Public 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 Especially when that specific purpose is obsolete. Or it may simply appear old-fashioned or outdated.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 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 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 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.
This prototype Bauhaus style modular cabinet was designed and handmade by Charles G. Weiss of Hoboken NJ in 1985. The 6-piece "Circle Seat" can be configured in hundreds of ways, including a butterfly-shaped shelf and throne-like chair.
Read MorePublic Sale’s upcoming auction, titled Life In America, features several antique handmade quilts. Many of these display the patterns that have come to be mythologized as part of a secret code used by escaping slaves during the Underground Railroad.
Read MoreThe story that came with a pair of shoes in Public Sale’s upcoming auction was that a school janitor found them in a locker room after a benefit game in which Kareem Abdul-Jabaar had played. But trying to confirm this provenance, and following the trail of clues, doesn’t offer any definitive proof to the story.
Read MorePublic Sale staff had the recent privilege of gathering some pieces from Hudson NY’s famous “Tiger House,” a rare example of Dutch Jacobean architecture that some have called “the grandest house in Hudson.”
Read MoreA number of the items in our upcoming auction, titled Beauty and the Beast, came from Ezra Fitch’s childhood estate.
Ezra Fitch was the cofounder of Abercrombie & Fitch, the iconic lifestyle clothing brand that was started by David T. Abercrombie.
Read MoreHeads Up! Shop items from our Weird and Wonderful sale. Finding inspiration comes so easy these days but executing and hunting for the items to create the decor you desire can be time consuming and downright frustrating. Public Sales ‘Weird and Wonderful’ auction is littered with over the top amazing finds. Here are two examples of coveted looks that can instantly be created from these ‘Weird and Wonderful’ headstrong items.
Read MoreThis past April, the Public Sale staff took a special road trip to the Children’s Museum in Utica, NY. The mission: to remove the complete dinosaur exhibit that had been on prominent display in the museum for years. Now located at our warehouse space in Hudson, NY, the display will feature in our upcoming “Weird & Wonderful” Auction (with bidding beginning on July 17th.)
Read MoreWe have an extraordinary album coming up for sale in Weird & Wonderful which will start at noon on July 17th.
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