Location

In the past we have held our workshops in the shops of Washington Square Antiques in Old Town, Alexandria, VA. Given the growth and popularity of our workshops we now look forward to holding our programs in the Alexandria, VA gallery of the Potomack Company, one of the preeminent Washington DC metropolitan area auction houses. The workshop participants will have access to view and inspect fine and decorative arts consigned to the auction house.

Maine Antiques Digest reported on a recent Potomack Company sale"

The October 5 and 6, 2013, catalog sale at The Potomack Company was advertised as a fine collections auction. Although the sale consisted of nearly 1000 lots covering virtually every imaginable category and time period, the focus of the sale was on two collections that were a world apart.

Potomack was selected to sell 250 lots from the collection of antiques and fine arts of Harry Z. Isaacs. The items offered had been deaccessioned from Historic Long Branch Plantation in Clarke County, Virginia. Historic Long Branch is on both the Virginia Landmarks Register and the U.S. National Register of Historic Places; the farm’s history can be traced to its original survey by George Washington.

The second collection offered consisted of more than 140 lots from the personal library of Wang Jiyuan (Chinese, 1893-1975). Wang was a well-respected painter and noted for promoting the so-called western style of painting in China. The Wang lots consisted primarily of works on paper, many inscribed by their artists and authors as gifts to Wang. The items ranged from woodblock prints to catalogs and examples of many styles of Chinese calligraphic art.

The items from both the Isaacs and Wang collections saw the most intense bidding in recent memory. Virtually every item in both groups was contested among several bidders. In the end, the Long Branch lots were the clear winners, with 100% of the lots selling and accounting for $650,000, nearly half of the auction’s $1.4 million in total sales. While many of the Wang items were the most hotly contested of the entire sale, only 70% of that group found new homes.