It's cool being centrally located to Kansas City, Omaha, Lincoln and Des Moines, however, it get's boring after a while being centrally located to Kansas City, Omaha, Lincoln and Des Moines. We need to live closer to something new.
Nevertheless, I hadn't been to Des Moines in years, and Gene doesn't think he's ever been there, so we decided to go to the big Party Metropolis DM for a couple days. For the record, I did not take one single photo, despite dragging along every piece of equipment I had. I didn't even open the bag. I guess I saw nothing that was truly worth of rememberance. That and the fact that I was crocheting in the car the whole way.
Being the party animals that we are, we did a lot. We ate dinner out, scoped out Archivers (he loves me), OD'd on Culvers sundaes - twice, and then we hit a couple of the biggest antique stores in town.
We found a few cool things at the first stop, the Brass Armadillo. BTW, if you visit one, be prepared to do a lot of walking. Note to self: Buy new tennis shoes, flip flops are not for antiquing.
The second day, we went to another mall which was highly deceiving from the outside, a little underwhelming.... The Majestic Lion. However, it claimed to have over 35,000 square feet of antiques so we thought we'd at least give it a shot, consider we were 2.5 hours from home anyway.
It was a different sort of place, it had quite a bit of furniture in it, which normally I don't care about, but this place had huge baroque beds, and dressers, hand carved with marble tops and highly detailed pulls. Stuff you only see in movies.
In fact, one bed and dresser set was in a movie with Elizabeth Taylor in 1957. "Raintree County" also starring Montgomery Clift.
It was only $93,000.
So by the time I've seen my 27th hand carved bed over $10k, I start skimming that part. I'm only interested from a historical aspect, and have to pretend at some point I'm just in a museum. Which in a way, Gene was too.
Museum stuff you can buy.
Gene called me back to where he was looking and I immediately knew he'd found something "really good". Ever since he bought Uncle Guido, he's caught the bug for artwork. He'll look and touch every single painting, etching, sketch, watercolor, and even some scuplture in every single store.
99.5% of the time, they are duds. Or they are incredibly rare pieces of art that we are clueless about. I imagine we've stepped over million dollar paintings that we thought looked like hotel art. lol.
But not on Sunday. He showed me this painting, and I knew instantly that it was something special. Something not created by a struggling art student. This person had talent, and even if they were a nobody, the painting was so well done I didn't care, I was willing to take a chance.
So about 3 minutes looking on the net on the cell phone, and we decided to buy this:
He worked sometimes from photographs, and also did reproductions of other works (I don't know if this is a repro or not, I don't recognize it if it is). We also found out that his work sells for considerably more than the price tag in the store. Someone, didn't bother to google!
Oh, and we got it on an anniversary sale, 14% off.
Suh-weet!
This piece is untitled, and the back has 2 numbers written on it. It looks as tho it might have been sold in an art auction once before. it also has what I believe is the original frame which in it's own right is a beautiful piece of art.
I'm gonna need a bigger house.
2 comments:
I have a small collection of N. Henry Bingham paintings that I am currently trying to get listed at auction. I think his works are very original and show a great deal of talent. I have been trying to get some biographical information on him but with no luck thus far. It seems like there are quite a few pieces of his that were sold at auctions around the world but not too much information on the web about him personally.
I have a small collection of N. Henry Bingham paintings that I am currently trying to get listed at auction. I think his works are very original and show a great deal of talent. I have been trying to get some biographical information on him but with no luck thus far. It seems like there are quite a few pieces of his that were sold at auctions around the world but not too much information on the web about him personally.
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