents, like archaic stylization inspired by Etruscan models, rendered modern because of their modern handling of materials, glazes and colors. For this original spirit of modernity, his works are in many private collections and in some of the most important museums of the world: in the United States his works can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Art of Boston, the Currier Gallery, the Syracuse Museum. In Britain they are in the Victoria and Albert Museum of London, the City Art Gallery of Manchester, at Royal Scottish Museum of Edinburg. In Japan they are present at the Museum of Modern Art of Tokyo and Kyoto. In Italy they are represented at the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, the National Bargello Museum and at the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi. In his long and versatile career, Fantoni has completed works for churches, public and private buildings, schools, cinemas, theaters and ships cementing himself in both figurative and abstract ceramics and various metals, and qualifying himself also in the field of medalism. In 1970 he founded the International School of Ceramic Arts at his laboratory in via Bolognese in Florence. Fantoni died at the age of 95 in 2011.

The Sweetser Co. New York, New York
(active 1900-1915)

Covered cigar box c. 1910

Elaborately etched sterling silver cover with a spherical jade finial and a copper box bottom, wood lined

Marks: S & E in three separate boxes (2x), STERLING, 2158

H: 4 3/4″ x D: 6 1/8″ x W: 7 5/8″

The Sweetser Co. New York, NY was active 1900-1915 and were manufacturers of fancy gold and sterling wares

TIM LIDDY

“Who Can Beat Nixon” (1970) Presidential Sweepstakes 2006

Oil and enamel on copper, plywood back

Signed in script: Tim Liddy “circa 1970” 2006, red circular ring

Provenance: William Shearburn Gallery (St. Louis, MO)

H: 11 ¾” x W: 9” x D: 2”

With his recent paintings, Liddy has both reasserted the construct of hyperrealist painting and developed a thoroughly unique advancement of that mode by extending the cultural reality of the indexed original. Based on the illustrated box lids of vintage board games, Liddy has recontextualized a subject, which evokes the underlying rules of life. Painted on copper or steel in the precise dimensions of the original, the metal is then manipulated to demonstrate the exact rips and tears from years of usage and includes trompe-l’oeil renditions of the scotch tape that might be holding the cardboard box together, the assorted stains, or the various graffiti of time. Liddy leaves no possibility of ambivalence, these works speak to a concurrent understanding of their original object identity and to themselves as works of art engaged in historical and psychological dialogue.

JULIUS DRESSLER Biela, Czech Republic

JULIUS DRESSLER BIELA (1888-1945) Czech Republic

Bowl 1910

Black and white glazed earthenware with three ball feet

Marks: JDB, 7764 (underglaze)

H: 4 7/8” x D base: 10 7/8”

Price: $3,750

Julius Dressler was a noted Bohemian ceramics manufacturing company that operated from the late 19th century until the end of World War II. Founded by Julius Dressler in the 1880s in Biela, Bohemia, the company produced high-quality decorative faience, Maiolica and porcelain ware. Dressler gained international renown for the ceramics it produced in the early 1900s in the Art Nouveau style, also known as “Jugendstil” or “Secessionist” ware.

FRITZ SCHMOLL VON EISENWERTH (1883-1963) Germany

M.T. WETZLAR (active c. 1905-1940) München, Germany

Hand mirror c. 1920

Handwrought silver and ivory

Marks: MTW (in a shield), 900, moon, crown, Wetzlar München, R

L: 10 ¼” x W: 4 ¾”

STEPHEN LONGSTREET (1907-2002)

“Jazz Festival Trio – Night Faces” c. 1970’s

Paper cut-out, mixed media and paper collage

Signed: Longstreet (lower right), titled in pencil (upper left)

Artist’s printed address label verso

H: 38″ x W: 28 3/8″

Stephen Longstreet was born on April 18, 1907 in New York City and attended Rutgers University (1926) and Harvard University (1927), and graduated from the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (1929); also studied in Paris with Matisse and Bonnard, as well as in Rome, London and Berlin; became painter, writer, art critic, and lecturer on art; literary critic for Reader’s Syndicate (1952-80) and for the Los Angeles Daily News; designed stage sets for RexRoth poetry jazz, 1952; president, Los Angeles Art Association. (1972-75); professor of modern writing, University of Southern California (1975-80); wrote radio plays, screenplays, and dozens of books ranging from novels to biography to travel, including: Decade, 1929-1939 (1940), The Pedlocks: A Family (1951), Gettysburg (1961), The World Revisited (1953), and The Real Jazz, Old and New (1956).

The world of jazz was a constant theme throughout Longstreet’s life.
Longstreet was introduced to ragtime and jazz by future singing legend Paul Robeson, then an All-American football player at Rutgers University. Their friendship began in 1918, when Robeson spotted the 11-year-old Longstreet sketching him as he practiced dropkicking. In his 1986 book “Storyville to Harlem: Fifty Years in the Jazz Scene,” Longstreet explained that Robeson made him “aware of the gap between the music taught on paper and the ‘razzmatazz’ sounds of the scratchy jazz recordings.” While studying at the School of Fine and Applied Arts in New York in the late ’20s, Longstreet drew the musical scenes in Greenwich Village, the speak-easies and the Cotton Club in Harlem. “I had hoped to capture with black marks on white paper, this music created by these people, and set down what they looked like, felt and did before they were gone,” he later wrote. By the late ’20s, Longstreet was furthering his artistic studies in Paris, where he met Picasso, Matisse and other artists. He also met and drew James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and the American “jazzmen” who were, he later wrote, “escaping from Judge Lynch and the back of the bus.” After returning to the United States in 1930, he traveled south to New Orleans, discovering the “strange and wonderful sounds” of jazzmen playing in Storyville, the city’s red light district, and capturing them in his work. He later drew and painted Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and other jazz greats. Of Longstreet’s depictions of the century’s jazz scene, Louis Armstrong wrote in 1971: “You want to feel the smell–the color–the great ‘OH MY’ feeling of the jazzmen, and stomp around in the smoke and dusk of the joints … then you just go and locate some of the drawings and paintings of this cat Steve Longstreet and steal you a few.”

Over the years, Longstreet’s jazz-era works, including collages, watercolors and ink drawings, were exhibited in museums and galleries, including the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution. The University of Chicago Library, The Graphic Arts Collection and Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library, as well as UCLA all have extensive collections of Longstreet’s artwork.

STEPHEN LONGSTREET (1907-2002) New York, NY

“Billie Holiday” c. 1970’s

Paper cut-out, mixed media and paper collage