Two thousand years ago, the Three Kings brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. Gift–giving options have since expanded to such mind–numbing dimensions that we dream of a single shop window that could supply the perfect gift for every crazy collector on our list…
Read MoreTaking his cue from “The Year of Miracles” – 1989 – by training his eye not on the fall of the Berlin Wall, but on the first global conferences confronting the precarious state of the planet, French philosopher of science Bruno Latour provocatively declared in 1991 that…
Read MorePublic Sale’s – and every auction house’s – gallery is a Memory Palace, stocked with a carnivalesque riot of things both wholly imbued with past experiences, and anticipating new ones – in new places, new rooms, with newly appreciative and artful owners.
Read MoreIf you have spent any time in Hudson – our home port, where the tide rises and falls twice a day – you’ve no doubt heard that the founding Nantucket Proprietors floated their island homes upriver to the Claverack Landing…
Read MoreOne thing that attracts us to antique furniture is how an item that was built for one specific purpose can call to mind a time and a culture very different from our own. Especially when that specific purpose is obsolete. Or it may simply appear old-fashioned or outdated.
Read MorePublic Sale’s Cowork Modern auction takes its name from the 100+ lots that came from a coworking space that closed soon after starting—much of its furniture barely used, unused, or in some cases still boxed.
Read MorePublic Sale’s upcoming auction features eight works from the estate of Arnie (Arnold) Zimmerman (1954-2021), internationally renowned ceramic sculptor.
Read MoreThe title of Public Sale’s upcoming auction, Disciplined, refers to the artist’s focused study—in both the sense of the field, medium, or branch of artistic production in which an artist specializes, as well the self-managed conduct and rules by which an artist structures their practice.
Read MorePublic Sale’s upcoming auction Standing Still features an incredible lifetime collection of silhouettes, that iconic style of paper illustration which became popular in the United States in the 19th-Century and democratized portraiture long before the advent of photography.
Read MoreTo celebrate Public Sale’s offering of photographs from the archive of After Dark and Dance Magazine editor William Como in our upcoming auction After Dark & Clean Lines, we examine four photographs by the magazine’s most celebrated photographers Kenn Duncan and Jack Mitchell, and a story they tell about the role of visibility in the struggle for gay rights.
Read MoreWhen you want a place to sit, but not for a very long time, you don’t sit in a chair—you sit on a bench. If sitting in a chair is like parking, sitting on a bench is like idling, between trips, keeping the engine running and ready.
Read MoreThere’s something appealing about an object that seems to be delicately balanced.
Read MoreAsafo flags, an artistic tradition of the Fante people of Ghana’s central coast, do a lot of pointing. Literally—they often depict a figure with an outstretched arm and one finger extended, in the direction of another figure, an object, or sometimes a whole scene.
Read MoreA pair of chairs may be placed at random.
For many of us, there may be something upsetting about this. Can’t the two chairs form some kind of arrangement, or acknowledge each other’s existence?
Read MorePublic Sale’s upcoming auction includes fifty-two lots of hardened metal slag, in both individual pieces and assemblages, in a range of sizes, each of them unique in shape and composition. They come from the studio of artist Mihail Chemiakin (b.1943), Russian artist and controversial figure in the underground art scene of the Soviet Union, who for many years maintained a studio near Hudson.
Read MorePublic Sale’s upcoming auction Design! Design! Design! features several items designed by late 20th-Century designer Philippe Starck, including a sofa (Lot 007) and chair/ottoman (Lot 006) from Starck’s legendary Royalton Hotel lobby in New York City.
Read MoreFor our latest auction preview, Public Sale’s showroom will transform into a temporary museum of Folk Art and Outsider Art, with a trove of items from the collection of Barbara Porter & Robert Wincuinas.
Read MoreA quick review of how the word “democratization” has been applied to the fashions of different time periods reveals how tastes in jewelry at least can move freely, in tandem with new technologies, between high and low.
If you live in Hudson and love design, you probably know Mark McDonald or, at least, have been influenced by his work in some way. Mark is a longtime collector, scholar, and promoter of the mid-century modern design subset in furniture, glass, ceramics, lighting, jewelry, metal, wood, and books.
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