Featured Stories

With his bold, inventive, and luxurious jewelry designs, David Webb remains one of America’s most important jewelers. Born on July 2nd, 1925, in Asheville, North Carolina, Webb grew up in an Arts and Crafts home designed by Richard Sharp Smith, a supervising architect at Biltmore House. Webb’s Asheville home, including the rear cottage which became his first workshop, is now the Carolina Bed and Breakfast, owned by innkeepers Diana Thornton and Kevin Gero. As the keeper of the former Webb home and a jewelry designer herself, Thornton is delighted to advance the legacy of one of Asheville’s most extraordinary sons.

David Webb stepped into the artistic world of jewelry design after a WPA Federal Art Project and a class at the Penland School of Craft in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He apprenticed with a silversmith at Hursey & Company, Jewelers, in downtown Asheville. In 1942, Webb traded native stones for precious ones, heading to New York City. With an inventiveness of design and a remarkable quality to his work, David Webb found the beginnings of success. By 1948, Webb opened a boutique on 57th Avenue, just off of 5th Avenue in Manhattan.

Best known for his carved, enameled animal-inspired bracelets, Maltese cross brooches, and intricate and impressive work in precious stones, Webb carved out an extraordinary body of work in his brief life. Webb’s jewelry designs were at once, clever, whimsical, and eminently chic. His intricately sculpted designs were often set in platinum and yellow gold, and featured diamonds, onyx, turquoise, coral, as well as precious stones of rich and dramatic hues. Webb’s influences derived from Faberge, Cellini, as well as classical themes from ancient civilizations and motifs from the international Art Deco style.

Webb’s jewelry appealed widely, capturing the imagination of luminaries and society women across the world. Among the well-noted was Jackie Kennedy, who commissioned Webb to create official gifts of State on behalf of the Kennedy White House. The Duke of Windsor also purchased a bracelet as a gift for his wife, Wallis Simpson. David Webb designs appealed to America’s Hollywood ‘royalty’ too, from Elizabeth Taylor to Beyonce.

Today, David Webb boutiques can be found on Madison Avenue in New York City and Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

Please join us on July 19th & 20th as our American Indian and Western Art Specialists at Brunk Auctions offer for sale a vibrant array of Native American, Southwestern, and Western art and objects, including:

• Cherokee rivercane baskets by Rowena Bradley and Emma Garrett
• Edward S. Curtis prints, including two vintage platinum prints
• Plains beadwork, Southwestern pottery, silver and turquoise jewelry
• Southwestern textiles, including a Third Phase Chief’s Blanket, Eye Dazzlers, Teec Nos Pos, and Germantown weavings.

This sale celebrates the history and the material culture of America, including Native American, Southwestern, and Western art. Highlights include an impressive “Steer Skull” oil painting, measuring almost nine feet in length, by Tommy Dale Palmore, as well as an early impressionistic landscape by Nicolai Fechin signed in Cyrillic, and New Mexico landscapes by Theodore Van Soelen and Oscar Berninghaus. “Still Life with Chrysanthemums” by Joseph Henry Sharp, and a significant signed bronze sculpture, “Sacajawea” by Cyrus Edwin Dallin will also be on offer.

The July 19th & 20th Brunk auction will feature fine examples of American traditions, including functional objects such as a Southwestern Zia redware Olla from the collection of Eleanor Tulman Hancock, a Lakota beaded and quilled cradle board, and a fine pewter inlaid pipe tomahawk with a beaded drop. Assorted knife sheaths, moccasins, and weavings will also be offered in this midsummer sale.

For more information on live, phone or absentee bidding, please click here.

For a private viewing prior to auction or for more information, please contact Nan Zander at 828-254-6846 or nan@brunkauctions.com.

“Brunk Auctions has had a unique position in the marketplace selling historical portraits of Southern importance. We set three records for Charlestonians by Jeremiah Theus. In 2007, we sold a life portrait of John C. Calhoun for $200,000. I am very excited to say that we now have the honor of representing a descendant of Governor Samuel Johnston and Justice James Iredell in the sale of two rare and important North Carolina portrait miniatures. As a native of North Carolina, I celebrate the incredible accomplishments of both of these gentlemen, their significance to our state is immeasurable,” shares Fine Art Specialist Laura Crockett.

Please see the two fine portrait miniatures and part of their stories below:

James Peale, Sr. Portrait Miniature
(Pennsylvania/Maryland, 1749-1831)

Governor Samuel Johnston (Scotland 1733-1816 North Carolina), 1793, completed at the time he was serving as a US Senator from North Carolina, signed “J.P. 1793”, watercolor on ivory, 2-1/2 x 1-7/8 in. casework, tests 14kt plain bezel frame with cobalt glass surround and window with braided hair, 3 x 2 in.; with red leather case

Provenance: Governor Samuel Johnston, North Carolina; By descent in family
Estimate: $20,000 – $30,000

>>> Samuel Johnston was three years old when he came to America with his family and settled in Eastern North Carolina. He was the nephew of Gabriel Johnston who was the Colonial Governor from 1730 to 1752. After studying law in North Carolina, he was admitted to the bar in 1767 and established a legal practice in Edenton.

Johnston began his political career when he was appointed the Clerk of Court for Chowan County, and in 1759, he was elected to serve in the North Carolina General Assembly which was displaced in 1775 upon the start of the Revolution. Starting in 1774, he served as a delegate to the first four Provincial Congresses and presided over the third and fourth Congresses in 1775 and 1776. When he succeeded John Harvey upon his death as the moderator of the Provincial Council and then as President, he became the highest ranking politician in the state, thus putting him in the role of acting Governor upon the abdication of the Royal Governor, Josiah Martin (1737-1786).

North Carolina was the first state to declare independence in 1775, with her constitution one of the earliest to be formed. The early leadership of this notable patriot is to be credited in part.

In 1780, Johnston was elected as a member of the Continental Congress and presided over both conventions called to ratify the U.S. Constitution in 1788 and 1789. He was the duly elected Governor of North Carolina and served from 1787 to 1789.
A U.S. Senator from 1789 to 1793, he returned from Congress to hold his last political office as a North Carolina Superior Court judge, which he held until the age of seventy in 1803. On retirement he quoted a soldier saying, “Some time should be interposed between life and death.” Governor Samuel Johnston passed away on August 17, 1806, and was buried at Hayes Plantation, near Edenton, North Carolina.

This portrait is thought to be the only known likeness of Samuel Johnston.
References: The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography.. New York: J.T. White, 1902, Vol. IV, pg. 420

National Governor’s Association, 2015, [Governor Samuel Johnston], May 3,2019, https://classic.nga.org/cms/home/governors/past-governors-bios/page_north_carolina/col2-content/main-content-list/title_johnston_samuel.default.html

Benjamin Trott, Portrait Miniature

(New Jersey/New York/Pennsylvania, 1770-1843)

Judge James Iredell, US Supreme Court, George Washington appointee, unsigned, watercolor on ivory, casework in burnished bezel with brightwork fillet, verso metal surround and window with braided hair, 3 x 2-1/8 in.; with red leather case

Provenance: By descent in Iredell/Johnston family
Estimate: $8,000 – $12,000

>>>In 1790, a young thirty-eight year old lawyer was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by President George Washington. James Iredell had already served North Carolina as the comptroller of the Port of Edenton. In 1771, he was admitted to the bar after reading law under Governor Samuel Johnston, a fellow Edentonian. In 1773, Iredell married Johnston’s sister, Hannah, joining these two influential families. During the Revolution he organized the court system and compiled and revised laws which were published in Iredell’s Revisal. He is considered North Carolina’s greatest essayist, having contributed many ideas that informed the authors of the Declaration of Independence. His treatise, Principles of the American Whig, published in 1776, outlining that mankind was intended to be happy, second, that government’s role is to secure freedom and happiness for the people and third, to define the principles of British legal abuses. He served as the state’s Attorney General from 1779-1781. As the leader of the Federalists in North Carolina, he strongly supported the ratification of the Constitution at the convention in 1788, though it failed to pass. After the inclusion of the Bill of Rights, Iredell’s efforts succeeded with the Constitution being ratified in 1789.

James Iredell died as a result of his travels as a Supreme Court Justice at the age of forty-eight.

His son would become the twenty-third Governor of North Carolina.

References: Johnson, Dale T. American Portrait Miniatures in the Manney Collection. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990, pp. 215-217;
https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/james-iredell-sr-1751-1799/

For more information on live, phone or absentee bidding, please click here.

For a private viewing prior to auction or for more information, please contact Laura Crockett at 828-254-6846 or info@brunkauctions.com

In 1917, John Singer Sargent was staying as a guest at Vizcaya, the work-in-progress villa being built for James Deering in Miami.  It presented almost infinite opportunities for painting, which Sargent took full advantage of and had no intention of leaving for some time.

When James and his brother Charles invited Sargent on a fishing trip aboard the Nepenthe, James Deering’s 80-foot steam yacht, he somewhat reluctantly agreed.  As they steamed through the Gulf of Mexico, America’s greatest watercolorist was roused from the monotony of those sultry days by a very big fish.  He managed to land the only Tarpon on the three-week excursion.  No amount of painting could have prepared him for the fight in a six foot 10-inch-long fish, and he complained afterwards about his aching muscles.  Being Sargeant, he of course sketched and painted the 140-pound Tarpon hanging next to the yacht and sparkling in the afternoon sunlight on the Gulf of Mexico.

A pencil drawing of the subject, with notations on size and weight, is in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.  Sargent’s important watercolor of that magnificent fish has been in private collections since 1923, and is now being offered for sale on November 17^th, by Brunk Auctions in Asheville North Carolina.  Lot #1672 can be viewed at https://www.brunkauctions.com/lot/john-singer-sargent-3893710.