Charles Frederick Eaton Photo Album, ca. 1910
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GUEST:
You're looking at an Arts and Crafts album that was, I think, made in Santa Barbara, California. There was a group of artists that did different things. This is wood, and then inside, there is a picture that was done by hand, like the illuminations, I believe, that they put in the bibles, when they made...
APPRAISER:
Maybe we can show some of the things you're talking about. So this shows that it's wood...
GUEST:
Wood.
APPRAISER:
And leather.
GUEST:
...and leather. This was an album, so...
APPRAISER:
It's a multi-media piece. It's a, what kind of an album?
GUEST:
A photo album.
APPRAISER:
A photo album. Missing some photos, but...
GUEST:
Missing some.
APPRAISER:
This is the drawing you're talking about...
GUEST:
That's the drawing.
APPRAISER:
Actually a painting, looks like a watercolor, and the artist is in the back.
GUEST:
Right, and it mentions that-- it says, "Santa Barbara, California."
APPRAISER:
Charles Frederick Eaton. And how did you acquire this?
GUEST:
My husband and I went to an auction. It was a rainy day, and we had my son and my granddaughter in the car, so he got out and stood in the rain. He was there for about 45 minutes and came back and handed it to me and said, "I think you might like this."
APPRAISER:
Let's close it for a second.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And show the front again. Tell you a few things about this. First of all, Charles Eaton was an artist, a painter, and was born in Rhode Island in 1842, and exhibited at the Paris Salon around 1880. But a funny thing happened-- he got arm cramps while painting. So he switched from painting to crafting, and he worked with metal and wood and mixed media. He moved, because of his daughter's health, to Santa Barbara around 1890. What I love about this the most-- and it's what I really want to talk about, it gets me very excited-- is that this is the pinnacle of Arts and Crafts expression, certainly in the United States, if not the world. Because the Arts and Crafts movement started in England. It started in Europe around 1870, 1880, and moved westward from England to Boston, then to New Orleans and Chicago, and finally ended up in California by the turn of the 20th century. But what it bumped up against, aside from the Pacific Ocean, was the influence of Asian art that was coming from Asia to California. So these two forces met, and they became manifest in many ways in American Arts and Crafts, which is why I think it's so mature and so sublime. For example, you got a wrought copper and abalone shell lotus blossom by a master on a wooden base for a photo album. It's just a fabulous piece of American Arts and Crafts, decorative art. People look at this and see a photo album. What I'm seeing is this culmination of Eastern and Western design, manifest in the artists' colony that was Santa Barbara in around 1910. What did you pay for this?
GUEST:
Knowing my husband, probably not over $20.
APPRAISER:
The height of this market was probably a decade or so ago. But it's such an exquisite piece, that even today, I think at auction, the value is somewhere between $6,000 and $9,000. That's off its high-- it would've been...
GUEST:
Oh, my gosh.
APPRAISER:
It would have been perhaps double that a decade ago, but still, $6,000 to $9,000 at auction I don't think is an unreasonable estimation by any stretch.
GUEST:
Unbelievable. I mean, I knew it had value, and I knew that my children shouldn't sell it for, like, $10, $20, but that... I've seen your show before, and I've seen people cry. (voice breaking) I thought...Thank you.
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