Displaying items by tag: Jewelry

Pedro Luis Enriquez who goes by the nickname “El Loco” or “the Madman” has pleaded guilty to stealing $15 million worth of jewelry and watches from Provident Jewelry in Jupiter, Florida.

Investigators believe that three people were involved in the heist that took place on January 22, 2011 although Enriquez, 41, was the only suspect who has been apprehended. The thieves used a jackhammer-style tool and a high-pressure cutting torch to open a vault surrounded by 10 inches of reinforced concrete. Inside the vault, police found an open bottle of wine and a small flashlight, which contained DNA matching Enriquez’s.

Miami-Dade County Police have recovered 170 of the 1,6000 pieces of jewelry, loose stones and watches that were stolen; four arrests have been made in connection to the trafficking of the stolen goods.

Investigators received their first break in the case three weeks after the robbery when one of the stolen loose stones turned up at the Gemological Institute of America in New York. Police tracked the stone to a pawnshop in Miami and were able to recover another 100 stones.

Enriquez, who will serve 15 years in prison, has not volunteered any information about the heist or his accomplices.

The art collection once belonging to the infamous Ponzi-schemer, Bernie Madoff, will be sold at Sotheby’s New York and Stair Galleries in Hudson, NY at the end of this year. The 61 works have an insured value in excess of $575,000. Securities Investor Protection Corporation trustee, Irving Picard, and the U.S. bankruptcy court are liquidating the assets, which include posters, rugs and fine art. Sotheby’s will be responsible for selling a large portion of the works and Stair Galleries will sell the remainder including posters, carpets and decorative items. The collection has been stored at Cirkers Fine Art Storage & Logistics in Manhattan since 2009.

While the majority of the lot is lackluster, there are a few important works including a lithograph by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) illustrating a black bull, six bull lithographs by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) and a small drawing of a woman’s head by Henri Matisse (1869-1954). There are also a number of works on paper by important postwar artists such as Jasper Johns (b. 1930), Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Frank Stella (b. 1936), Cy Twombly (1928-2011) and Ellsworth Kelly (b 1933). The sale will also include a pair of oriental rugs that once decorated Madoff’s offices in Manhattan and Queens.

Picard has been working to liquidate Madoff’s assets since the disgraced financier’s arrest in 2008. To date, he has collected about $9.3 billion to compensate the people and companies that Madoff defrauded. Picard has overseen the sales of three powerboats, various cars, jewelry, pianos and Madoff’s wine collection.

The fourth edition of Art Antiques London will open on June 13, 2013 at Kensington Gardens in London. The show attracts collectors, curators, and exhibitors from across the globe and presents everything from furniture, paintings, and jewelry to sculpture, ceramics, and silver. This year, Art Antiques London is happy to welcome a number of new international exhibitors including Roell Fine Art (The Netherlands), Sabbadini (Italy), and Christopher Perles (France).

The fair, which is held through June 19, 2013, includes a private viewing on June 12, a collectors’ dinner on June 13, and a lecture series, which will feature a talk on Russian Imperial porcelain and sculptures led by Dr. Ekaterina Khmelnitskaya, the curator of Russian porcelain at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg Russia.  

Art Antiques London is organized by Haughton International Fairs. For more information visit http://www.haughton.com/international-fairs/19/fair_pages/art-antiques-london.

A multimillion-dollar art collection built by poet T.S. Eliot’s widow, Valerie, will be sold at Christie’s London on November 20, 2013. The collection includes works by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lucian Freud (1922-2011), and J.M.W. Turner (1775-19851). Ms. Eliot, who passed away in November at the age of 86, amassed her collection using royalties from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music Cats, which was based on her husband’s whimsical poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Ms. Eliot’s collection, which resided in the London home she shared with her husband, is expected to garner around $7.6 million.

Highlights from the collection include drawings and watercolors by 18^th and 19^th century British artists including Turner, Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), and John Constable (1776-1837); a sculpture by Henry Moore (1898-1986); and a lush landscape titled The Cathedral, Hackwood Park by Winston Churchill (1874-1965). There will also be portrait miniatures from the 16^th through the 19^th centuries, furniture, and jewelry for sale.

Proceeds from the Christie’s auction will benefit the Old Possum’s Practical Trust, an arts charity created by Ms. Eliot.

A painting by renowned Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) will be the highlight of Masterpiece London, which takes place at the Royal Hospital Chelsea from June 27 through July 3, 2013. Now in its fourth year, the show presents the finest art, antiques, and design from across the globe.

While works ranging from furniture, jewelry, and books to classic cars, watches, and whiskey will be offered, there is one particular artwork generating tons of pre-show buzz. Geoffrey Diner, a Washington, D.C.-based art dealer, will present Roy Lichtenstein’s Puzzle Portrait (1978), which has not been seen in public in 30 years and has never appeared at auction. Similar paintings are part of the Guggenheim Museum’s and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections in New York. Puzzle Portrait is expected to garner around $10 million.    

Diner has revealed little about the painting’s provenance other than the fact that it was sold in 1984 to “a prominent American collection.” Diner purchased the painting privately last year and the change of ownership still has not been registered in the Lichtenstein Foundation archives. The identity of the previous owners will be revealed to the buyer upon acquisition of the painting. The future buyer will also be given the personal correspondence between them and the artist from the original transaction.

The touring exhibition The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece: Masterworks from the British Museum is currently on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through October 6, 2013. Presenting 120 objects from the British Museum’s renowned collection of Greek and Roman art, each work explores the human form and humanity as sources of artistic inspiration. The show spans three millennia of Greek civilization and includes marble and bronze sculptures, painted pottery, terracotta, and jewelry.

The Body Beautiful is divided into 10 thematic sections that illustrate the various ways the Greeks interpreted the human body including Cycladic figures and realistic Roman genre sculptures. Highlights from the exhibition include the Diskobolos (discus thrower) sculpture from the second century A.D., which is on view for the first time in the United States, and a model of Ancient Olympia as it would have appeared around 100 B.C. A video installation will be shown alongside the model providing glimpses of the original Olympic sites and artworks depicting the ancient athletic event.

Maxwell L. Anderson, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, said, “We will present a visually engaging and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition as seen by the ancient Greeks, and, equally, of the origins of our construct of beauty today.”

In an effort to curb the massive debts accrued by the American Folk Art Museum’s former chairman, Ralph Esmerian, the institution has decided to sell over 200 works from its collection at an auction at Sotheby’s. Esmerian, the former owner of the jewelry company Fred Leighton, is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for wire fraud and other charges.

In 2005, Esmerian promised to donate 263 works from his illustrious collection to the Folk Art Museum. However, he used some of those same works as collateral to secure multi-million-dollar loans with Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Late last month, Manhattan’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court arranged a settlement with the museum allowing the Folk Art Museum to keep 53 of the promised works as long as they enhance the institution’s collection and aid its educational mission. The remaining works, which include paintings, sculptures, scrimshaw, and needleworks, will be sold at Sotheby’s.

The trustee responsible for liquidating Esmerian’s estate has decided to sell the remainder of the collection through Sotheby’s, much to Christie’s dismay. Christie’s filed an objection to the settlement on March 15, 2013 claiming that Sotheby’s intimidated the trustee into choosing them to host the important auction.

The Esmerian sale will be held in December 2013 or January 2014 and the profits will go towards repaying the creditors the former chairman defrauded.    

George Bailey, the Chairman of Business Development at Sotheby’s London has partnered with fellow Sotheby’s employee, Lucinda Blythe, to launch an independent online auction site. The Auction Room (www.theauctionroom.com) specializes in “middle market” works of art that fall just under the minimum value criteria that many big name auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s enforce.

The Auction Room’s inaugural sale of Middle Eastern Contemporary Art will take place on June 24, 2013. An accompanying exhibition will held in London so that prospective buyers can view the works in person before the online sale begins. All of the lots offered will also be available for browsing two weeks before the sale on The Auction Room’s website.

The Auction Room will also specialize in the sale of jewelry, watches, silver, ceramics, and paintings. While the website is a bold new venture, Bailey will maintain his post at Sotheby’s.

On Tuesday, April 9, 2013, Christie’s announced that they have been granted a license allowing them to hold independent auctions in Mainland China, making them the first international auction house to do so. The company’s inaugural sale will be held autumn 2013 in Shanghai. Christie’s has been building its relationship with China since 1994 when the auction house set up a representative office in Shanghai.

China’s art market continues to grow at a rapid pace, making it an ideal location for international auction houses. The sale of art and antiques in China garnered $13.7 billion in 2012, making it the second largest market in the world behind the United States. The country’s strong buyer base has been active in Christie’s global auction centers in New York, London, Hong Kong, and Paris. In fact, the number of clients from Mainland China bidding at Christie’s international auctions has doubled since 2008. Christie’s presence in Shanghai will allow the auction house to sell directly to China’s growing number of wealthy buyers.  

China’s auction market is currently dominated by the country’s own Beijing Poly International and China Guardian. Sotheby’s joined forces with the state-owned Beijing GeHua Cultural Development Group last year to hold auctions in China. Sotheby’s own 80% of its venture with Beijing Gehua.

Christie’s recently granted license, which is good for the next 30 years, allows the auction house to hold sales anywhere in China, but prohibits the company from selling anything created before 1949. Christie’s plans to sell wine, jewelry, watches, contemporary Chinese paintings, and international modern paintings starting this fall.

Renowned art collector, Daphne Farago, announced that she will donate 161 works from her stunning collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A longtime supporter of the MFA, Farago’s contribution is the largest gift of contemporary craft the museum has ever received and will greatly improve a once-lacking part of the collection.

Farago’s gift features works from the 20^th and 21^st centuries by artists such as Dale Chihuly (b. 1941), Sam Maloof (1916-2009), and John Cederquist (b. 1946). The pieces range from works of fiber, ceramics, glass, woodcarvings, and metal to furniture, jewelry, basketry, and folk art. The newly acquired works, man of which have remained out of public view until now, will be exhibited in the museum’s Farago Gallery beginning in August 2013.

This is the third major donation from Farago and her late husband, Peter to the MFA; their contributions total $2.5 million to $5 million in art and money, which prompted the museum to open the Farago Gallery in September 2011 as part of the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art. Edward Saywell, Chair of the Linde Family Wing, said, “Although the MFA has a distinguished history of collecting and exhibiting contemporary craft, this gift broadens and deepens our holdings in truly significant ways. The gift will be a touchstone for the collection and will be a remarkable legacy.”