Maine Antique Digest March 2015

172 / 217

28-D Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
- AUCTION -
Humler & Nolan, Cincinnati, Ohio
Holiday Sale 2014
by Don Johnson
Photos courtesy Humler & Nolan
There was a bit of nudity going
on during “Holiday Sale
2014” conducted by Humler
& Nolan on November 8 and 9,
2014, in Cincinnati. It seemed an
abundance of Art Nouveau mate-
rial was adorned with a fair num-
ber of scantily clad women. Those
pieces weren’t the top lots, but the
beauties revealed enough through-
out the sale to be noticed. Face it,
who doesn’t notice a naked lady?
When asked about the pieces,
gallery director Riley Humler
didn’t sidestep the matter. “I will
not deny I’m a big fan of nude
women,” he said. “That’s beside
the point.” That’s a classic com-
ment from Humler, a congenial
guy with a sense of humor and
a love of art pottery, especially
Rookwood. More on those naked
gals shortly.
The four-session sale once again
included the three usual strong-
holds: Keramics (essentially any
art pottery and ceramics except
Rookwood), art glass (domestic
and foreign), and Rookwood Pot-
tery. Added to those was a paint-
ings category.
Prior to the holiday sale, con-
tractual obligations prohibited
Humler & Nolan from selling
art. When Cincinnati Art Galler-
ies sold its auction business in
2009, the Auctions at Rookwood
(owned by Rookwood Pottery
Company) and, later, Humler &
Nolan (which acquired the busi-
ness in 2010) agreed to a five-year
non-compete clause regarding art-
work. That stipulation expired at
the end of 2014. Randy Sandler,
owner of Cincinnati Art Galleries,
granted Humler the right to sell art
during the holiday sale, since it
was so close to the deadline.
Humler was glad to be back in
the art business. “It was always
something I wanted to do,” he
said. “I worked with Randy at
Cincinnati Art Galleries for twen-
ty-plus years. I always wanted to
have some [art] in the auction,
not to the exclusion of everything
else.”
Results in the paintings ses-
sion followed the sale’s progress
in general. “The good things did
fine,” Humler said.
The best price a painting received
was for a barnyard scene by Ada
W. Shulz (1870-1928), depict-
ing a child feeding farm fowl. In
heavy impasto, the artwork sold
for $7187.50 (includes buyer’s
premium). Plato’s Ascension by
Henry Faulkner (1924-1981), oil
on masonite, signed, dated 1973
on the back, realized $6900. It
showed the artist’s goat, Alice, atop
an altar-like structure beside a cit-
rus tree. An original oil on canvas
illustration by Haddon Sundblom
(1899-1976), thought to have been
used in a Cream of Wheat adver-
tisement and picturing a mother
apparently giving her daughter a
geography lesson, brought $6325.
Pueblo Chief by John Hauser
(1859-1913), gouache on paper,
depicting a Native American with a
rifle in hand standing in front of his
mount, dated 1901, sold for $5520.
Although regionalist paint-
ings were readily available, they
weren’t Humler’s sole concern.
“I’m interested in decent, qual-
ity paintings. I don’t care where
they come from,” he said. “I like
regional things, but if someone
walked in with a painting from the
Ukraine or Cambodia, and it was
researchable and there was a fol-
lowing for it, I would be interested
in it.”
Art will also be added to the
June auction. Specialty sales
within the genre are not out of the
question, but that’s more a matter
of opportunity.
Of the four sessions, Rookwood
drew the strongest interest with an
18½" tall Tiger Eye vase by Albert
Valentien, circa 1899, depicting
cranes in flight. The vase, known
as Uranus, sold above estimate
for $35,650. That wasn’t the only
dollar amount ever attached to the
piece, which until recently could
have been classified as “where-
abouts unknown.”
The exact date of manufacture
is a reasonable guess, because a
glaze obstruction on the base cov-
ered the usual markings. The Tiger
Eye effect of the glaze was said to
have an “almost liquid quality,”
according to the auction house.
When Rookwood Pottery cele-
brated the company’s 40th anni-
versary in 1920, a newspaper
account in the November 22 issue
of the Cincinnati Times-Star noted
that the vase had won the Grand
Prix at the Paris Exposition in
1900 and “has been valued by
some at $50,000,” a hefty amount
at the time when the average
income for an American male was
less than $600. The vase entered
the spotlight again in 1945 during
Rookwood Pottery’s 65th anni-
versary celebration. In The Book
of Rookwood Pottery, author Her-
bert Peck noted that the piece of
Tiger Eye was again on display,
but this time it was described as “a
$10,000 vase.”
The vessel had never been sold
previously, possibly because the
company wasn’t interested in part-
ing with it. In 1942, ownership of
Rookwood Pottery was transferred
to Institutum Divi Thomae, an edu-
cational and research foundation of
the Roman Catholic Archdiocese
of Cincinnati. Operation of the
pottery, along with the company’s
assets, transferred to Sperti, Inc. At
some point George Sperti (1900-
1991) gave the vase to a close
friend, whose son consigned the
piece to the holiday sale.
Sperti might not be a household
name, but most people know of the
Italian-American inventor’s most
popular creations: Preparation H, a
hemorrhoid medication, and Asper-
creme, an arthritis relief. He also
developed an ultraviolet lamp that
added vitamin D without changing
the taste to irradiated milk and the
first practical technique to freeze-dry
orange juice concentrate.
Sperti died in 1991. Nearly a
quarter of a century later, the Ura-
nus vase came onto the market
as suddenly as it had vanished.
“It was a neat piece, one that had
disappeared. Nobody really knew
where it was,” said Humler. How
significant was the vase? “It was
the only piece of Rookwood that
I’m aware of that they ever both-
ered to give a name to,” he noted.
Other good Rookwood was
offered during the holiday sale,
but nothing deserving a name of
its own. An Iris glaze vase show-
ing life-size irises blooming and
budding, the work of Albert Val-
entien in 1904, having gold-plated
silver overlay at the rim, 14½"
high, brought $10,925. The cata-
log noted, “This is only the third
Rookwood vase with gold used
in the applied metal that we have
ever seen.”
Two vases sold for $6037.50
each. One was a 6" Mahogany
glaze lidded potpourri jar with
butterfly-shaped handles and
a hand-painted decoration of a
dragon by Kitaro Shirayamadani
in 1888. The other was a 15" vase
in a special shape in Decorated
Porcelain depicting birds in flight
among cherries by Lorinda Epply
in 1924.
From the session of art glass,
top bidding went to two pieces of
Daum Nancy, a footed vase deco-
rated in cameo with red anemones,
vertical stripes in ivory and tea-
berry rose, 8" high, at $8912.50,
and an oval cameo vase, having a
design of tall pink and white dai-
sies, 11 7/8" high, with slight dam-
age to the rim, at $7762.50.
For the Keramics session, a
Newcomb College vase took top
honors at $8912.50. Under a high
glaze, the decoration showed
seven unfurled yellow irises
carved and painted by Marie
Levering Benson in 1908. Next
best was a Royal Doulton Chang
vase by Charles Noke and Fred
Moore at $7475.
The usual contingency of Rose-
ville andWeller waned by compar-
ison. The best of the Weller was a
Hudson vase depicting Asian fish-
ing boats at $2875, while the top
lot of Roseville couldn’t garner
half that much.
At least there were the titillating
Art Nouveau nudes, which largely
came out of the Keramics session.
The thinly clad beauties were
primarily French and included
a Clement Massier centerpiece
bowl, molded with a seminude
woman drifting upon ocean waves,
dated 1901, that realized $3450,
and a Delphin Massier pitcher,
having a topless gal for the handle,
contrasting with a Bacchus-like
face below the spout, at $3220. A
Zsolnay wave vase, molded with a
mermaid and a merman reaching
for a catfish on the ocean surface,
was $2875.
There was even a little strip-
tease in the Rookwood session. A
figure of a seated nude, a Louise
Abel design cast in 1935 and cov-
ered with a white porcelain glaze,
sold for $2070.
The bare truth, however, was
this: The nudes were neither bet-
ter nor worse than anything else.
“Good stuff continues to do well,”
said Humler. “The low end contin-
ues to get lower.”
He added, “It was not an overly
exciting sale. I think people were
just biding their time and look-
ing very hard for good prices and
quality, the rest of the time sitting
on their hands. It was hard to get
the crowd wound up on this sale.”
Naked ladies or not, that’s
how it went. For more informa-
tion, phone Humler & Nolan
at (513) 381-2041 or visit
).
Face it, who
doesn’t notice a
naked lady?
Rookwood Uranus Tiger Eye
vase, Albert Valentien, circa
1899, cranes in flight, 18½"
high, several in-the-making
base chips, $35,650.
Rookwood Iris glaze vase with gold-
plated silver overlay at the rim, Albert
Valentien, 1904, three life-size irises
in bloom and two buds, the overlay
engraved with a floral design, 14½"
high, uncrazed, $10,925.
Weller Hudson vase, Asian
fishing boats by Hester Pills-
bury, script mark, 9 7/8"
high, overall crazing, $2875.
Fulper lamp, a large and uncommon
form in a combination of cat’s-eye
flambé and Flemington green turn-
ing to cucumber crystalline, the
shade with 36 pieces of glass, marked,
20½" high, shade 15¼" diameter, res-
toration to cracks in the shade, needs
rewiring, $5750.
Waylande Greg-
ory glass-fused
stoneware fish,
one of four the
artist created and
installed in his pool in
Bound Brook, New Jer-
sey, marked, 12" high x
18" wide x 5" deep, $3680.
Overbeck four-color
bowl, exotic floral
decoration by Eliz-
abeth and Mary
Frances Overbeck,
marked, 3¼" high x
4 5/8" diameter, excel-
lent condition, uncrazed,
$3450.
Clement Massier centerpiece bowl, a semi-
nude woman drifting upon ocean waves, 5"
high x 17" wide x 10" deep, marked and dated
1901, excellent condition, $3450.