Picasso Madoura - Thanks to masterworksfineart.com
Yesterday started off just right because I was excited about the auction I was going to attend. There was a Picasso ceramic that I had spotted and one like it had sold at Sotheby's for $5500. It also didn't hurt the day that the stock market continued its advance and several of my stocks headed higher.
But back to the Picasso. I arrived an hour early for the auction so that I could preview the sale and reacquaint myself with the many friends that I was sure would be attending. So that everyone at the auction wouldn't know what my interests were, I had one of the attendants bring the Picasso to the back of the auction house for my inspection. The first thing I did was look at its bottom. The mark of Madoura was impressed in the clay making it the real thing, but that is as good as it got.
The pitcher was dirty and there were many scratches and marks over the entire piece. I began to examine the parts of the pitcher that would have been most susceptible to damage and I began to notice differences in the clay around the lip and neck of the piece. The paint seemed to have been placed on the lip recently and the clay on the inside of the neck changed from grooved to smooth as you moved your finger from one side to another. This indicated to me that there had been major repairs to the neck. But before I completely rejected the idea of purchasing the pitcher, I had to reconstruct what I thought the piece had gone through during its lifetime.
In my mind I could see how this expensive item probably had been damaged and then treated with little respect. It had probably spent time in a box lot with other items of little value and that is where it had obtained all the scratches and marks. But the question still remained. How did it get to this auction?
Here is my guess. A dealer spotted it priced at only a few dollars, was aware that it was a real Picasso and decided to have it repaired. By doing this and putting it in an auction where everything is sold "as is", the dealer didn't have to reveal that it had been repaired. Hoping that someone would be familiar with the piece and its value in mint condition they hoped that the bidding would take the item to 50% of what it had sold for at another auction. In this case that would be about $2500. With an investment including restoration of perhaps $300 this would be a huge score. I can't deal this way and I hope that my members wouldn't be able to either but it is important that we are aware that this is a part on our industry.
This is where patience comes in. After rejecting the pitcher as a possible purchase I continued to preview the rest of the sale. There really wasn't anything else that excited me so rather than stay at the sale and purchase items that I knew I shouldn't, I simply left the auction. Remember you don't always have to buy something. The blog on Picasso prints will have to wait until tomorrow.
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