Arts & Crafts - Pitfalls in Appraising

May 28

Course Details

Description

Appraising Arts and Crafts today is an exercise in appropriate market selection. Record prices continue to be established at auction. Nonetheless, distinguishing work that is most often sold online, by dealer, or flipped from similar objects sold at auctions is complex. A combination of connoisseurship, understanding of reputational value, knowledge of the markets, and access to relevant information is required.

Auction records belie hidden pitfalls for appraisers in a market that is fractured and inefficient. Generational shifts have increased supply and new vendor entrants, especially in the auction market, compete for collections and estates. Marketing strategies make it difficult to ascertain what exactly a buyer paid for the item we find in online databases when buyers' premiums and shipping are obscure and confusing.

Join Tommy McPherson for an afternoon discussing what Arts and Crafts is, and how the most sophisticated generations of collectors are impacting the markets for a mature collecting category. In what looks like one of the most transparent, catalogued and documented market categories…. what we see, on record, can be misleading, because the object may not be genuine, comparable, or all that the client bought with their money.

Instructor(s)

Tommy A McPherson
ISA AM, MA, MBA
ISA Member since November 2019

Tommy McPherson sold art and antiques in Columbia, SC in high school and research fellowships soon followed. Formal academics, Winterthur, the Stickley and Mobile Museums, high net worth clients and curiosity fuel adventures across time and medium.

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