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Constellation, by Helen Gerardia, 1956. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Samuel Sumner Goldberg, 1977.
The month he was to be sworn in as the first vice president of the United States, John Adams expected to see a comet. In fact, Adams helped to pay for a publication announcing the celestial appearance, an auspicious astronomical event for the first month of the new federal government.
Since the classical era, comets had been imagined as ill omens for rulers. Plutarch linked the appearance of a comet to the death of Julius Caesar, and William Shakespeare would invoke this association in the sixteenth century when he wrote a play dramatizing Caesar’s assassination. But while the traditional link between the appearance of comets and the deaths of kings had not changed by the late eighteenth century, the ultimate meaning of that association had changed entirely. Revolutions and rebellions had taken on very different associations by this time, and so comets had likewise come
Stack’s Bowers Galleries is excited to announce their June 2021 Showcase Auction, the first event to be hosted at the state-of-the-art auction gallery in
Extraordinary New Jersey Coppers From the Donald G. Partrick Collection at Heritage
The
Donald G. Partrick Collection of Extraordinary Colonial Coinage Featuring New Jersey Coppers promises to strike a chord with specialists across every colonial collecting interest. Divided into robust Signature and Internet sessions, the sale includes 510 total lots-nearly 200 magnificent pieces in the live
Signature Session, complemented by over 300 impressive lots poised for enthusiastic competition in the
Internet Only session. The sale will be held at
Heritage Auctions in
New Jersey coppers headline the auction.
Donald G. Partrick sought out examples from the pre-federal issues (
Mark Newby’s St. Patrick farthings and