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This vivid journey into the world of antiques follows the fortunes of three eighteenth-century pieces of American furniture as they pass through the hands of twentieth-century pickers, dealers, restorers, and collectors, accruing new value while becoming objects of desire.
Among the many desirable objects on offer during the 1991 Americana Week in New York - the annual high point of antiques sales - are three prized pieces. One stands in a spolight at the Winter Antiques Show: a pine blanket chest made for a farmer in the 1750s and still wearing its original coat of robin's egg blue paint. The asking price is $250,000. A few blocks away, on display at Sotheby's, is a rare Chippendale card table, created in Philadelphia in 1759.
The auction house is hoping that bidding for the piece will reach one million dollars. Also on display at Sotheby's is an inlaid sofa table from the Federal period, valued at $100,000, one of the prized possessions of a collector forced by circumstance to sell his cherished objects
- How these three pieces came to be at the apex of the American antiques market is the story of the evolution of the world of antiques: a world of bold enterprise, canny deal making, consuming aesthetic vision, and obsessive pursuit - all fueled by a passionate attraction to objects.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Collectors and collecting, Furniture, History, Furniture, collectors and collecting, Furniture, united statesPlaces
United StatesTimes
18th centuryShowing 4 featured editions. View all 4 editions?
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Objects of Desire: The Lives of Antiques and Those Who Pursue Them
May 1, 1995, Penguin Books USA Inc.
Paperback
in English
- Published in Penguin Books 1995.
0140244808 9780140244809
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OBJECTS OF DESIRE: The Lives of Antiques and Those Who Pursue Them
January 18, 1994, Pantheon
Hardcover
in English
- 1st ed edition
0679421572 9780679421573
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Feedback?July 24, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
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