Since it’s inception in 2001, we have quickly established ourselves as a sophisticated full-service auction house, equipped to handle a single item or an entire estate. In our first seven years of business we sold over 20,000 lots of antiques and fine art totaling $50 million.
We schedule a wide range of auctions throughout the year. These sales are held at our auction house at 549 Warren Street, with two spacious floors of exhibition space in the historic city of Hudson, NY surrounded by over sixty antique shops, galleries and restaurants.
Our catalogued sales take place approximately seven times per year and focus on American and European paintings and decorative arts including silver, porcelain, furniture, carpets and Chinese Export works of art. An exhibition is held one week prior to each sale. A fully illustrated online catalogue is posted on our easy to navigate website, two weeks prior to each sale.
The sales are vigorously promoted through e-mail notifications which link to our online catalogues, tasteful mailings, extended exhibitions at the gallery, print ads in local publications and trade publications throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and South America.
In addition to our catalogued sales, we offer our popular informal Exposition Auctions. These live auctions are typically held monthly on a Friday evening. Items in these sales are generally valued below $1,000. A small preview and catalogue is posted on the website and absentee bids are accepted.
The first auction was held on October 20, 2001 of 481 lots totaling $235,538, and within the first year and a half the sales totaled 3 million.
During our May 2002 auction we set a world record for the artist Paul Seifert (1840-1921) selling his watercolor depiction of a Wisconsin farmhouse for $66,700.
On September 17, 2005 at our first auction in our new building at 549 Warren Street in the heart of historic Hudson, NY we were able to obtain $1,000,000 in sales for English and Continental furniture, paintings and decoration.
On April 22, 2006 at our first paintings sale which included the Thomas Van Loan Collection, we sold over $1.7 million in fine art and set records for the artist William Mason Brown (1828-1898) selling his White Mountain View, oil on board for $43,700 and for Frank Anderson (1844-1891) selling his oil painting of the Hudson Highlands for $212,750.
December 1, 2007 we sold Search for the Right Address, an oil on canvas by Mark Tansey (b. 1949) for $247,250.
In June of 2008, we sold over $3 million in property at auction in one month at the Salander-O’Reilly bankruptcy auction and the Antiquities and Modern Art sales.
2010 was a stellar year starting with our March sale with a printed catalog for a Hudson Valley Collection of Americana. June’s sale was the collection of famed Hollywood producer, Douglas S. Cramer and his partner, Hugh Bush from Dogwood Farm, CT. November saw the glamorous Estate of Dominick Dunne. The fall saw a record for a Middle Eastern Ivory or Bone Plaque which sold for $200,000. January 2011 was a record breaking sale for Stair Galleries in the Asian department which nearly topped $1 million for Asian, Middle Eastern and Ethnographic items.
