Divers
If 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, and then re–erected them right here in the two–square–mile city they chartered in 1785. Truth is that they may have brought a door or two along, but they built their neat new capes with Columbia County timber. The local legend suggests how, a hundred–and–ten miles in from the Atlantic, we still yearn to keep our connection to the Sea.
If it be a universal rule–of–thumb that the farther we wander from a person, place, or thing, the keener is our heart to have it close by, then the companion maxim is that our hearts ever lean in a watery direction. We are happiest when we are on – or at least dreaming about – some shoreline.
Divers may take its title from the auction trade’s term for “discovery,” but its linguistic roots lead us back to its meaning “various & sundry.” There are surely various & sundry riparian and marine treasures awaiting your dive into this auction.
If the ships–in–bottles; shell–encrusted memory boxes; buoys; sponges; and carved swordfish gathered together in the front display case make you do a double–take to think you are in Cape Cod or some other salty coastal location, then keep exploring, to discover hidden in coves of the catalog’s terrestrial treasures plenty of art–full testimony to the human love affair with water – both salt and fresh.
by Dr. Dann