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| LOUISIANA PURCHASES | ||
| MARC CHARBONNET EXPLORES HIS NATIVE NEW ORLEANS |
| artists Marie Madeline Seebold, who was born in
1876 and died in 1948, and Richard Clague, who was active in New Orleans between 1850 and
1873," he says. Moses also chuckles about a piece of Newcomb art pottery, made in New
Orleans around 1900 that its owners were going to give to their children to play with but
instead sold for twelve thousand dollars. "However," Moses is quick to add, "with our expanded interests in the last two years, we've also sold a circa 1710 English lacquered chinoiserie secretary, to a dealer who was going to take it back to London, as well as more jewelry and smaller pieces." Charbonnet says that one of the nicer things about Neal's is a sense of southern courtesy. "You can call them and get the provenance of anything you're interested in , and photos, and anything else they have - all without attitude." The next destination on Magazine Street is a shop with a completely different inventory. |
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Mario Villa is a native of Nicaragua who has a
degree in architecture from Tulane University but who for many years has owned his own
gallery in which he shows the steel, bronze and copper furniture that he designs, along
with the work of other contemporary artists. "Beds, tables, consoles, sconces, chairs
and candlesticks are all here," says Charbonnet, " in the most heavenly space,
which Mario strews with garlands of magnolia leaves. He's got real style. He borrows from
Neoclassicism and puts a twist on it, and a lot of his furniture anticipated the current
retro interest in forties and fifties French pieces." The gallery is located in a late-eighteenth- century building in the Upper Garden District that was once a jail. Says director Charlotte Rolfs, "This is the part of the district with all the kooks and weirdos - the interesting part." |
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| Moving farther south on Magazine Street,
Charbonnet comes to the New Orleans Auction Galleries, in the Warehouse District. One
thing that he likes about the galleries, which were started eight years ago by Jean R.
Vidos, is that "they're not limited to a specific period or style," he notes.
"They have everything in their auctions, from cuff links to blackamoor pins to
Louisiana plantation and Russian furniture to tramp art - and it's likely to all be in the
same auction." The designer, over the years, has found a set of fourteen dining chairs in the style of Duncan Phyfe there (again, New Orleans is the source for those hard-to-find sets of dining chairs) and an American Empire pedestal table from a Louisiana estate. On a recent visit he saw a beadwork fire screen with an open barley-twist pole that he says is one of the finest he has encountered. Vido's husband, Mike, explains that the galleries hold six major auctions per year, with eight more, featuring less important pieces, in a neighboring building. The main structure was originally a nineteenth-century commodities trading warehouse that calls to mind Degas's painting of New Orleans cotton brokers, who would have worked in a similar place in the early 1870's. A supplementary attraction of the galleries' auction is that they |
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