Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Art Glass Paperweights

Art Glass Paperweights

I have a shop that sells art glass.  My favorite art glass is paperweights.  I have a lot of fun attending art auctions and buying art glass.  I try to pay attention to what my friends and clients like and dislike.

I usually give people art glass paperweights that I find at art auctions for milestone birthdays and anniversaries.  My grandmother turned eighty last October and I found a wonderful art glass paperweight for her.

The art glass paperweight that I found for my grandmother was made by Baccarat.  I was extremely lucky that this was one of the last things auctioned.  A lot of people had already left the art auction when this item went on the block.  My grandmother appreciated the pansy design because the pansy is her favorite flower.

My cousin loves frogs.  She has managed to decorate her home tastefully with her favorite item.  I have been on the lookout for an art glass paperweight for her for years.  I finally found one at an art auction I was at last year.  The art glass paperweight featured a frog sitting on a lily pad and the frog was surrounded by blue water.  It was really pretty and my cousin started using it on her desk immediately.

My aunt collects art glass paperweights.  I have been asked by her on numerous occasions to find pretty art glass paperweights for her while I’m attending art auctions.  Of all of the pieces I’ve won for her over the years, one memory sticks out in my memory more than any other.

By far the prettiest art glass paperweight I’ve ever won at an art auction has to be one that features a blue and gold Macaw.  Rick Ayotte was the artist that created it and it was even featured in a book of his work.  He has created many lovely art glass paperweights.

I have an art glass paperweight in my shop that just won’t sell.  It has been in the store the longest and I think I may have it priced too high.  I won the paperweight at an art auction several years ago for one thousand dollars.  The paperweight was created by Paul Stankard and it should have easily sold for twice what I paid for it.

I have no trouble at all selling art glass paperweights that were made by Rick Ayotte.  His work seems to draw the most interest.  I try to win any auction I find for art glass paperweights he made.  I won one not long ago that was pink roses.  They looked so delicate and sweet.  I know that this art glass paperweight will sell quickly.

There have been some inquiries at my shop for art glass paperweights by Richard Marquis.  I haven’t found any in any of the art auctions I’ve attended recently.  I looked at some of the pieces he’s made and I’m not especially impressed.

I will keep looking for the art glass paperweights at the art auctions I attend, but I will not be going way out of my way to track them down.  I will just remember that Marquis is an artist that some of my clients are really interested in.  I’m sure that I will find an art auction with one of his pieces in it at some point.

There were some inquiries about nautical themed art glass paperweights a couple of years ago and I found a fantastic artist that made them.  I buy every art glass paperweight I can find that was made by Rick Satava.  My favorite has to be the coral orange jellyfish that I found at an art auction an hour from my home.  It was really pretty.

The coral orange jellyfish art glass paperweight was just the first Rick Satava piece that I’ve found at various art auctions.  I’ve also found jellyfish in ruby and blue.  They are beautiful by themselves or when they are put onto a black light stand that has been built especially for them.

Art Poster Auctions 

Art poster auctions are very popular.  Owning great pieces of art has gotten easier.  A properly framed art poster can be as nice as owning an original painting and it is far less expensive.

I have found many different art styles in art poster auctions.  The most expensive art poster in the abstract style sold recently on eBay was a 1959 Picasso entitled Les Menines.  The poster sold for $560.00.

There was an original and authentic art poster auction recently in the art deco style that caught my eye.  The poster was from 1961 and was for Breakfast at Tiffany.  The poster sold for over three thousand dollars.

World’s Fair art poster auctions seem to do very well.  I saw an auction for the 1939 New York World’s Fair that sold for more than fifteen hundred dollars.  There was another art poster auction for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair that went for just under fifteen hundred dollars.

In the Asian art poster auction market, there seems to be some really odd things.  I found a poster that depicted McDonald’s hamburgers invading Japan.  The poster got fourteen bids from six different people and it closed at four hundred fifty five dollars.

In the category of Impressionist art poster auctions, I found one for the 2006 Jazz Festival in New Orleans that sold for over four hundred dollars.  It was done by a Cajun artist named James Michalopulos and featured Fats Domino.  The colors in the poster were brilliant.

I found that the category of Modern art posters seems to get the most auction listings.  There is one art poster that keeps being re-listed because it just doesn’t sell.  The poster is from the Elvis movie Love Me Tender.  Apparently the owner of this poster has determined that it is worth one thousand dollars and will not take less than that.  He hasn’t sold it yet, but I wish him luck.

There were another Modern art poster auctions that really did well as far as I could tell.  They were Greyhound travel posters.  There were a couple of art poster auctions that sold recently.  They were both created in the 1950’s and both of the posters sold for around three hundred dollars each.

After researching so many art poster auctions, I have come to the conclusion that my parents and grandparents should have collected every piece of advertising they ever came across.  They would be worth a small fortune by now! 

The Sante Fe Railroad as a subject is prominently sold in art poster auctions.  These must be highly collectable because they generate a lot of bids.  If the art poster auction is for an old original poster of the Sante Fe Railroad, it will fetch upwards of four hundred dollars.

I found an art poster auction that was listed by the artist himself.  He made a black ink drawing for the Pearl Jam concert in Rome in 1996.  This original drawing was what the poster was made from.

Pop art poster auctions cover a lot of different topics.  One of my favorites was a 7-up soda advertisement from 1970 that featured The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.  The item did not sell, but it was fun to look at.

In the style of Realism, art poster auctions abound.  I found one that was an advertisement for United Airlines and depicted the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  This poster sold for over one hundred fifty dollars.

The most interesting art poster auctions I found were for rock concerts.  I liked the one listed for at 1956 Rolling Stones concert and there was another one for a Grateful Dead concert in Hawaii.  They sold for a combined total of over seven thousand dollars.  The interest in these art poster auctions was overwhelming.

Advertising seems to be a big theme in the art poster auctions that I looked at.  I found advertisements for just about everything.  I liked the poster for Russian beer that was created in the late 1920’s.  It would look fantastic framed in my neighborhood bar.  The buyer of this particular poster bought it for $475.00.

Concert posters are fun to look through.  Art poster auctions feature a lot of posters for concerts.  I found one that was made by Jim Pollock for a Phish concert in 2000 in Hartford.  I liked it, but I am not a fan of Phish and the three hundred dollars that it went for seemed a little pricey to me.

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