Photo courtesy of The Potomack Company
Large Copper 50 Gallon Fermentation Vessel, 19th Century (H:23 3/4 x W:41 in)Estimate: $1,000-2,000
The Potomack Company of Alexandria is excited to announce its Sept. 22 auction: “The Collection of Sandy Lerner: Ayrshire Farm, Upperville, Va.”
It's not the only big news for the auction house. On the occasion of Potomack's 20th anniversary this year, the business is expanding its brand with the opening of an upscale gallery at 601 Prince St., where they will showcase high-end fine art and jewelry collections, a spokesperson said Friday. Potomack Company has purchased the historic 19th-century Romanesque church at 601 Prince St. and plans to open its gallery there in September.
Cisco Systems co-founder and author Sandy Lerner has been driven by a passion for collecting as well as her drive to innovate. With the sale of her celebrated 571-acre Ayrshire Farm in Upperville, Va., in the spring for $20 million (featured in The Wall Street Journal), nearly 400 pieces of her collection from the estate will be offered at the Potomack Company auction house in Alexandria. Spanning decorative objects, fine art, furnishings and personal treasures, the auction offers a compelling window into her world, shaped by bold ideas and relentless curiosity.
Photo courtesy of The Potomack Company
Spode ‘Stafford Flowers’ Service for Twelve, 166 Pieces; estimate:$5,000-10,000
That same curiosity that defined Lerner’s career as a visionary across technology, beauty and sustainable agriculture is vividly expressed in her collection. She collected with intention across an extraordinary range of objects and periods, never bound by a single category or convention but always drawn to objects of beauty, wit and meaning.
Lerner launched Cisco from her living room in the 1980s, building the first commercially viable router that allowed computers to network with one another. After leaving Silicon Valley, she founded Urban Decay, upending the beauty industry with bold, unconventional aesthetics, and went on to establish Ayrshire Farm, a working farm dedicated to organic, humane and sustainable agriculture.
Photo courtesy of The Potomack Company
Ronald Stevens Pink Opal Carved Persian CatEstimate: $3,000-4,000
It was among the first of its kind in Virginia. She also authored Caticons: 4,000 Years of Art Imitating Cats, a testament to her deep love of cats.
Other exciting auctions coming up include:
• Harold Courlander (of Bethesda), who wrote the novel upon which the original blockbuster novel and movie Roots was based
• Two major recently re-discovered paintings by British artists George Romney and William Etty from the estate collection of Arthur Cohen (Bethesda)
Tucked into a 15,000-square-foot converted warehouse at 1120 N. Fairfax St., and now in a renovated gallery in a historic 19th-century Romanesque church at 601 Prince St., The Potomack Company has spent nearly two decades turning Old Town into an unlikely hub of the international art market.
Founded in 2006 by Elizabeth Haynie Wainstein, the firm took its name from a defunct Alexandria business established in 1785 with the help of George Washington. Wainstein, who spent eight years at Sotheby's in New York and London before running Brockett's Row Antiques in Old Town for 13 years, built the house around a roster of specialists in fine art, antiques, jewelry, Asian art, silver, rugs and decorative arts. She has credited the internet with making the venture possible at all, arguing that online platforms let regional houses reach the worldwide audience Sotheby's and Christie's had long monopolized through their international offices.
What distinguishes Potomack is less what it sells than whom it sells for. Wainstein attributes the caliber of consignments to the region itself — a well-educated, international community whose residents, as she puts it, lead fascinating lives, travel to fascinating places and accumulate objects to match. Sales have included:
•Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Picassos
•Lace associated with George and Martha Washington
•A Warhol its owner had mistaken for a poster
• Chief Justice Warren Burger's personal effects, including a Rolex and a painting by Dwight Eisenhower
• Colin Powell's Luke Skywalker Light Saber from George Lucas
• George Washington's direct descendant consigned a painting that hung at Mount Vernon while George Washington was living there
• An important collection of 20th and 21st century African Art from Janet Stanley, the former chief librarian for the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s Warren M. Robbins Library
• A Washington-area grocery-store heiress collection
And in 2011, the house helped return a pair of urns tied to Arlington National Cemetery's Memorial Amphitheater to the Army after brokering an agreement between the service and the consignor.
Today the gallery hosts primarily open public previews culminating in bidding on an online auction format, with previews held in person at the Fairfax Street space — roughly five minutes from I-495 and 10 from Reagan National.
