Lighting Set to Shine (Again) at Rago's Saturday Sale

Note: As soon as the results of last Saturday's auction are available, we will post a follow-up article.

The October 1st Arts & Crafts auction at David Rago's Lambertville, New Jersey, facility seems set to circulate a fresh round of furniture, art pottery and metalware into the hands of collectors.

Offering an exceptional array of art pottery, including decorated Grueby, Walwrath, Saturday Evening Girls and Marblehead, the sale will open with three exquisite, glazed forms by Charles Binns. Each comes with the provenance of having been a part of the collection of the Litchfield Historical Society in Litchfield, Connecticut, and demonstrate how the proper glaze can serve as all the decoration a fine vase can require.

The sale will also include several pieces of crumpled George Ohr and moss-draped Newcomb College pottery, a complete eight-tile Grueby fireplace frieze entitled "The Pines" fresh from an Illinois home, and an offering of early Gustav Stickley and L. & J.G. Stickley furniture accompanied by a few examples of Limbert, Roycroft and Stickley Brothers.

Headliners in the sale, however, fall under the category of lighting, which has continued to attract a serious following in recent months. In a form most often associated with Fulper, Fred Robertson, of the famed Robertson family of potters, created a spectacular earthenware table lamp with a matching earthenware shade featuring inset butterflies of yellow stained glass. This lamp has descended through the Robertson family and is being offered for the first time with a pre-sale estimate of $20,000-$30,000 (top photo).

From the opposite side of the country, a Karl Kipp hammered copper and leaded glass table lamp is coming to auction with the same pre-sale estimate (lower photo). Kipp is best known as the long-standing foreman and designer at the Roycroft Copper Shop, but this rare beauty bears only his individual mark, indicating it was made between 1911-1915 when he operated his own shop in East Aurora called the Tookay Shop.

Two more common, but no less impressive lamps from the workshop of Dirk Van Erp are also included in the sale. A large, early 1911 copper and mica lamp bearing both Van Erp's and partner D'Arcy Gaw's names is expected to bring $25,000-$30,000.

A lesson in the importance of condition:

A third Dirk Van Erp table lamp in this sale is even larger than the 1911 lamp, but has issues: the base has been polished, the mica has been damaged and the copper shade has been repatinated. Pre-sale estimate: $1,000-$1,500.

Some difference!

I predict it will go for $4,500 or more.

Check in next week for highlights of the sale.

- Bruce Johnson

To see the online catalog for this sale, go to www.RagoArts.com.