The unusual pairing of Standardbred racing and stained glass has resulted in not one, but two mainstream news stories in the past few days. The question that is begging to be asked is ‘why?’
The first article, by The Independent, provides the significant back story on a stained glass piece, entitled ‘P-Town Race.’ The piece had adorned a four-foot by six-foot area near the entrance of the Pleasanton Hotel, located in Pleasanton (also known as ‘P-Town’), California.
The Pleasanton racetrack is regarded as the oldest continually operating track in California, and, according to the article, is the oldest one-mile racetrack in America (six years older than Saratoga). In the early 1980s, Margene Rivara was commissioned to create a local historical piece for the Pleasanton Hotel, and what she came up with was the P-Town Race piece, which features the use of a rare opalescence grained red-brown glass from Oregon. At one time, Rivara had been considered one of the 10 best stained-glass artists in the United States, and the piece was held in high esteem by people that know the level of craftsmanship that it possessed.
The Pleasanton Hotel changed hands over the years and was ultimately closed at the end of 2008. Some of the items went to auction, including the P-Town Race piece, which went to Sotheby’s for auction on January 14, 2009.
Without Rivara knowing, her brother, David Gerton, was successful in purchasing the P-Town Race after what has been described as an ‘aggressive’ bidding battle via phone. He had to spend $10,000 to win the bidding and another $2,200 to get it packaged up and sent to storage. The piece sat in storage in Oregon until money could be raised to bring the P-Town Race back to Pleasanton. An anonymous $2,000 donation allowed the transportation to happen.
“It’s a gorgeous piece, and Margene is a fantastic artist,” Gerton has told the East Bay Times. “When I found out it was going to auction, I thought that was (expletive), and I was going to see what I could do to get it.”
“A few days after the auction, I thought about it and wondered if he had bid on it,” Rivara said. “His only response was, ‘It was too rich for my blood,’” even though he ultimately told his sister that he had bought it.
To bring the story full circle, the P-Town Race has been reinstalled in the spot where it sat for so many years, which is now called the Pleasanton Hotel’s ‘Handles Gastropub.’
(With files from The Independent and the East Bay Times)