Upcoming Events

October 27-28 - RISD: Art and Antiques Appraisal + Connoisseurship "Portsmouth Ramble" with Evelyn Lamprey. A tour of Portsmouth, including visits to historic houses, antiques shops and lectures by local historians. Wear your best walking shoes! Itinerary coming soon - contact me for details.

Past events

June 27, 2008 - RISD - Appraising American Folk Art Painting
Deborah Child. This daylong workshop acquaints participants with the challenges inherent in assigning fair market and insurance values to American folk art. We begin with a brief overview of market highlights, and then discuss the roles of condition, scholarship, marketing and provenance as they impact value. The benefits of cataloguing paintings as Anonymous/American School versus establishing an artist's identity are also explored. In addition, students learn how artistic identity can be firmly established through genealogical sources, account books, periodicals and diaries. A review of the prices commanded by the portraits of Ammi Phillips, now setting record highs in the marketplace, provides a useful case study for assigning market values. The session concludes with the group assigning values to American folk paintings in a variety of genres including weathervanes, marine and landscape.

June 26, 2008 - RISD Lecture: Establishing an Appraisal Practice

January 16, 2008 5:30 p.m. Warner House ANNUAL MEETING
Stoodley’s Tavern, Strawbery Banke Museum. Speaker Deborah Child will present: Great Aunt Florence’s Trunk: Discovering the Artistic Legacy of John Samuel Blunt

September 12, 2007
Great Aunt Florence’s Trunk:
Saving J. S. Blunt’s Artistic Legacy

Deb Child, author of The Sketchbooks of John Samuel Blunt, will discuss how the Blunt family’s interest in their ancestry has led to new insights into this Portsmouth artist as he tried to make a living in Federal America. By placing his sketchbook, ledger book, early correspondence and genealogical notes in her trunk for safekeeping, the artist’s granddaughter preserved concrete proof of Blunt's sustained interest in becoming a landscape artist. 11 am at the Moffatt-Ladd House, Portsmouth, NH

July 26-28 2007
Important July Estates Auction at John McInnis Auctioneers

July 17, 2007
Book signing of The Sketchbooks of John Samuel Blunt by Deborah M. Child, design and photography by E.S. Lamprey. Published by the Portsmouth Athenaeum.

June 1 - October 31, 2007
John Samuel Blunt's Views From Nature at the Portsmouth Historical Society. Deborah M. Child, Curator

Spring 2007
Volume II • Piscataqua Decorative Arts Society Lecture Series Publication 2004-2006, E.S. Lamprey design

2/1/07 Lecture: Research on the Internet at Pratt Institute, New York