04 August 2013

Anton Chotka (18??-19??)

This ongoing series about Top eBay Chess Items by Price depends heavily on an image of the chosen item. For this current edition I had the choice between a bound set of the'"Deutschen" Schachzeitung 1846-1848' (sold for US $2455 after 7 bids) and the item pictured below, an 'ANTON CHOTKA LAMP WITH "TWO MEN PLAYING CHESS"'. The photo of the book was as uninteresting as you might expect, so I chose the lamp.

The Chotka lamp, which sold 'Buy It Now' for US $1200, was described only as

Anton Chotka (1875-1925) COLD PAINTED BRONZE FIGURAL LIGHT - Cast as two Arabs playing chess upon a carpet, one seated on a bench below a lantern. At a private auction, a lamp like this went for $9,000. It is an amazing lamp. The lamp itself works. See the pictures. A wonderful piece to own.

I couldn't find much about Chotka on the web, and there is some disagreement on his life span: 'Anton Chotka (1878-1928)' and 'Anton Chotka (1881-1955, Austrian)'. Is art history even more unreliable than chess history?

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