American fashion designer Thom Browne is playing a central role in Sotheby’s retooled American sales in late January, selecting nine artworks and objects to highlight among a series of sales and events featuring centuries of art and design.
Browne, who is chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, or CFDA, will also promote a sale of American design that the auction house is holding in partnership with the council. Proceeds will go to the CFDA Foundation for scholarships and business mentoring.
“American art comes in so many different forms and tells so many different stories that allow me to see my own stories in new ways—to elevate them and challenge how I think about the world,” Browne said in a news release.
The designer, credited with “modernizing today’s uniform,” chose art and objects being offered in various auctions throughout a week Sotheby’s is calling “Visions of America.” With Browne’s partnership, the auction house hopes to draw more collectors to American craftsmanship, according to a spokesperson.
Browne’s selections include fine art, furniture, and design objects, such as a Chinese export “Hong” punch bowl from the Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Period, 1780-85, and an American silver ice pail made in 1872 to appear as if it had been damaged by waves in a shipwreck. Chinese export porcelain was made in China for European and American markets and is held in many private collections.
The designer also chose to focus on a circa-1795 portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, offered with an estimate range beginning at US$2 million, and an orange-and-yellow hued 1883 landscape of Wyoming’s Green River by Thomas Moran, estimated to achieve at least US$1 million.
Browne’s other picks include a Chippendale-carved tea table, circa 1755, with a low estimate of US$800,000, a pair of Chippendale-carved mahogany tassel-back chairs, circa 1779, with a low estimate of US$10,000, and a federal “gentleman’s secretary,” circa 1880, estimated to achieve at least US$30,000.
Another new charitable component of the sales are three collections of photographs depicting a 2018 restaging of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings made to “represent the multitudes of American identities that make us who we are today,” according to Sotheby’s. The remaking of Rockwell’s paintings was done in 2018 by Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur, in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery, for For Freedoms, an artist-led nonprofit. Proceeds from each collection (with a low estimate of US$50,000) will benefit the nonprofit.
Interior design will also play a role during this American-focused week, with Corey Damen Jenkins designing a 1,000-foot gallery space at Sotheby’s with art and design being sold throughout the week.
In all, there will be five live auctions, including, for the first time, a sale of American bourbon and rye and a sale of real estate celebrating “American culture and creativity” from Sotheby’s Concierge Auctions. The whiskey sale includes “the President’s Choice Private Barrel Select for Haabs Restaurant,” a 112.8-proof bottle from 1963 expected to achieve at least US$60,000, and a Twisted Spoke 16-year-old 105 proof NV, with a low estimate of US$10,000.
Four online sales throughout the week will include the CFDA auction and an auction of Native American art.
According to Sotheby’s, the newly designed Americana week also will feature yet-to-be-announced events featuring designers, historians, journalists, and curators.
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