The Antique Victorian Furniture Blog

On Saturday, October 24, Stair Galleries of New York will host an auction of the Hunt Slonem collection contained in Edgewood Terrace, also known as Cordts Mansion, “an imposing Second Empire-style brick mansion that stands at the top of a hill overlooking the city of Kingston in New York’s sprawling Hudson Valley.” Previews run from October 9 to October 24.

I’ve attached the press release and photos here for you, so there’s not much need for me to elaborate. Suffice it to say that this is going to be one magnificent auction. Here’s some more from the press release to entice you:

“After restoring his country retreat to its original Victorian grandeur, Mr. Slonem filled the rooms with an eclectic combination of 19th-century furniture and decorations, modern art and his own exotic, vibrantly colored, neo-expressionist paintings… The sale will feature an extensive selection of 19th-century furniture, decorative arts and fine arts as well as a number of 20th-century paintings, prints and photographs.

According to Mr. Slonem, ‘The collection represents nine years of gathering.’ The impressive array of 19th-century furnishings, spanning the years from 1830 to 1900 and encompassing all the major styles of the Victorian era, is heavily focused on the Gothic Revival. Throughout the house are chairs, center tables, dressing bureaux, secretaries, gilt-bronze mantel clocks, glass vases, porcelain teawares and ironstone toilet sets embellished with tracery, pointed arches, steep gables, pinnacles and cusping. Balancing the medieval-inspired pieces are furniture and decorations in other revival styles including Rococo, Renaissance, Louis XVI and Neo-Grec. Modern works of art, hung on brightly painted walls inspired by the colors in Mr. Slonem’s paintings, serve as a foil to the Victorian furnishings.”

Wow.

Click here to read the full press release.

Click here for the catalogue. You have to see this.

For information, contact Walter G. Ritchie, Jr. of Stair Galleries at 518-751-100 or walter.ritchie@stairgalleries.com. Visit Stair Galleries’ website at http://www.stairgalleries.com/.

Technorati Tags: 19th Century, Antiques, Chairs, clocks, decorative arts, Furniture, gothic revival, Hunt Slonem, louis xvi, modern art, neo-grec, paintings, Renaissance, Rococo, second empire, secretaries, Stair Galleries, tables, Victorian

I mentioned that many people selling antiques are using pay-per-click ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

On Friday, October 23, at 8:30 PM CDT, Mastermind Pros, one of the premier training schools for internet marketing, will be holding a free webinar on PPC marketing.

Frank Terranova, president of Mastermind Pros will be the host. He will discuss his $1 A Day strategy.

If you are interested at all in how pay-per-click works, this will be well worth your time. No cost. No obligation.

Space is limited. Click here to register now.

To learn more about Frank Terranova and the $1 A Day strategy, click here.

Technorati Tags: Antiques, marketing, mastermind pros, pay-per-click, ppc

Here’s a thought. If you go to Google and do a search on antiques or antique furniture or Victorian furniture, you’ll see sponsored links come up on the right side of the page, or even at the top. Look at all the people trying to sell antiques by advertising on Google Adwords.

You can try the same thing on Yahoo and Bing, too. More ads.

Do you think some of these advertisers are getting results? Those ads cost money every time somebody clicks on them, so they must be productive. If you’re not advertising your antiques in the same place, do you think you might be missing out on something?

Where do you think those people learned how to place those ads? Do you think they hired someone to do it for them or just started doing it themselves through trial and error. I can tell you from experience. It’s pretty easy to get an ad up and running, but it’s not easy to make it profitable.

I’ve been looking around for training on the subject. Here is simply the best thing I have found.

It’s an eBook put out by a company called Mastermind Pros. The ebook is called $1 A Day Plan, and there is a series of four videos that accompany it.

What this book teaches is how to apply real-world, offline principles of marketing to your online, pay-per-click marketing campaigns. It shows you how to research your market, which means researching keywords and competition, and how to test your campaigns with minimal risk. Indeed, for no more than a dollar a day.

A series of bonus booklets also shows you how to get started with Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search Marketing, and Microsoft Ad Center Bing.

This isn’t the usual online hype. This is for the serious marketer, newbie or pro.

Check it out. It’s actually a small investment, much smaller than placing ads in the offline media. Here’s the link:

http://www.one-dollar-a-day-marketing.com/Pros/

Technorati Tags: Antiques, bing, Furniture, Google, marketing, Online, pay-per-click, ppc, search, Victorian, Yahoo

Here is part two of the series I started on Sept. 28. Mr. Whitley has to add a lot of little pieces of wood and do some very fine chiseling and shaping. Makes you appreciate the restorers craft.

Technorati Tags: Antique, Antiques, Restoration, wood

Here’s an article called “Victorian loos can leave you feeling flush.” It’s from the Mail Online out of England, and it’s all about loos, or toilets if you live this side of the Atlantic.

While many styles of Victorian furniture have slumped in value in recent times, Victorian toilets “are now fetching thousands of pounds and being plumbed back into properties as prized period pieces.”

How do you like that?

Interestingly, the earliest toilets that are readily adaptable to modern bathrooms date to the 1880s. And the most valuable now are the ones decorated with prints such as flower arrangements.

This article is chock full of history.

Did you know that the toilet company Thomas Crapper & Co was established in 1861 and was purchased by a toilet collector named Simon Kirby in 1999?

Or that Sir John Harrington is credited with inventing the first flushing water closet, the “John,” back in the 16th century?

By the way, if you think you’re sitting on a goldmine, as the article puts it, make sure your Crapper doesn’t have a crack. It has to be in pristine condition to be worth a bundle.

You might also be able to find one of these unexpectedly valuable loos if you know where to look. But beware — you won’t be the only one looking for the John. These commodes are hot commodities.

Get the full scoop here.

Technorati Tags: Furniture, toilets, Victorian