The Crow's Nest 3-6

3-6

            The silence ended with two antiquarian thunderclaps.  The first was detected by my own antiquarian vigilance.  While perusing… the large body of weekly regional public auction notices as is part of my job and is done on the habitual and hopeful delusion that I WILL find a public auction or something offered at public auction that is good and I can make purchases at … or make a purchase of… cheaply… I read a coastal Maine auctioneer’s items to be sold listing… that seemed… like things from the mother’s house.  The listing was tagged with a “selected offerings from an interior Maine estate” “with additions”.  What caught my eye was the juxtaposed “large early painting of Jesus Christ” followed by “family’s box of Civil War papers” followed by “Boston 1900 wicker bookcase” followed by “Civil War Sword”.  It was the large painting of Jesus that linked my eye to the rest.

            I went to the auction preview.  The large painting of the resurrected Jesus Christ… in its undisturbed perfect original state… within its perfect original undisturbed massive gold gilt frame… greeted me from across the room when I stepped into the auction hall.  In all its glory… off the mother’s parlor wall for the first time in 150 years… in full daylight enhanced by the auctioneer’s promotional spotlighting…  it was with NO QUESTION from the mother’s front parlor and JUST AS ABSOLUTELY OF NO FINE ART MERIT… as I’d always known it to be.  I walked to it, I scanned it, I moved on to review the whole room full of …public auction offerings.  I found the mother’s “rubbish” everywhere.  All of the front hall contents seemed to be there.  All of the front parlor contents… except the drapes… seemed to be there.  All of the upstairs bedroom contents… including the mother’s sewing machine and the refinished trunks from the landing… were there.

            I then began to examine the objects that I had NOT seen before and… quickly became lost in a futile attempt to find ANY OBJECT that I could say “came from there”.  I wandered around among stacks of old picture frames, modest late l9th century furniture, glass and china table top bric-brac displays and… suspiciously BETTER quality in BETTER condition ABUNDANT offerings that… IF THE MOTHER HAD THESE OBJECTS… SHE WOULD HAVE SOLD THEM… unless she had a Victorian decorative taste that was her personal thing and I had not detected… including old mantel clocks, sentimental oil paintings, oriental rugs, silver and silver plate and… jewelry.  All of this I concisely noted to be “select additions” meaning items from the auctioneer’s stock placed in the sale… to the extent that these offering were BETTER and more numerous than the mother’s offerings so that the mother’s “estate” was simply a bottom tier foundation for these better items to be sold for the auctioneer’s benefit.  This procedure, should it be unfamiliar to the reader, IS a very common practice of “public auction”.

            I had no trouble denoting this occurrence.  I had no problem with this occurrence.  It is normal public auction procedure to my eye.  The only thing I cared about was… that the mother’s inclusions WERE FROM THE HOUSE and that proved that …Margaret was no longer “there” (?) or at least something had happened “there” (?) or… Margaret had ordered the items sold (?).

            What was I going to do?  Call up Margaret from the auction hall?  I wandered around a little longer.  I talked with a few fellow antiques dealers who knew nothing about “where the stuff came from”.  I left.  I did not attend the auction.  The Jesus painting brought $265.00 plus “buyer premium” to a coastal Maine dealer “I BOUGHT IT FOR THE FRAME”.  I’ve never seen it again.