Saint Paul Online Arts

I find some really nice maritime items for my collection at art auctions.  I went to an art auction in Charleston last month and found a pair of candle powered navigation lights that were used on ships in the 19th century.  These types of candles were also used in lighthouse stairwells.

My collection also includes a maritime item that was made in 1891.  It is a chronometer and it still keeps great time.  It is very special because the broad arrow on it indicates that it was purchased by the British Navy and they are known to have only the best time pieces.  I found this piece of my collection at an art auction in New Hampshire.

I have another chronometer in my collection that I found at an art auction in Dallas.  It was sold to me in a wooden box from someone that had owned it for fifty years.  They had kept this maritime relic in a closet.  I plan to keep it on display.

I was at an art auction in Miami a couple of years ago and found a fantastic maritime item for my personal collection.  The compass that I won was over 100 years old and was made in Persia.  The compass face has all twelve signs of the zodiac engraved on it.  I thought that this was a great find.

My kids thought I was crazy when I drove to an art auction is Hartford and drove back with three hundred pounds of maritime Navy anchors.  I thought they’d look great in the yard.  I like to have art in my yard, in the beds I made around my trees.  No one wanted to help me unload them.

I found myself in a bidding war at an art auction in Mississippi over the original builder’s plate from the SS Contessa.  It is truly a unique and wonderful maritime item.  I have polished it and it gleams in the display case I bought for it.

Maritime items don’t seem to be in as much demand anymore.  A few years ago, my collection got easier to add to for some reason.  Art auctions everywhere I went started having really great things on the auction block.

The brass plaques from old ships have always been one of my favorite things to find up for sale at art auctions.  One of my favorite maritime plaques came from a ship that was used in WWII.  The ship that the plaque was on was called the Marechal Joffre and it was taken from the French in 1942.  The Maritime Commission renamed the ship USS Rochambeau.

I had a friend of mine that was going to attend an art auction in Anchorage a couple of years ago bid on a bell for me.  I had no idea how much the freight charge was going to end up being, but I wanted this maritime item in my collection.  It was magnificent.

There is going to be a really nice maritime item at an art auction I intend to attend this weekend.  Lighthouse items are of interest to me more and more lately.  I have found that there is going to be an antique brass oil lamp up for auction and I plan to win it.  The price will probably get up to fifteen hundred dollars, but I don’t care.  I need this maritime item in my collection.

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.

Art auctions for sculptures are a great way to find new art for your home or office.  I like to peruse the online auction sites for nice sculptures.  I have found some very interesting items when I’ve looked.

There was a sculpture sold on eBay recently that was entitled Love.  The art auction for this sculpture went above the estimated value.  The piece was red and blue and made of polychrome aluminum.  The French artist’s name was Robert Indiana.  The art auction listed the item as six feet tall, six feet wide and three feet deep.

I liked a hall stand that was carved from wood that I found in an online art auction.  The carving depicted a playful bear climbing a fir tree.  There was a young bear cub carved into one of the branches.  The branches were there to serve as garment hooks and there was even a mirror on the piece in a carved oak leaf designed frame.

There was an exquisite sculpture by a Russian artist that was sold recently in an art auction.  The subject of the sculpture was a Bar Mitzvah boy and the medium was marble.  I think that marble statues seem so timeless and elegant.  It is an excellent medium for a sculpture.

The wife of artist Yitzhak Danziger signed a certificate for the brass sculpture her husband completed in 1969.  Danziger is an Israeli artist.  The piece looked very abstract to me.  It did not do very well in the art auction and sold for less than it’s estimated worth.

I found a lot of bronze sculptures in the online art auctions.  Most of them were of people, but the ones I liked best were abstract.  My absolute favorite was a Harry Bertoia bronze sculpture called Bush.  This piece is also known as a Brain or Coral.  The bidding for this piece of art in the art auction was started at thirty nine thousand dollars.  It didn’t get a bidder.

I saw little interest in the bronze sculpture art auctions for animal figures.  I’m not sure if the reasons they didn’t get bidders were because of subject matter or because of price.  Bronze is an expensive medium for an artist to work in and it takes a lot of training to be proficient.

I have a favorite glass sculptor.  His work goes for so much in online art auctions that I will probably never own a piece of his work.  Dale Chihuly is magnificent.  There are permanent installations of his tremendous work all over the world.

Crystal sculptures look more like paperweights to me.  Online art auctions for glass representations of animals and sea life are really neat.  My favorite art auction recently was for a hand blown glass jellyfish.  It was magical.

I liked another online art auction for optical crystal that had been turned into a work of art by artist Christopher Ries.  The piece was small and called Lotus.  It would look so pretty in a well lit display case.

I’m jealous of the buyer that gets to call this sculpture their own.  They won the piece in the art auction for just under a thousand dollars.  This artist uses blocks of pure, clear lead crystal cast from Schott Glass Technologies of Duryea, Pennsylvania.  It is truly amazing art.  His work is prominently displayed in numerous galleries and even in the Columbus airport in Columbus, Ohio.

Art auctions for drawings are categorized into antique, modern and contemporary.  Antique drawings are any drawings that were produced before 1900.  Modern drawings have to have been created between 1900 and 1949.  Contemporary drawings are drawings that were created from 1950 until the present.

There are a lot of contemporary drawings listed in art auctions that never get a bidder.  There are many reasons for this.  One of the main reasons is that the starting bid is set so high that it discourages interest.  There was an art auction for a drawing that was created in 2000 that depicted James Dean welcoming Elvis Presley into heaven.  The starting price for this art auction was twelve million dollars.  I am not surprised that it did not get a bidder.

I found another pen and ink drawing in an art auction that was listed for a lot more than it was worth.  The original listing started at $825,000.00 and when it didn’t sell, the artist lowered the price to $545,000.00.  He offers the copywrite to the design, which he thinks would translate well for prints, posters or greeting cards.

There was an art auction for a drawing that was purchased in 1971 London that did very well.  The seller of the drawing inherited it from his grandfather, who was the original owner.  He started the bidding at a reasonable $599.00 and the drawing ultimate sold in the art auction for over twelve thousand dollars.  He did a great job describing and picturing the drawing.

Antique drawings in art auctions can garner a lot of interest.  I saw a drawing of two men in the nude that was drawn in the 1800’s go for more than eleven thousand dollars.  This drawing was pen and ink and had a brown wash and traces of charcoal on lines of black pencil.

I was very taken with an antique drawing made by Sir Francis Grant in 1832.  The drawing in the art auction was of a woman and her daughter in Scotland.  The drawing was a signed original and sold for two thousand dollars.  I hope that it ends up framed and hanging in a collection of similar pieces.  It was really nice.

Another reason that art auctions for drawings don’t sell is that they are listed in the wrong categories.  I found several contemporary pieces that were listed in the antique category.  With so much competition in art auctions, it is important to make sure every detail is noticed.

Modern drawings are by far my favorite art auctions.  I wanted the stamped Degas I saw up for auction, but it was way out of my budget.  I’m sure that the person that ended up with the highest bid at the art auction will love and treasure it.

Well known artist’s drawings can fetch a lot of money in online art auctions.  If the title of the art auction contains the words original Picasso, for example, it is sure to go over two thousand dollars.  If the item is signed, it can go for much more.

I really liked a drawing I found in an art auction from an artist that I was unfamiliar with.  The artist was Patrick Caulfield and he titled his drawing Grapes.  He used colored pencils on black paper in the late 1980’s.  This drawing sold for the opening bid, $4,250.00.