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| Douglas Ross Auction, Hamilton, Ohio |
There was very little in the way of vintage or antique art pottery or glass, but we had driven 2 hours for one particular piece. It is generally considered a bad practice in the business to invest most of a day and a bunch of gasoline to travel to an auction for a single piece. You may arrive to find it isn't available anymore, it may be damaged, or even worse, someone simply outbids you and you get "blanked". But every now and again you see something so nice that you cannot resist. And so we did not resist.
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| Carl Schmidt Venetian Harbor Scene |
To our surprise, we found the piece inside the garage. A gorgeous 1925 Rookwood Pottery vase (Shape 925D) with a wonderful Venetian harbor scene. Decorated by the acclaimed artist Carl Schmidt, it is a rare find for collectors. It was a nice 8 1/2 inches high, and completely factory fresh. No chips, cracks, repairs, and amazingly absolutely no crazing. You just don't find these every day. However, such things never go cheap, and there were plenty of people were tossing out guesses as to the hammer price. To make things even worse, there were to be several phone bidders giving us concerns that the winning bid would be near to the retail value.
The bidding on the vase began at precisely 6:00pm, and we quickly defeated the phone bids. However, one other bidder in the crowd seemed determined to take it home. The price spiralled up, but in the end we were victorious. The cheerful crowd applauded us, and many people shook our hands an remarked on the high quality of the vase and congratulated us.
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| 1925 Rookwood Carl Schmidt Venetian harbor vase |
We will be honored to offer this amazing piece of vintage Rookwood Pottery for sale on our website and others, and look forward to finding a new home for this exquisite piece.
