Skinner is honored to be offering the Kolar collection as the centerpiece of its annual August Americana Auction. Carefully assembled over decades by collector, scholar, and author John Kolar, the collection is an impressive grouping of Americana. The collection is especially strong in the decorative arts of rural Pennsylvania and Ohio, exuberant paint-decorated dower chests, fraktur, and painted boxes, including examples by the Compass Artist and the Checkerboard Artist. The timed online only auction opens Monday, Aug 3, and closes Wednesday, Aug 12., at 7 p.m. Visit www.skinnerinc.com for terms, conditions, and bidding instructions. The 300-plus sale begins with spectacular mochaware china, painted furniture, formal furniture, portraits including a pair attributed to George Hartwell depicting a husband and wife, Pennsylvania and New England redware, stoneware, weathervanes, gameboards, windsor chairs, fine baskets, quilts, and more. Lehnware includes a fine lidded sugar pail and decorated box. A red painted ground Compass Artist box will be sold, ex. Harry Hartman, and also a blue ground example in rare slide-lid box form, ex. Chris Machmer. Many lots of very good fraktur will be sold, including several taufshein by Abraham Huth, ca. 1805-15, with unique characteristic vivid red and yellow tulips, birds, and stars, and excellent examples by Rev. Henry Young, Abraham Brubaker (Huber Artist), and Ehre Vater Artist. A rare paint-decorated slant-lid wooden box attributed to Checkerboard Artist possibly Somerset County, Pa., with red, black, yellow, and dark green unique banding/checkerboard pattern and scalloping with geometricly incised outlines, is an expected highlight in the painted box category. A Sugar Creek Township, Tuscarawas County, Ohio, 1846, paint-decorated lift-top chest, the facade lettered in yellow Noah Mali and dated 1846, above a rectangular reserve painted with a scene of a red-roofed two-story house, and flanking floral reserves will be estimated at $15,000-$20,000. This chest was used as the frontispiece illustration for Ohio Furniture Makers 1790 to 1860, by Jane Sikes and Edward M. Hageman, in 1989. A Berks County, Pa., early 19th century paint-decorated lift-top chest painted all over with salmon ground, and varied designs in pink, black, white pinwheels, floral devices, and black dots, above a facade centering carved applied floral and heart and tulip ornament flanked by painted arched reserves with pinwheels and tulips, will be estimated at $6,000-$8,000. It has a very unusual applied tulip and heart carving in center front. The full catalog for the Kolar sale and August Americana sale is online at www.skinnerinc.com. To learn more, call Skinners Americana Department at 508-970-3200 or email americana@skinnerinc.com. Images courtesy of Skinner Auctions.