Ever wonder where dealers go to get the antique paintings, silver, furniture and artifacts they sell in their stores?They go to auctions like those held about once a month at the Portsmouth, RI auction gallery run by auctioneer-extraordinaire Mike Corcoran. (You can find a list of upcoming auctions all over New England at Antiques and the Arts online.)
Even if you don't buy anything, you'll learn a lot about what things are worth by going to an auction — and if you go to one of Corcoran's, you'll be entertained as well. At yesterday's auction of estate items, you would have learned that your great-grandmother's long-handled brass bed-warmer isn't worth much more than 50 bucks — and that a 1920s California landscape painting by Maurice Braun would draw rapid-fire phone bids from California art galleries topping off at $34,000.
In between, there was plenty of action in the $500 to $5,000 range as Corcoran entertained the crowd with the antics they've come to see. Every once in a while, he draws gasps by lobbing a just-sold vase or cloisonnee dish to sidekick "Murph." At one point during yesterday's show, he removed a tiny fig leaf from the front of a bronze male nude: "Spitzer last week. . . Spitzer today!"
When a beautifully carved wooden music box came up for bid, he lifted the lid so the audience could hear it play a tinkling waltz. Then, calling one of the women in the crowd to join him, he took her for a little spin, saying in a broad aside to the audience, "When the moment is right, will you be ready?"
