Collective Hudson Releases Its Treasures At A Gallery Closing Sale

Collective Hudson is ending its short run at 602 Warren Street in Hudson New York, with a Gallery Closing auction that is turning heads and offering some of the biggest names in jewelry, fine art and furnishings available at bargain starting bids. The culmination of owner Marc Miller’s 46 years in antique dealing, the auction, set for October 3 at 10 a.m., is a dream for collectors, investors and deal hunters.

Miller opened the Collective Hudson storefront in just 2018, and said he’s closing shop now simply because he couldn’t give it enough of his personal attention. Miller is, in addition to a prodigious dealer, a top-rated real estate and commercial business attorney, leading his Kingston, New York, firm of Marc W. Miller & Associates. With the current market boom taking up so much of the law firm’s energy he decided it was time to scale down his antique business.

To do so, he’s looking to move a significant amount of items, including hundreds of estate jewelry pieces from Tiffany, Cartier, Buccellati, David Webb, Henry Dunay, H. Stern, Angela Cummings, Van Cleef & Arpels, Patek Philippe, Piaget, Taxco, Frascarolo Modele Depose, Gucci, and a lot more. The fine art collection on the block includes the work of masters of many schools such as Picasso, Fletcher Martin, Laura Grisi, John Fenton, William Nelson, Joan Miro, Man Ray, and on and on. 

Home decor, ceramics, lamps and glass work from the studios of Frank Lloyd Wright, Giacometti, Edgar Brandt, Robert Kuo, and so many others make for an incredibly enticing slate of offerings. Every piece has been professionally appraised and verified and is backed, more than anything, by Miller’s lifetime of credibility and success in the industry. 

In 1975, while Miller was attending law school and working as a contractor in New York City, he began to notice interior design trends and started to attend auctions. He bought his first house in the Hudson Valley at the age of 22, and went to auctions here as well. He saw how different styles sold better in different areas and began strategically buying and auctioning until he was able to actually purchase the Chichester Auction Hall in Phoenicia. He brought pieces up from the city and worked with mentors in the industry to learn all he could.

He soon started sourcing and selling farther afield, importing from Europe and moving auction items throughout the U.S. He noticed, for instance, that in New Orleans dealers had softwood furnishings that New Yorkers loved but southerners considered “slave furniture,” so he brought softwoods up north to sell and took down the more traditional European goods southerners were after at the time.

Miller established a 40,000-square-foot warehouse on Route 28 outside Hudson and soon — all while simultaneously establishing his law career — had auction houses and dealers coming to him to sell and source items. He even bought the grand old Hudson Elk’s lodge in the 1990s and ran his business from there for some time before selling it.

“I was in Hudson when it was becoming the antiques capital it it now,” Miller said. “Now, Collective Hudson is too far for me to supervise properly from an hour away in Kingston.”

The totality of Miller’s nearly half century of expertise and selective eye is evident in the auction catalog for Collective Hudson’s closing sale, which will be held with live auctioneers, virtually on Bidsquare and Invaluable.

“We’ve assembled a huge aray of amazing things,” Miller said. “These are beautiful, high-value, quality assets that will appreciate in value. One-of-a-kind stuff that’s timeless.” 

Napoleonic Inkwell Circa 1840

Some of the most noticeable pieces in the auction are the smallest, and shiniest. There’s a Tiffany & Co watch that retails for $140,000 with a starting bid of $10,000. The authentic, custom-made watch is smothered in baguettes and round, brilliant cut diamonds, sapphires, and an 18 karat white gold bracelet watch with mother-of-pearl dial and sapphire hour markers.

Less flashy but more rare is the original, and possibly only, Angela Cummings Nocturnal Necklace, made for Tiffany & Company. The 18 karat gold collar necklace was designed by Cummings for Tiffany and it was photographed and included in its 1983 catalog. However, right about this time, according to Miller, Cummings announced she was leaving Tiffany to start her own studio. The piece was already in the catalog, but, apparently, no others were produced or made and she could not make it for her studio because it was designed for Tiffany. Miller’s research has found no evidence of another example of the piece, making it a one-of-a-kind artifact of Tiffany history, available at a starting bid of $7,000, though it will likely go for as much as $50,000.

With so many auctions behind him, Miller has a relaxed, almost philosophical attitude about his auction’s low prices.

“The interest and the market will determine the price,” he said. “It’s all contextual. What makes a dollar worth a dollar? I don’t know how it will end up. That’s the fun of it.”

Miller says the auction, and leaving Hudson, is a step towards “gearing down” a bit as he gracefully glides into his 70s. But a slower pace is unlikely for the workaholic. Miller has a patent pending on new technology to fix the frustrating and too often glitchy online auction system. So while the gears are shifting, Miller clearly still has his foot on the gas. 

The Collective Hudson auction catalog is a repository of spectacular, often museum-quality works of art and craftsmanship. Whether splurging on a big-ticket item or hunting for a steal, there seems to be a treasure for just about anyone.