Dear Diva Readers,
top: 5px; float: left; color: white; background: #781300; border: 1px solid darkkhaki; font-size: 50px; line-height: 40px; padding-top: 1px; padding-right: 5px; font-family: times;”>The number one rule of advice I give clients on our antique buying tours is to buy what you love.
Recently Susan Cohan, principal of Susan Cohan Gardens, a boutique design studio which specializes in residential landscape design, booked a 10 day long Antiques Diva Gardens and Ornaments tour in France & Belgium to shop the flea markets, warehouses and architectural salvage stores, bringing a group of her friends with her to shop abroad with diva style.
While we were in Belgium her son was rummaging through a flea market and fell in love with a gorgeous Art Nouveau Mucha print which he bought for 12 Euro. Bringing it back to New York he and his mother dropped the print off at the framers. As they were unmatting it they discovered that this “print” was in fact “the real deal.”
LANGAGE DES FLEURS.
Plate 35 from Album de la Decoration.
10 3/8×14 1/4 inches. F. Champenois, Paris.
Condition A.
A brunette with flowing hair is caught in the midst of a fantastic swirl of Art Nouveau flowers in red, blue, green and yellow. A “projet de teinture” (“a study for fabric”) , Rennert/Weill refers to the finalized cloth version (printed on “satin or velveteen and possibly on silk” p. 396) and pictures two images clearly from the same series. Rennert/Weill A.11 (var).
It had been auctioned off at the Swann Galleries in 2002 for more than $2,000.
Susan’s son had his treasure framed behind UV glass with an acid free backing and matt and smiled all the way home – delighted with his Antiques Diva Antiques Roadshow moment.
The moral of this story according to Susan Cohan, “Buy art that you love and you will never be a loser! And, sometimes, you will be a really big winner!”
Bonne Shopping!
The Antiques Diva®
(seen above with Susan Cohan while shopping The Paris Flea Market)