Bonhams Skinner

Judith Sumner

Beware of credit card security when dealing with the new Bonham's regime at Skinner. We recently were notified by Fidelity that our credit card number was discovered "for sale on the dark web" as a result of nefarious activity at the main London office of Bonham's. Fidelity cancelled the card and left us waiting for a replacement, and we still must deal with possible fraudulent charges. So after many years, we are now former Skinner customers--until they lift the requirement that customers must share credit card information in order to bid in one of their auctions.

Kenneth Shaw

Absolutely the worst!! They will do anything to avoid paying you Kerry Schreiber should be fired on the spot! DON’T CONSIGN WITH SKINNERS! I consigned a Viola that somehow got swapped out for a lesser viola and they tried to pass it off as mine in their auction. Not only did it not look like my viola, this piece had a label, and it was a cheap Strad. Copy. I dealt with Adam Tober, Skinners “Expert”. I made an appointment with Tober for the July 14th 2021 to bring these items in to consign to Skinners musical Instrument Dept. Tober had viewed the items I brought in, He had written down the lots and asked me “ which of these items do think is the most valuable?” An odd question at best….. I told him the bows and the American Violin are decent but the viola is nice. After seeing the paperwork on the consignment control form I questioned his estimate on the viola as it being very low and he said this was a formality and that he would need to look at it closer and adjust it at a later date. Tober’s vibe was uncomfortable to me and him asking me that question was very odd and I felt uneasy as I left items with him. I wanted to give Tober , not ever meeting him before, and Skinners the benefit of the doubt and left the items in they're care. After receiving a “day of auction” notification of the auction with a list of my items coming up for auction it was obvious that my Viola was swapped out for a much lesser and very cheap viola, whether this was done on purpose or a simple mistake is questionable. After alerting them of this mistake I have been treaded with a lack of interest in my “loss” of items and an indifference to them ever getting this resolved. After many emails to Adam Tober and Karen Keane (president of Skinners) with little to no action and many phone calls always being sent directly to voice. My next action is to go legal and very public.

Peter Kreckovic

They are deceptive and unethical. I bid on four items on their online rug auction. Their online auctions are run in a rather confusing and cumbersome way. It was twenty minutes before the items I was interested in were going to close. I placed my maximum bids online for the items; my maximum bids were about 50% over the current bids. To my shock the bid prices jumped to what I had just put in as my maximum offer or one increment below that on all four items. From this it was clear that they do not bid for you in a competitive way the way other auction platforms do. I had read carefully their instructions for bidding online, and nowhere did they disclose that they would jump the bids up to my maximum. There was NO disclosure. They are dishonest. Shame!

Alan Z

Avoid Skinner! Apart from a few bright spots (Judith/Asian Art and her scholar/assistant Richard, Jonathan/Clocks and Watches, and a generally amiable, well-intentioned staff, albeit with one or two nonresponsive or conceited higher-ups), Skinner can be a miserable place to sell your artwork. As a late, very accomplished and knowledgeable ethnographic art and antiquities dealer from Cambridge (N.H.) once observed to me after a Skinner auction, Skinner sells art "by the yard". By that he meant that in his view (and I concur), Skinner runs a wholesale, high volume business catering to dealers seeking cheap inventory. In my view, Skinner has never developed the cachet necessary to build the level of retail (i.e., collector) presence achieved by the the top-tier N.Y. firms. And their recent headline making acceptance (and later withdrawal) of a painting misidentified as a Florine Stettheimer (an important, albeit not well known, artist) cannot engender much trust among collectors. Concerning consignments, under their contract, Skinner can lower estimates and place artwork in a cheap (less expensive to run) Discovery sale where low estimates and low expectations set the stage for low results. The sale of a painting by Anne Harris, "Self-Portrait in Paul's Shirt", provides a good example of what can go wrong at Skinner. Originally sold by Nielsen Gallery, Boston, it was placed by Skinner 'specialists' in a Discovery sale, (Discovery/Studio Paintings, Nov. 10, 2010, 2525M/Marlborough, lot 39) sat unnoticed, and sold for a hammer price of $350, about 98% below her gallery pricing at the time. According to Anne, Phil (Alexandre Gallery) sought out the purchaser and bought the painting for $4,000. Another work by Anne Harris, "With Max in May", (Studio Art Online, July 10, 2019, 3267T/Marlborough, lot 1303), from a series that formed the basis for a museum solo exhibition, sold for $1,500, half of its original Nielsen Gallery price, and about 75% below her current gallery pricing. And a painting by Laurel Hughes, "Settling", (Discovery Interiors, August 21, 2019, 3280T, lot 1140) sold for $130, about 90% below its original Nielsen Gallery price. In my view, any of these works would have done well in a better promoted and followed (and more expensive to run) fine art auction. But that is not how Skinner chose to handle them. At times Skinner's cataloging is so poorly executed that it descends into the realm of the comic. A collagraph by Donald Hugo Stoltenberg (Discovery Interiors 3280T, lot 1446) was first attributed to "Stattenberg Rimp" (a misreading of the abbreviation for R. impressit - that the work was executed and printed by the artist). The entry was corrected only a few days after the catalog went online, but the sparse descriptive text lacked the work's date and edition number, only stating its dimensions and that it was a print. Estimated at $20-200, the work sold for $20. Bravo once again to Skinner for meeting its low estimate target! Two monotypes by the late Sally Bishop, (Discovery Interiors 3280T, lots 1138, 1139) a talented artist and educator from Worcester, had images so poorly executed that the works, although rectilinear, appear trapezoidal. And, although corrected now, both works were depicted upside down in the online catalog, one throughout the duration of the auction. Bravo again to Skinner! And kudos for making bargain seekers giddy at their consignors' expense! My advice? Go elsewhere, maybe to a good boutique firm like (rhymes with) Logan, if you need to stay in Boston, or (rhymes with) wind, man, (they recently did well with a Susanna Coffey painting), in the Windy City if you can ship there.