Augusta Auctions represents museums, historical societies, universities and other institutions bringing to market museum deaccessions and patron donations, with sale proceeds earmarked to benefit their permanent collections. Our company also represents individuals and select estates in the auction of rare fashion items.

Consignors, both institutional and individual, are assured that their textile treasures will be treated with respect and will benefit from our targeted marketing programs directed to our customer base around the globe.

Serious buyers from the international fashion, museum, film and textile worlds travel each year to New York City, Vermont and Massachusetts to attend our specialty auctions. Consigned lots benefit from lively bidding online or at our various sale venues. 

Our founder, Karen Augusta, passed away on October 26, 2019 after a  courageous battle with endometrial cancer. During her life, she had dedicated her knowledge and talents to increasing the appreciation of fashion and textiles as an overlooked art form. She purchased, sold and appraised antique clothing, rare laces and textiles over a five decade career. A link to her obituary can be found here.

Augusta Auctions was created in 2000 to assist the family of Sue Varner (The Suzi's), in Farmville, Virginia. Karen and her husband developed the company to market Sue's historic clothing collection after her brutal ax murder. Karen and Sue were colleagues from the early days of the vintage movement. From this tragedy evolved America's premier company for auctioning vintage clothing and historic fashion.

Karen was a member of The Costume Society of America and The Textile Society of America. She served, for thirteen seasons, as a fashion and textile appraiser on the popular PBS series, Antiques Roadshow.

The guiding principles throughout her life were to treat everyone fairly and with compassion. She always went the extra mile to help others and make everyone comfortable. Her warmth and concern for people's needs was genuine.

Incredibly proud of her website and the information it contained, Karen constantly updated its contents as she learned something new. She viewed the site as a teaching tool and the best way to document the incredible pieces that crossed her path. She maintained her past sale archives, photo galleries and the searchable database and made them all available for free to fashion students and researchers around the world.

The staff of Augusta Auctions will continue to incorporate Karen's principles to guide the business as we expand into this new decade.

Bob first met Karen in college in New England in 1969. They had been married and worked together in their historic farmhouse for almost four decades.  In addition to developing several area businesses over his long career, Bob loves building new things. He created the internal systems used to catalog and present historic fashion to our customers, collectors, costumers and researchers.

Augusta Auctions adds more than ten thousand fashion and textiles objects to our catalogs each year. Our company offers this archived knowledge free to students, scholars and lovers of vintage around the world via a searchable database.  This database has been integrated into the search tool on this website, providing the most comprehensive searchable clothing and textile price guide anywhere on the web.

With Karen's passing, Bob has been working to build the team that will continue Karen's legacy. She spent much of her life and career appreciating the beauty of historic fashion and textiles and this website is a tribute to her love of these amazing objects.

Contact Bob

With a combined 13 years of experience in Costume History and Fine Jewelry, Jules brings a wholistic understanding of the history of The Decorative Arts. After completing a seven year apprenticeship with Master Jeweler, David Walter, she cataloged alongside Karen Augusta for the last year and half of Karen’s life. After her passing Jules assumed the oversight of daily operations at Augusta Auctions, from studio photography to social media and catalog production. Over the last six years, she has continued to collaborate with Costume Historian, Edward Maeder, in the production of our Auction catalogs, striving to bring the same integrity and passion to this valuable historical record. Jules has consulted for or collaborated with Sothebys, Doyle, The Colonial Dames of America, The Valentine Museum, The Museum of the City of New York and numerous historical societies and private museums. Jules volunteers for numerous non profits and is the current Northeastern Regional Chair of The Costume Society of America. 

Edward Maeder has been involved in the world of textiles since he began to embroidery at the age of three.  Fascinated by all forms of textile creation - from weaving to knitting, lace making, tailoring and historic pattern making, printing and dying, beadwork to porcupine-quill work - as well as textile conservation.  As a textile conservator he studied with Karen Finch, OBE at Hampton Court, and at the Abegg Stiftung, in Switzerland. A Wisconsin native, his undergraduate degree was from the U of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, in theatre, art, art history and textiles. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art, History of Dress program, University of London, he has held curatorial posts at FIT [Fashion Institute of Technology] NY, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Founding Director of the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, Ontario, CA, and Historic Deerfield in Massachusetts. Edward is the President of the Board of Directors of the National Museum of the American Coverlet in Bedford, PA, on the board of the Honorable Cordwainers’ Company, Williamsburg, VA, a Fellow of the Costume Society of America and a frequent lecturer and consultant across the country and abroad. He acts as an expert witness for court cases involving shoes and fashion.  He is a Research Associate in the Theatre Department at Smith College, Northampton, MA.

Edward had known and worked with his dear friend -company founder Karen Augusta - for more than two decades. Upon her passing, Edward was hired to continue  identification and description of the historic garments and textiles found in our catalogs. 

Ida grew up, and has lived most of her life in Vermont. After graduating high school, she lived for a short time in the deserts of southern California, but returned after two years to the woods and streams of New England. Ida studied to be an esthetician, but realized it was not the path she wanted to take. In 2016 she became employed as an Office Manager at a small consulting firm in Brattleboro, Vermont. This sharpened and developed her already present aptitude for organization, multitasking, and memorization. After a couple of years running the office, but striving for something more enriching, she was contacted by her long-time friend Jules, asking if she would be interested in an office position, and the rest is history. An avid animal lover, Ida and her husband are active in local cat & kitten rescue and rehoming. She also enjoys getting her hands dirty with both outdoor and indoor gardening, cooking, music & podcasts, and enjoying the quiet life in the woods with her husband and two cats.