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Art: Decorative Arts

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Roberta Kramer
Managing Director, Chicago
RobertaK@ha.com
1-877-HERITAGE (877-437-4824)  x1759
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Roberta Kramer, Managing Director, Chicago, is a 25-year veteran of the art and antiques world. Before beginning her career in auctions, she spent two years curating for the Ben Uri Art Society in London. Returning stateside, Roberta served as Gallery Director for J. Rosenthal Fine Art until her interest in Continental Antiques led her to a management position at Rita Bucheit, Ltd. In 1992, with her extensive knowledge of fine art and antiques, Roberta started her auction career at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers as an account executive. In 1995, after taking a leave to found the Antiques Center at Kinzie Square, she was named Consignment Director of newly formed Chicago auction house, Susanins Auctions. While at Susanins she also managed the appraisal department and served as principal auctioneer alongside Sean Susanin. In 2001 she founded Roberta Kramer & Associates, Inc., a firm specializing in appraisals and art consulting. A recognized USPAP compliant appraiser and auctioneer, Roberta has served as a charity auctioneer for numerous charities and has been a frequent contributor to Art & Antiques Magazine.  
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Karen Rigdon
Director, Decorative Arts & Design/Silver & Vertu
KarenR@HA.com
1-877-HERITAGE (877-437-4824)  x1723
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Karen holds a Master’s Degree in Decorative Arts History from Parsons’s School of Design and the New School for Social Research through the Cooper Hewitt Museum.  Her career began in the curatorial departments of distinguished collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts where responsibilities included the reinstallation of the decorative arts collections and period rooms as well as establishing the collecting direction of the Norwest Modernism Collection.

She went on to Gallery Directorships in Chicago, Atlanta and Birmingham, MI, accepting opportunities to continue to curate exhibitions while buying extensively and developing private collections of furniture, ceramics and glass.  Beginning in 2003 she developed curriculum and taught graduate and undergraduate courses in the History of Decorative Arts for institutions including Georgia State University.

Karen has been with Heritage Auction since 2007, and has been involved with the Fine Silver & Vertu Auctions sincere their inception in May 2008.  She is currently Director of Silver and Decorative Arts.
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Nicholas Dawes
Sr. Vice President, Special Collections, New York
NickD@HA.com
1-877-HERITAGE (877-437-4824)  x1605
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Nick Dawes began his career in his native England and brings over forty years of experience in the antiques and fine art auction business. He emigrated to New York in 1979 and has pursued his career there as an auctioneer, appraiser, author, lecturer, and antiques dealer. Nick is a former Department Head and auctioneer at Phillips and at Sotheby’s in New York and has organized his own auctions at several prominent auction houses.  He held annual exhibitions of Lalique glass hood ornaments at the Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance for over twenty years since 1993 and is considered this country’s leading authority on the work of Rene Lalique. Nick is the author of four standard works on decorative arts, together with scores of articles, and lectures widely internationally.  He has been a faculty member of Parsons School of Design since 1984 and has taught Luxury Marketing at Columbia Business School and courses on English and French furniture at Bard Graduate Center. Nick is active within many charitable organizations and is the Chairman and CEO of Salmagundi, the oldest artist’s club in New York City founded in 1871.  He first appeared as an appraiser on "Antiques Roadshow" for PBS in the second ever broadcast of the show, and has appeared regularly ever since, discussing ceramics, glass, silver, and other decorative arts.
Headshot photo of Carolyn Mani
Carolyn Mani
Consignment Director and Trusts & Estates, Beverly Hills
CarolynM@HA.com
1-877-HERITAGE (877-437-4824)  x1677
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Carolyn Mani's background includes twenty years of experience in both live and online auctions, as well as an extensive background in appraising and vetting Furniture and Decorative Arts, Fine Art, Collectibles, Musical Instruments and Entertainment Memorabilia. Prior to joining Heritage, Carolyn was Director and Auctioneer at Bonhams (Butterfields).  She oversaw the estate department for more than ten years, established a proven track record in working with large consignments and institutions and was an accredited member of the International Society of Appraisers (ISA). Most recently, she has brought to auction the celebrity estates of Shirley Temple Black and Zsa Zsa Gabor with outstanding results.  As an auctioneer she has raised millions of dollars and provided auction services to numerous charities including John Wayne Cancer Society, Stars for a Cause, The LOOC foundation, Wheels for Humanity, The Beverly Hills Bar Association Barristers, The Chrysalis Foundation, Project Angel Food, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, The Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, Ed Asner Family Foundation and many others.
Headshot photo of Samantha Robinson
Samantha Robinson
Consignment Director, Decorative Arts & Design
SamanthaR@HA.com
1-877-HERITAGE (877-437-4824)  x1784
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Samantha Robinson is a Dallas-based Junior Specialist of Decorative Arts, with interest and expertise in Silver, Art Glass, and Design. Samantha received a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2010 and a Master of Arts in Art in Art History from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas in 2014. Her MA thesis, titled “An American Antiquity: The Iconography and Materialist of Tiffany & Co. ‘Aztec’ Style Silver,” examined Gilded Age notions of race, nationalism, and masculinity evident in Tiffany & Co.’s rare ‘Aztec’ style presentation silver, chief among them a coffee service commissioned by William Randolph Hearst in the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) permanent collection. Samantha joined the DMA as a McDermott Graduate Curatorial Intern of Decorative Arts in 2014, advancing to the positions of Digital Collections Content Coordinator in 2015 and finally Interim Assistance Curator in 2016. In addition to managing the research and display of the permanent collection, she curated three special exhibitions – The Wittgenstein Vitrine, Shaken, Stirred, Styled: The Art of the Cocktail, and Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion – that demonstrate the range of her knowledge of the Decorative Arts. Samantha served as an Editor at Everything But The House, a Cincinnati-based online estate sale start-up, before joining Heritage Auctions in June 2018.

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