#Brettells Auctioneers

[frimleyblogger]

Lemon Of The Week

A 285-year-old #lemon sells for £1,400 @Brettells_

Having squeezed one on to my pancakes yesterday, I will never look at a lemon in the same way again after this snippet of news I came across. Shropshire auctioneers Brettells were preparing a  19th cabinet for auction when a lemon was discovered at the back of a drawer. It was no ordinary lemon, either. The inscribed message “Given by Mr P Lu Franchini Nov 4, 1739 to Miss E Baxter” showed that…

[xtruss]

285-Year-Old Lemon 🍋 Auctioned For $1,780

— By Ben Hooper | January 31, 2024

January 31 (UPI News) — A 285-year-old lemon found in the back of an old cabinet drawer was auctioned for $1,780 in England.

Brettells Auctioneers in Shropshire said a 19th century cabinet was brought to the auction house by a family who said it had belonged to a deceased uncle.

A specialist was photographing the cabinet for sale when the lemon was discovered in the back of a drawer. The fruit was inscribed with the message: "Given By Mr. P. Lu Franchini November 4, 1739 to Miss E. Baxter."

The auction house decided to attempt to sell the aged lemon, and officials were shocked when it fetched a high bid of $1,780. The cabinet, meanwhile, sold for just $40.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

2 February 2024

[sawtelghad]

عُمرها 3 قرون وتوثق قصة حب قديمة.. بيع ليمونة في مزاد علني بـ1700 دولار https://sawtelghad.net/32892

[jeremystrele]

This Elegant Victorian With An Eclectic Architect-Designed Extension Is For Sale

This Elegant Victorian With An Eclectic Architect-Designed Extension Is For Sale

On The Market

by Amelia Barnes

This Ascot Vale family home is for sale! Photo – courtesy of Nelson Alexander

The property is an 1883 Victorian with an architect-designed extension. Photo – courtesy of Nelson Alexander

The main bedroom enjoys views of the lush backyard through floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Photo – courtesy of Nelson Alexander

The current owner of this Ascot Vale property, Renata Slusarski, designer and co-director of BiGfiSh Workshop in Footscray, who were involved in the design and build. Photo – courtesy of Nelson Alexander

Renata and her husband Michael were refining the design and build of the chandeliers for the Melbourne Recital Centre with ARM Architecture at the time of building their home, so they knew their way around beautiful timber and laminates, which feature throughout. Photo – courtesy of Nelson Alexander

The current owner of this Ascot Vale property, Renata Slusarski, designer and co-director of BiGfiSh Workshop in Footscray, was initially hesitant to move to Ascot Vale. 28 years ago the suburb was very different to the vibrant spot it is today, but Renata and her late husband, Michael Blunden, quickly grew to love the area.

Initially the house was Renata and Michael’s rental, which they went on to buy in 1997. Utilising their skills as designer and builders, the couple later undertook a major renovation, with the help of structural engineer Peter Felicetti, and architect Steven Swain (then a graduate architect working at DKO Architecture).

The period features in the original 1883 rooms were retained, joined by an eclectic, new extension.

‘By the time we were in a position to renovate and extend, we had lived in the house for 15 years, and knew pretty much what would work and what wouldn’t,’ says Renata. ‘We kept the four original Victorian front rooms which were generously proportioned and had lovely detailing, but we were very happy to say goodbye to the rest of the house which featured a 1970s home handyman renovation heaving with badly-made pine features and trim!’

Renata and Michael were refining the design and build of the chandeliers for the Melbourne Recital Centre with ARM Architecture at the time of building, so they knew their way around beautiful timber and laminates, which feature throughout. ‘We had to have timber ceilings too!’ Renata says. ‘With a well-equipped workshop in Footscray, we were able to build many of the features including the exposed steel work, some cabinetry, the suspended timber shelving in the dining room, and the timber cladding in the main bedroom.’

With the family’s youngest son now moved out of home, Renata says it’s time to pass the baton onto new home owners.

‘I will miss the comfort and consideration that went into the design… It can provide a private haven for my family one moment and then expand to accommodate a dozen people and their dogs,’ she says. ‘The heated slab floor with its gentle and consistent warmth is something I will miss every day, especially in winter.’

Renata hopes the new owners will love the home as much as she and her family have, for almost three decades.

54 Munro Street, Ascot Vale, Victoria will be sold via auction Saturday 13th March at 2pm by Liz Brettell and Jayson Watts of Nelson Alexander. For more information, see the full listing.

[usnewsrank]

TREASURES – Yields fall on short hedge after strong 10-year auction – Reuters

TREASURES – Yields fall on short hedge after strong 10-year auction – Reuters

(New throughout, updates prices and yields, market activity and comments, adds 10-year auction results) By Karen Brettell and Herbert Lash NEW YORK, Jan 12 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields traded lower on Tuesday as strong demand for the Treasury Department’s $38 billion sale of benchmark 10-year notes had traders covering short positions, which reversed an […] The post TREASURES – Yields fall on…

[caveartfair]

Why This Claude Monet Haystack Could Sell for over $55 Million

Claude Monet, Meules, 1890/91. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Claude Monet’s series “Les Meules”—alternately translated as “The Grainstacks” or “The Haystacks”—both glorifies a humble staple of rural life and enjoys worldwide acclaim. From 1889 through 1891, the French Impressionist captured the lumpy stacks (possibly of wheat, oats, or barley) sitting just outside his door in the village of Giverny in northern France. Painting the same objects in different months, at various times of day, Monet made light into his true subject.

In all, Monet created 25 “Meules,” which significantly vary in composition and palette. Some feature two full stacks; others just one, truncated by the picture’s edge. Snowy landscapes and long, blue shadows alternate with verdant surroundings full of green trees and lush grass. “Each picture is a masterpiece of beauty, truth, and form,” art theorist Wynford Dewhurst crowed in his 1904 volume Impressionist Painting, Its Genesis and Development. “The influence of such creations is world-wide.” On May 14th, a prominent example will go to auction with an estimate in excess of $55 million at Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art evening sale in New York.

Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (End of Day, Autumn), 1890/91. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

While the sale proves, once again, just how prized the individual “Meules” are, their art-historical importance lies in their serial aspect. After years of working on one scene at a time—a seascape, a luncheon, or a snow-covered fence, for example—Monet opted for a new, long-term project. Over the course of around two years, he’d make longitudinal study of the subject matter lurking in his own yard. Notably, he began his canvases while painting en plein air and finished them in his studio: As an Impressionist, effect was more important than realism. Later, he’d famously repeat the serial process as he fixated on the cathedral in Rouen, the waterlilies in his garden, and London’s Houses of Parliament. The Sotheby’s buyer won’t only be paying for a lush painting of a haystack, but for a symbol of a hallowed artist just discovering his dominant mode.

Within Monet’s larger series of “Meules,” August Uribe, head of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern art department, unsurprisingly rallies for the singularity of the painting he’s selling. “It’s the best one,” he said. The example on offer, Meules (1890), features a large stack protruding into the composition from the painting’s left side. The sun beams out from the stack’s right edge, creating a curved red line that extends into the grass toward the viewer, who’s looking at the object from its shaded portion. The haystack’s hues—blue at the top, purple in the middle, red at the bottom—signify the subtle gradations created by the natural lighting. Another haystack peeps from beyond the central subject, and lumpy, colorful masses in the distance lead the viewer’s eye out to the painting’s right edge. The stacks create a dividing line between brushy pink sky and soft purple earth. The work is quite obviously concerned with beauty, which no doubt makes it an easy sell.

Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer), 1890/91. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In addition to its sunny vibrancy and grand dimensions—at 28.6 by 36.5 inches, this is one of Monet’s three largest haystacks—the painting’s esteemed provenance also contributes to its multimillion dollar value. Monet’s gallerist, the legendary dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, first exhibited Meules in May 1891: It was one of 15 works from the series included in a larger presentation of Monet’s work.

Angelica Daneo, the Denver Art Museum’s chief curator, calls Durand-Ruel’s show “groundbreaking.” This fall, three “Meules” paintings will be on view at the museum, where Daneo is organizing the major exhibition “Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature.” Although French artists (including Monet) had worked serially before, depicting sequential events such as the four seasons or the months of the year, this was the first time that Monet considered that “[his paintings’] marriage and value would be because of their display as a group, as a series,” Daneo said. Fellow Impressionist Camille Pissarro praised the way the series could “breathe contentedly”; just years later, he’d paint his own haystacks. Like Pissarro, both critics and collectors were immediately enamored with Monet’s series.

“In the history of modern art, it is hard to point to other paintings as revolutionary that have been accepted so easily by critics and collectors alike as were the Haystacks,” art historian Richard Brettell wrote in 1984. He asserted that many of the “Meules” paintings on view sold within a month of the opening, and all but one or two of them (including examples not exhibited as part of the show) had sold by the end of 1891.

Claude Monet, Stack of Wheat, 1890/91. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Durand-Ruel sold eight “Meules” paintings (including the one coming to auction at Sotheby’s) to major Chicago collector Bertha Potter Palmer. She loved the series so much—and was so mindful of its potential resale value—that she bought a ninth canvas from the Bostonian dealer Charles Fairchilds. Throughout the course of her life, Palmer amassed over 90 artworks by Monet, along with paintings by Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and other luminaries of her day. Though Palmer gave Durand-Ruel the painting back on consignment the following year, she quickly changed her mind—“this painting was so near and dear to her,” said Uribe.

Brettell noted that within three years, Palmer had already sold three of the “Meules.” She was apparently at least as driven by profit as she was by aesthetic interest. Yet Brettell didn’t fault her for this. “That her aims were unabashedly capitalist should neither surprise nor repel us,” he wrote. “After all, Monet’s garden became larger and more extraordinary as Mrs. Palmer made more and more money from—and for—the artist.” In other words, he contended that Palmer’s early sales of the “Meules” paintings helped Monet build the setting for perhaps his best-loved series, the “Water Lilies,” which sustained his artistic interest for decades and up until his death in 1926.

In 1893, Palmer built onto The Castle—as her mansion in the Windy City’s Gold Coast neighborhood was known—a picture gallery where she most likely hung her Monets. Crowds paraded through the gallery during that year’s World’s Columbian Exposition. (For the festivities, Palmer also invented the brownie.) The Meules now on offer at Sotheby’s stayed in the family until 1986, when one of Palmer’s heirs sold it at auction for $2.5 million. At the time, only one other “Meules” painting remained in the household.

Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), 1890/91. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Palmer had already given one to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1922, as part of her bequest. By 1933, the institution owned two additional “Meules” from other American collectors of Impressionism: the Ryerson and Coburn families. The three significant paintings helped form the core of the Institute’s famed Impressionist holdings (cue the scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986, in which one “Meules” painting hangs in the background). In the 1980s, the Institute purchased another painting from the series, and the Palmers and a different private donor gifted the museum one more each: The Chicago collection of Monet’s “Meules”—the largest in the world—now numbered six.

Today, institutional “Meules” owners span the globe, from the National Gallery of Australia to the National Gallery of Scotland, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Only 8 of the 25 works in the series remain in private collections. Gloria Groom, chair of European painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, stressed that these works were the first-ever sustained and successful series.

Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (Thaw, Sunset), 1890/91. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“The fact that Monet conceived them individually from nature and then reworked them in his studio so that they would work as an ensemble, as a whole, and gain meaning from being shown in that way was a very new direction for art,” she said.

To arrive at Sotheby’s current estimate (nearly 22 times the painting’s last auction result), Uribe and his team assessed recent auction records. A “Meules” painting was last sold at auction in 2016 at Christie’s, to a private buyer, for $81.4 million. Three other “Meules” paintings made between 1889 and 1891 have sold in the past 20 years: one for £10.1 million ($14.3 million) in 2001 at Sotheby’s in London; another for $6.6 million at what was then Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg in New York, also in 2001; and a third for just under $12 million at Sotheby’s in New York in 1999.

Haystack in the evening, 1891. Claude Monet "Monet - Lost in Translation" at ARoS Aarhus Museum of Art, Aarhus

“We came to an agreement with the seller,” Uribe explained. “We think the pricing strategy which we’ve put forward is the best one, which reflects not only the importance of the work, which will get the attention of important buyers and will promote healthy bidding.”

Daneo, for her part, offered a different rationale for the haystack paintings’ enormous prices. “These paintings are important to understand the evolution of French art, the transition from the 19th to 20th century,” she said. “[Toward the end of Monet’s lifetime,] there’s a pull towards abstraction that of course he will not quite completely realize, but the generation after obviously look at this particular series. He was extremely influential.”

from Artsy News

[vanitynumbers]

U.S. tax bill adds to debt need as interest costs weigh

New Post has been published on https://new800numbers.com/business/u-s-tax-bill-adds-to-debt-need-as-interest-costs-weigh/

U.S. tax bill adds to debt need as interest costs weigh

Local vanity Numbers:

(Reuters) – A U.S. tax overhaul will increase the government’s need to issue more Treasuries as interest costs on the country’s debt become a larger drain on the budget.

Demonstrators march in protest against the federal government tax reform federal San Diego, California, U.S., December 4, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

The U.S. Senate on Saturday approved a tax rewrite, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would double the deficit over the coming decade to around $2.8 trillion.

That would add to the worsening debt outlook, which is already hurt as an aging population boosts healthcare and retirement spending.

Increases in issuance could push up bond yields, adding to the cost of carrying the debt.

“The debt continues to grow faster than the economy,” said Susan Irving, a senior advisor for debt and fiscal issues at the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office in Washington.

Rising debt costs will leave less room for other forms of government spending, absent unpopular changes such as tax hikes.

“It increases the government’s interest cost, it puts pressure on other parts of the budget, and it limits the ability to respond to unforeseen events,” Irving said.

U.S. net interest costs rose to $274 billion in fiscal 2017, the most on record, according to the government’s fiscal 2018 budget.

They are projected to increase to $528 billion by 2022, which would account for 10.9 percent of total outlays, up from 6.8 percent this year, the budget shows, making interest costs the fastest-growing major expense over that period.

The proposed tax changes will add to the already worsening picture.

“I wouldn’t say that this is a game changer per se in the trajectory of the increase in the debt outstanding, but it’s definitely going to contribute to more Treasury issuance,” said Subadra Rajappa, head of U.S. rates strategy at Societe Generale in New York.

Total debt held by the public is forecast to rise to $17.52 trillion in 2022, from $14.92 trillion in fiscal 2017.

Outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said last week that the path of federal debt “should keep people awake at night.”

Pressure is intensifying to fix the country’s debt problem.

The United States needs to raise its debt limit in the coming months, and if it does not, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the U.S. Treasury would run out of cash to pay its bills by late March or early April.

Congress has a notional Dec. 8 deadline to raise the debt ceiling, but the U.S. Treasury can take emergency measures to delay the drop-dead date.

For a graphic on the rising U.S. debt burdern, see: tmsnrt.rs/2AU9Cap

RISING DEBT COSTS

If increased Treasuries supply leads to higher yields, the impact on the budget will be worse.

Since the financial crisis of 2009, refinancing high- interest-rate debt at lower rates has held down interest costs even as the debt doubled in size. But with rates now at historic lows, there is less room for further savings.

“For another steep drop in interest rates to create similar opportunities to extend the average maturity while reducing overall costs, interest rates would have to cross into negative territory,” rating agency Moody’s Investors Service said in a recent report.

The CBO estimates the government will need to increase debt by around $900 billion next year, in part because the Fed is reducing its participation in the market.

The Treasury said in November that it expects to announce changes to the sizes of debt auctions in February for the first time since 2009, though it is expected at first to concentrate increases in short- and intermediate-dated debt.

That increase in supply may send borrowing costs higher.

“I think it will take a little while for the market to get really saturated, but not that long,” said Thomas Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies in New York.

If tax cuts fail to spur faster growth and inflation, however, one possible solace could be that debt financing costs stay low.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields tumbled from 15.5 percent in 1981 to 7 percent in 1986 as inflation plummeted, even as the debt rose to $2.1 trillion from $1 trillion in the same period.

“Supply doesn’t matter. That’s a red herring in the bigger picture. It’s all about inflation and inflation expectations,” said Lou Brien, a market analyst at DRW Trading in Chicago.

Reporting by Karen Brettell; Editing by Dan Grebler

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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[usnewsrank]

TREASURES – Yields fall after 30-year auction with solid demand – Reuters

TREASURES – Yields fall after 30-year auction with solid demand – Reuters

(Recasts with auction results, adds analyst quotes, updates prices) By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields fell on Thursday and the yield curve flattened after the government sold $23 billion in 30-year bonds to solid demand, the final sale of $108 billion in new coupon-bearing supply this week. The 30-year […]

The post TREASURES – Yields fall after 30-year auction…

[usnewsrank]

TREASURES – Yields tumble after 30-year auction with solid demand – Reuters UK

TREASURES – Yields tumble after 30-year auction with solid demand – Reuters UK

(Recasts with auction results, adds analyst quotes, updates prices) By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields fell on Thursday and the yield curve flattened after the government sold $23 billion in 30-year bonds to solid demand, the final sale of $108 billion in new coupon-bearing supply this week. The 30-year […]

The post TREASURES – Yields tumble after 30-year auction…

[usnewsrank]

TREASURES – Yields drop after 30-year auction with high demand – Reuters

TREASURES – Yields drop after 30-year auction with high demand – Reuters

(Recasts with auction results, adds analyst quotes, updates prices) By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields fell on Thursday and the yield curve flattened after the government sold $23 billion in 30-year bonds to solid demand, the final sale of $108 billion in new coupon-bearing supply this week. The 30-year […]

The post TREASURES – Yields drop after 30-year auction…

[usnewsrank]

TREASURES – Yields tumble after 30-year auction with high demand – Reuters India

TREASURES – Yields tumble after 30-year auction with high demand – Reuters India

(Recasts with auction results, adds analyst quotes, updates prices) By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields fell on Thursday and the yield curve flattened after the government sold $23 billion in 30-year bonds to solid demand, the final sale of $108 billion in new coupon-bearing supply this week. The 30-year […]

The post TREASURES – Yields tumble after 30-year auction…

[usnewsrank]

TREASURES – Yield curve steepens ahead of 30-year auction – Reuters

TREASURES – Yield curve steepens ahead of 30-year auction – Reuters

By Karen Brettell NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury yields rose on Thursday and the yield curve steepened before the government will sell $23 billion in 30-year bonds, the final sale of $108 billion in new coupon-bearing supply this week. The Treasury has been increasing the size of its auctions across the curve […]

The post TREASURES – Yield curve steepens ahead of 30-year auction –…