Page 8 - JOA-Sept-2021

WORLD MARKETPLACE NEWS

BAKERSFIELD.COM – 1stDibs, a higher-end design and antiques SALZBURG, AUSTRIA – The logo of the
online sales site, has launched an NFT platform, responding to the venerable Salzburg Festival is impossible to
rapidly growing market for digital artwork. The new NFT platform miss during the summer months when it is
is based on an auction model, which expands on 1stDibs’ core e-com- attached to buses and flanks the busy sidewalks
merce site. The platform debuted August 11, 2021. During the initial on the Staatsbrücke bridge. The logo has had
phase, the proprietary platform will feature semi-monthly auctions remarkable staying power. First seen on a
consisting of both group and solo work. A two-week exhibition titled poster for the 1928 iteration, it was soon adopt-
Portals, featured dozens of NFTs and ed as the festival’s permanent symbol, with the
was curated by notable artist exception of the Nazi era. Yet its history, and
Metageist. Also announcing NFTs for particularly the story of its designer, hasn’t
sale is DraftKings, which is working been thoroughly known until recently. The
with Tom Brady among other sports Salzburg Festival commissioned a report on the
personalities and athletes to launch logo’s origins. The research revealed new infor-
a series of digital collectibles that mation about the life of its creator, artist Leopoldine Wojtek, who
serve as a deed of ownership. Marvel began as a modernist but whose work took a conservative, Nazi-
has entered into the fray with an initial offering of three Spiderman sympathetic turn in the 1930s, and who was married to one of the
images followed by a “blind box” series of Captain America NFTs. party’s most prolific art looters and schemers. Helga Rabl-Stadler, the
festival’s longtime president, said “We have to remind people that we
have already had this history. This period before 1938 is even more
THE EPOCH TIMES – Antique dealers are challenging a law that interesting than the Nazi period, because it shows how quickly a
makes it nearly impossible to market some of their wares in New parliamentary democracy can change.”
York state that are otherwise legal to sell in the U.S. With the passage
in 2014 of the New York State Ivory Law and the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation’s CULTURAL PROPERTY NEWS – The balancing act of preserving
creation of license conditions limiting whether World Heritage Sites and growing local economies has shown to be a bit
and how antiques containing ivory may be tricky in England.
displayed, most such antiques are now banned For years, Highways
from being sold and displayed for sale in New York England, the govern-
state. If an antique, defined as an object of at ment-run company in
least 100 years of age, contains more than 20 charge of the country’s
percent ivory, state law bans its sale to New highways, has sought
Yorkers and prohibits its display in New York to undertake a major
state dealers’ stores. Dealers may only show reconstruction of the
photos or catalog listings of that merchandise to A303 to relieve traffic
in-store visitors and only if a “not for sale in New York” disclaimer is jams by widening it
attached. Violations of the state statute, which also applies to ivory from from two lanes to four
mammoths, an ancestor of modern elephants that became extinct 4,000 and by shifting a two-
years ago, can lead to imprisonment for up to seven years for a felony, mile stretch of the highway to an underground tunnel. The problem?
a sentence that may be accompanied by fines of up to $3,000 or two This tunnel would run directly through land adjacent to Stonehenge,
times the value of the item involved. potentially destroying still-buried ruins or other artifacts and
imperiling its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Recently,
Liverpool was pulled off the designation list after the redevelopment of
NYT NEWS SERVICE – Wendy Waszut-Barrett, a specialist in period its city center to focus on maritime trade and manufacturing.
theatrical painting who runs the company Historic Stage Services, Campaigners against the highway development are motivated not
was visiting various theatrical venues when she made a stop in Leadville, only by concerns for Stonehenge’s international prestige, but also for
Colorado to check out the Tabor, which opened in 1879 and has since the safety of as-yet-undiscovered remnants of Britain’s ancient past,
been designated a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic still buried in the soil surrounding the monument. Recent
Preservation. Waszut-Barrett had heard rumors about old scenery archaeological surveys have found the land around Stonehenge to be rich
being stored on the in architectural remnants, gravesites, and other buried artifacts.
top floor of the
Italianate theater
and asked if she AKRON BEACON JOURNAL – An 800-pound heirloom has been
could poke around. reunited with the descendants of an Ohio family who owned it nearly 150
“Basically, I got, years ago. The Menches Bros. restaurant in Green, Ohio is
‘Sure, but you’re by celebrating the return of an antique safe manufactured in March 1877
yourself,’” she said. by the Diebold Safe & Lock Co. Its original owners were Canton
There, she discov- siblings Charles E. Menches (1860-1931) and Frank A. Menches
ered an “amazing (1865-1951), famed concessionaires who, according to family lore,
scope of scenery invented the hamburger sandwich in 1885 as food vendors at the Erie
from 1879 to 1902, County Fair in Hamburg, New
which is unheard-of York. Matt Lamborn, who owns
in North America.” Matt’s Antique Safe Restoration, is
The Tabor’s hitherto hidden collection held samples illustrating both the one who alerted the family to
the wing-and-shutter system of theatrical design (in which sets move the heirloom. Menches suspects
horizontally across the floor) and the fly system that replaced it (in the family used the safe into the
which they move vertically, with ropes and pulleys). And all this because 1930s at its business ventures,
the local Elks put the old scenery away when they bought the opera including Summit Lake Park
house in 1901, and everybody just forgot about it. and the Premium Cone Co.

6 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles