NEW YORK, NY.- Christie’s
presents Americana Week 2018, a series of auctions, viewings and events, to be held January 12-19. The week of sales is comprised of Chinese Export Art featuring 100 Lots from Marchant, Est. 1925 on January 18, Beyond Imagination: Outsider and Vernacular Art featuring the Collection of Marjorie and Harvey Freed on January 19, and Important American Furniture, Folk Art and Silver on January 19.

Highlights of the Chinese Export sale include 100 lots from the esteemed Chinese art dealers Marchant, est. 1925, and a very rare set of 17 blue and white dishes depicting the various stages of tea cultivation. The Important American Furniture, Folk Art and Silver auction features The Hunter-Dunn Family Chippendale Plum Pudding Mahogany Block-and-Shell Tall-Case Clock ($200,000-300,000), a tour-de-force of colonial American clockmaking; a Queen Anne Figured Maple Dressing Table, Philadelphia, 1750-1760 ($250,000-500,000), a masterpiece of Philadelphia’s Queen Anne aesthetic; and a painting by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), after Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), Portrait of George Washington as a Colonel of the Alexandria Militia, early 19th Century ($400,000-600,000). Among the silver highlights are ten lots of Silver Formerly from The Dwight D. and Mamie Eisenhower Collection: Property of The John S.D. Eisenhower Trust, including a Tiffany flatware service monogramed ‘DDE,’ and also engraved ‘The Columbine,’ which was the very first Airforce 1. Beyond Imagination: Outsider and Vernacular Art features an exceptional collection of Outsider art from Marjorie and Harvey Freed, led by a double-sided watercolor by Henry Darger (1892-1973), 93 At Jennie Richee, are chaced for long distance by Glandelinians with blood hounds. / 95 At Jennie Richee, Escape down Aronburgs Run River through circle section in storm ($200,000-400,000). The sale also includes sculptures by William Edmondson and significant works by well-known American and European artists including Adolf Wölfli, Bill Traylor and Aloïse Corbaz.

In all, Americana Week 2018 will offer nearly 500 carefully curated lots across the three auctions. In conjunction with the sales, Christie’s will host the annual Eric M. Wunsch Award for Excellence in the American Arts on January 17 honoring Wendell Castle, American furniture artist and a leading figure in American craft, and Audrey Heckler, seasoned collector and patron of Outsider art. Additionally, a curated selection of property from The Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller will be exhibited during the Americana Week preview from January 12-18.

Christie’s Americana Week kicks off with Chinese Export Art Featuring 100 Lots from Marchant, Est. 1925 on January 18, which offers more than 200 lots and is highlighted by classic pieces from established private collections. Property from the esteemed London dealers Marchant, whose single-owner sale was a resounding success at Christie’s in September, includes blue and white, famille verte, famille rose, armorial and European subject porcelain as well as animals, figures and glass pictures.

Selections from private collections include a very rare and large punchbowl depicting a procession of European horsemen, a boar’s head soup tureen, armorial porcelain for the Russian Imperial court, and ‘tobacco leaf’, ‘Pompadour’ and ‘Rockefeller’ pattern pieces. The sale is rounded out by a group of American market porcelains and a number of rare China Trade paintings in oil on canvas.

Christie’s presents the dedicated auction of Outsider art, Beyond Imagination: Outsider and Vernacular Art featuring the Collection of Marjorie and Harvey Freed to take place on January 19, 2018. This year’s offering features 90 lots across various media, including sculpture, painting, and works-on-paper from preeminent “old masters” of Outsider art, including James Castle, William Edmonson, and Bill Traylor, as well as by contemporary self-taught artists George Widener and Domenico Zindato, among others.

The sale includes works from renowned private collections, featuring over 50 lots from the great early collectors of Outsider art, the Chicago-based Marjorie and Harvey Freed. The Freeds sustained a half-century-long love affair with the genre, acquiring works by artists like Henry Darger and Bill Traylor who were edgy, different, and - at first - not household names, and from local artists including William Dawson, Lee Godie and Wesley Willis, among others. As art lovers, the Freeds helped establish Chicago’s Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, ensuring the field they love has a good home for the next generation. The top lot of the collection and of the sale is a large-scale double-sided watercolor and collage by Henry Darger, 93 At Jennie Richee, are chaced for long distance by Glandelinians with blood hounds. / 95 At Jennie Richee, Escape down Aronburgs Run River through circle section in storm ($200,000-400,000).

In addition to the Freed Collection, the sale includes works that reveal the history and future of Outsider Art. Two important works from the Namits Collection speak to the origins of the field in Europe: Adolf Wölfli, Untitled, 1918 (estimate: $40,000-80,000) and Aloïse Corbaz, Aristoloches (double-sided), circa 1925-1933 ($40,000-80,000).