Beginning June 23 and continuing through June 25 is Brian Lebel’s Cody Old West Show & Auction, a popular summer event in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Western Great Lakes ball-headed club, 23 x 6½ x 3" Estimate: $150/200,000
Taking place at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center, the Cody Old West Show & Auction will offer a stunning array of material, from cowboy gear, fine art, Native American items and objects related to the West and Southwest. “Because of the wide variety of material available at the show—from cowboy to Native American, from old to new, and from inexpensive to lavish—it’s often difficult to explain to people what exactly the event is like,” says Lebel, who started the show 34 years ago in Cody, Wyoming. “But one thing is certain-: after someone’s first visit, they come back every year. It’s a special event with a community like none other.”
Parker Field & Co. 1864 Indian tack gun, 42” barrel, 58” overall Estimate: $50/60,000
The show is set up in two parts: a dealer show with booths in the convention center on June 24 and 25, and a 300-lot auction on June 24. There is also a special early-bird opening for the show on June 23 for VIPs and vendors. Between the various events, collectors will have many chances to add a huge variety of Western material to their collections—from fine art paintings and sculpture to cowboy gear, Native American pottery and weavings, decorative objects, books, boots, hats and historic memorabilia on artifacts.
Highlights in the sale include a number of Native American pieces, the most prominent one being a Western Great Lakes ball-headed club measuring 23 inches long. “A fine example of an Ojibwa carved club with incised floral and figural decoration on the flat-sided handle and the ball. The ball shows use but the paint is overall smooth and even,” the catalog notes. “Elegant but deadly, ball-headed clubs are seen as an art form but had the efficiency of a very deadly weapon in the hands of a Native American warrior. These clubs were popular for 200 to 300 years and were associated with mostly peoples of the Northeast and Great Lakes regions before pipe tomahawks gained preference around the beginning of the 1800s.” The estimate for the item is $150,000 to $200,000.
Plateau beaded cradleboard, ca. 1880s Estimate: $15/25,000
Also available is a Parker Field & Co. 1864 tack gun (est. $50/60,000), an exceptionally fine Cheyenne beaded cradleboard from 1870 to 1880 (est. $25/35,000), a Plateau beaded cradleboard from the 1880s (est. $15/25,000), a Lakota beaded bridle from around the 1880s (est. $10/15,000), a beaded pictorial vest (est. $20/25,000) and a Navajo pictorial rug (est. $4/6,000) by Mike Cowdrey and Ned and Jody Martin.
Navajo pictorial rug, 49½ x 66¾" Estimate: $4/6,000
Other items in the sale include an extensive collection of Will James artwork, silver parade saddles from the Edward H. Bohlin company and many objects from the cowboy side of the Old West. The draw for many collectors, though, will be the Native American artifacts and objects, which are also popular categories amid the dealer booths in the show portion of the weekend.
Lakota beaded bridle, ca. 1880s-1890s, 9 x 6½ x 23" Estimate: $10/15,000
“Native American artifacts are particularly strong this auction,” adds Lebel.
These twice-a-year sales frequently feature strong representation of Native American materials, including historic objects by unknown or deceased artists and contemporary work by living artists of all varieties. Areas where the sales perform strongly include pottery, weavings, basketry and beaded objects, from tobacco bags and knife sheathes to cradleboards and vests.
Beaded pictorial vest, Estimate: $20/25,000
This year’s event will mark the first collaboration with Morphy Auctions, with which Lebel and his Old West Events have partnered. Collectors can expect to see all of Lebel’s high-quality material and dealers, and also Morphy’s expanded opportunities in the auction world. One of the big changes that the partnership has allowed is a new show in Las Vegas in January 2024. The show is moving to Nevada from Mesa, Arizona, where it had been for many years.
Cheyenne beaded cradleboard, ca. 1870-1880, fully beaded cradle with blue-beaded background and decorated with geometric design in colorful patterns, mounted to wood slats studded with brass tacks, beaded cover is 25” long with the sticks being 40½” tall Estimate: $25/35,000
“It’s going to be an exciting opportunity for us and our Western dealers,” Lebel says. “We’re thrilled at what the future holds in Santa Fe and Las Vegas.”
June 23-25, 2023
Brian Lebel’s Cody Old West Show & Auction
Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501
(480) 779- 9378, www.oldwestevents.com
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