"PIETAS" by Gerald Caron

Pietas in Latin means piety, devotion, kindness, compassion, dutifulness, dutiful conduct.

Gerald Caron chose his subjects from the rocky shoreline of Maine to the sandy beaches of Connecticut. Yankee Magazine commissioned him to paint the cover for its July 1986 magazines. The result was Pietas, arguably the finest painting that Caron has ever painted. Only a few signed and numbered prints remain.

Artist: Gerald Caron
Title: “Pietas”
Type: Historic
Size: 17" X 22"
For availability and pricing, contact Adam.

Three Generations

Welcome to my blog! This is a real honest-to-goodness photograph of the first truck my father purchased to transport furniture consigned to him for restoration. He did the lettering on the truck himself. His business was in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn in the 1920's and the name of the business, Safra Roma, came from this ancient Roman coin, which I still have in my possession.

My grandfather was a cowboy in Argentina and a cowboy in our own Wild West. He came to Waterbury CT from Italy in 1932 to work with my father, restoring and making fine furniture. At some point he worked installing railroad track from New York to Connecticut.

I don't ride a horse or drive a truck. The last thing I carted in my vehicle was a box of water damaged music books. I had to spray my trunk with Fabreze to get rid of the mildew odor. They didn't have Febreze back in the day but it looks like the air conditioning option didn't cost extra! My appraisal assignments have taken me all over the country in my various roadsters and I have a lot to share, so keep coming back for more posts.

Is wine a good investment?

Last year’s Wall Street nosedive and mortgage crisis prompted many investors to seek out more stable markets than stocks and real estate. A handful of success stories (such as that of the 1961 Chateau Latour) make wine an attractive prospect. The Chinese in Hong Kong have recently begun investing heavily, garnering a good chunk of the fine wine market.

Yes, wine is a somewhat unique commodity in that improvement in quality is built into its molecules. This characteristic cannot, however, be equated with resale value. There are no guarantees or easy rides. Factors to consider:

Taste is subjective. A bottle of wine’s resale value is only as much as someone else is willing to pay for it.

The “butterfly effect” – in a global economy, the fine wine market can be affected by shifting currencies and even schemes such as Bernie Madoff’s.

The quality of a wine is not discernible at time of production.

Preserving and storing fine wines is expensive and subject to risk – floods, earthquakes, power outages. A bottle of wine, while aging, is subject to problems such as oxidation, corking, and cooking (exposure to heat).

One must be licensed to sell wine and must produce proof of provenance. Besides "chain of custody" that means documentation that storage requirements were consistently met.

Counterfeiting is on the rise. Even if a label is authentic, the bottle could have been refilled with an inferior product. (A clue to this is lack of sediment).

Wine futures can be a good investment for those who have the time and resources, along with knowledge of the product and the increasingly complex marketplace. Otherwise, the value of a bottle of wine is based on how much you will enjoy it when you drink it.