BOSTON - Leading antiques and fine art auction house Skinner Inc. announced today that it has been chosen as the sole auction house to handle the sale of the estate of Richard Wright, one of the world's leading experts in the field of fine dolls, and a prominent and colorful appraiser on the PBS series, The Antiques Roadshow. Internet live bidding will be provided by www.LiveAuctioneers.com.

The estate of Richard Wright promises to be a major highlight of Skinner's fall auction season as Wright's vision is showcased in two exciting and diverse October sales. Stuart Whitehurst, Skinner's specialist in European furniture and decorative arts, and one of the company's most knowledgeable generalist appraisers, will head up the auction.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A Utah businessman who collected antique cars has been indicted on charges of defrauding investors of more than $18 million in an alleged Ponzi scheme.

U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman unsealed an indictment on Tuesday for Jeffrey Lane Mowen, 47, formerly of Lindon, Utah.

Federal authorities say Mowen's last known country of residence was Panama, where telephone directories have no record of him.

Authorities have seized more than 200 antique, classic and modern vehicles they say Mowen bought with investor money and stored in various places in Utah.

The cars include a 1939 Jaguar, a Model T from 1918 and a 1903 Oldsmobile Horseless Carriage.

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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-04-22-09 1501EDT 

LONDON (AP) - Anyone searching for a sepia tinted rugby photo, antique cuff links or a precious piece of art deco jewelry at the Antiquarius Center had better come fast.

Blink and it will be gone. The dozens of diverse, very British shops on the chic King's Road in Chelsea face eviction to make way for Anthropologie, an American-based chain planning an American fashion emporium, much like the stores it operates in St. Louis and Miami Beach.

"There used to be three antique centers in Chelsea, soon there will be none," said Sue Norman, who has sold hand-painted 19th-century china here since 1972. "I think it's very sad. It seems the younger generation much prefers American-style things to English style."

The pending loss of the Antiquarius Center is part of the wider, inexorable Americanization of Britain, where rich veins of eccentricity are being snipped as American customs catch on.

Remember the dapper English gentleman? Shoes polished and dressed to the nines? He's often found in blue jeans, an open shirt, and sneakers these days.

And those bad English teeth, neglected for years? Tooth-whitening is catching on, a l'americaine.

There has been a surge of cosmetic surgeries as more women - and teenagers - embrace the Hollywood ideal and have their breasts enhanced and wrinkles Botoxed. Pillbox psychiatry is catching on too, with record numbers gobbling antidepressants, and Britons are turning to fast food at such an alarming pace that obesity among young people is reaching epidemic proportions.

A Prozac-popping, surgically enhanced nation of overweight slobs? Sometimes it seems dear olde England could almost be the 51st state.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) - A walnut sideboard table is being returned to Colonial Williamsburg where it was crafted more than 240 years ago.

The table, believed to be crafted between 1750 and 1770 by the Anthony Hay Cabinet Shop, will be installed in the dining room of the Thomas Everard House on Palace Green later this spring.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation purchased the antique table from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts of Winston-Salem, N.C.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-03-31-09 1610EDT

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (AP) - A New Bedford man has been charged in connection with the slaying six years ago of a Dartmouth man.

Authorities say 37-year-old Derek Hunt was indicted by a grand jury on Friday, March 31, on murder and firearms charges in connection with the May 2003 shooting of 41-year-old Joseph Downing Jr.

Downing worked at a New Bedford glass company and was a part-time antiques dealer. He was found dead in his minivan in the parking lot of a Dartmouth apartment complex.

The Bristol district attorney's office says Hunt is being held pending an arraignment in April.

Prosecutors did not provide a possible motive for the slaying.

District Attorney Samuel Sutter says the indictment is in line with his campaign promise to solve cold cases.

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Information from: The Standard-Times,

http://www.southcoasttoday.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - She probably wouldn't admit it, but Bette Largent is the Carrousel Lady.

The artist has been restoring and maintaining all the critters on Spokane's beloved Riverfront Park attraction since January 1991, and she's still classified as a temporary seasonal employee.

Note to Parks and Recreation: The Carrousel Lady deserves a promotion.

After all, there's next to nothing Largent doesn't know about the Looff carrousel, which turns 100 years old this summer.

The park kicked off the season-long centennial celebration and grand reopening of the carrousel with special events recently that included a historical tour by Largent, who also is president of the National Carousel Association.

Designed by master craftsman Charles Looff, the carrousel began operation in Spokane's now-defunct Natatorium Park on July 18, 1909. But everybody around these parts knows that.

What you probably don't know, Largent said, is that the horses on the carrousel's outside ring have traveled the equivalent of a trip to the moon and would be headed back to Earth by now.

Or maybe you were unaware that Riverfront Park goes through about 50,000 of those little plastic rings each year despite a prohibition against taking them home as souvenirs.

That's OK; Largent said she even caught former City Manager Roger Crum stuffing one of the rings in his pocket after a ride.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - Mike von Matuska of Matuska Doll & Toy Auctions has confirmed a break-in occurred earlier this month at the Stockholm toy museum Leksaksmuseet, of which he is director. He is advising anyone who is offered antique or vintage toys from a Swedish source to ask questions and proceed cautiously.

Mike says restoration had just been completed at the museum and that sometime at night between March 5 and March 9, an intruder forced the alarmed doors several times to gain entry. 

Many rare toys - approximately 115 antique and vintage pieces - were taken in the heist. Mike said they were all "excellent to mint toys of German and Japanese manufacture, dating from 1900 to 1960." The perpetrator(s) are quite likely to be knowledgeable about toy values, as they took valuable Marklins and Lehmanns, which are easily resold.

All of the stolen toys are listed online at http://scandalic.nu/auktion/stulet/Stold_pa_Leksaksmuseet/Bilder.html. There's also a selection of images of some of the stolen pieces.

Anyone who may have information pertaining to the theft or suspicions based on offers to buy is asked to e-mail Mike von Matuska at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Copyright 2009 Auction Central News International. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.  

VINELAND, N.J. - The toy-collecting community came together with international force Thursday evening as Bertoia Auctions hosted the opening session of its sale of the Donald Kaufman antique toy collection.

The March 19 event attracted bidders from all over the United States, as well as France, Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom, and such exotic ports of call as Curacao and Tortola.

Structured as a sampler of what would follow on Friday and Saturday, the 283-lot first-session offering gave bidders a taste of American cast iron, European tin character and automotive, TootsieToys and games - and they didn't hold back, either in the room or on the Internet, which played a significant role in underbidding. Early reports were that the session clocked out at somewhere between $700K-$800K.

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A Nevada collector believes he has found a mid-1800s photographic image of Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general who went on to become the nation's 18th president.

A University of Nevada, Las Vegas archivist says the daguerreotype appears to be an authentic image of Grant, who served two terms as president from 1869 to 1877.

Collector Randall Spencer said he would prefer to sell the image to a historical institution for public display, but would consider selling it to
a private collector to finance his search for vanishing images of U.S. history.

"I was told that the man who had these had bought stacks of daguerreotypes, and they were obviously from a collection because they were all the finest quality I have ever seen," Spencer said.

Spencer, 56, is an alternative rock 'n' roll guitar player who performs under the name Eric London. In the 1970s, his day job was managing the Early American division for a large antique dealership. Later he started his own shop in California's Bay Area.

"There was at that time still an abundance of Early American photography that had not been examined, especially in San Francisco, because when people went West in the mid-19th century, that's where they ended up," Spencer said. "And what really launched me into photography was discovering a picture of Mrs. Thomas Lincoln, Sarah Bush Lincoln, the stepmother who raised Abraham Lincoln.

Spencer thinks it was 1991, but remembers the date clearly: Lincoln's birthday.

It had been discarded out of a sterling silver photo album that was put up for sale in the same store. He captured the image but wasn't able to get the album.

That was the point when interest became obsession, Spencer said. He began poring over books and memorizing every known image he could find, captured in the 19th century dawn of photography, of any American historical figure.

NEW YORK (AP) - A silver Torah crown and pointer worth thousands of dollars are going on the auction block - another casualty of the Bernard Madoff scandal.

The items belong to Rhea Schindler of Westport, Conn., the 75-year-old widow of a New York City rabbi who invested nearly all of his pension with the disgraced financier, her daughter, Elisa Schindler, said Thursday.

The Judaica will be sold at the J. Greenstein auction house on June 8. The Torah ornaments were a gift to Rabbi Alexander Schindler on his retirement in 1996 as president of the Union for Reform Judaism. He died in 2000.

The 12-inch pointer, made in the Netherlands in the 1800s and encrusted with European-cut diamonds, could fetch as much as $25,000, said auctioneer Jonathan Greenstein. The pointer, or Yad, is used so that hands never touch the sacred Hebrew text.

The Torah crown, an ornate piece that adorns the holy scroll, is from the mid-20th century and is expected to bring $5,000 to $7,000.