Rachel Goodenow, AAA

Rachel Goodenow Appraisals & Consulting, LLC,

Rachel began working with antique dealers in Amherst, MA while pursuing her BA in Art History and Theory at Hampshire College. After college she worked with art dealers, an artist’s estate and a major museum in New York City, before moving to Albuquerque for her MA in Art History/History of Photography from the University of New Mexico. For the past 25 years, she has worked with multiple auction houses and as an appraiser in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a generalist, she specializes in the documentation and valuation of large collections, including the entire personal property inventory of homes and estates, and especially enjoys finding and working with specialists in any category a project requires. Rachel has a particular interest in normalizing estate planning and equitable distribution, and leads with the belief that people and relationships are always more important than things. She splits her work and time between the San Francisco area and New England/New York.

Sacha Q Grippando, GG, AAA

Sacha Q Grippando at Bellwether Advisory & Appraisals LLC began working in the art industry as an intern at the Phillips Collection and The Decatur House in Washington DC the summer of her junior year. She earned a BA in Art History with a minor in Italian from Middlebury College. She has over 25 years of experience in the auction industry working in a variety of fields of expertise including jewelry; Asian works of art; rugs and carpets; European and American decorative arts, silver, and arms and armor. She has also worked for reputable dealers such as Oscar Isberian Rugs in Chicago and Dillingham & Co. in San Francisco. In 2003, she received her MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago focusing on Chinese art and literature. In 2012 she left the auction world to have her third child. While at home she decided to pursue her longtime interest in jewelry and embarked on her gemology degree, receiving her graduate gemologist diploma from the Gemological Institute of America in 2018. She is passionate about history, particularly jewelry history and has given multiple lectures on Belle Epoque, Art Deco, Retro and Modern jewelry. She has also written an essay on the history of micromosaics for Antique Jewelry University as well as a primer on wristwatches and pocket watches for the Appraiser’s Association of America’s appraisal handbook.

Our Esteemed Team

We have an extensive network of experts that we consult with. Some examples of categories (of expertise we have located and worked with) are: arms and armor, luxury accessories and couture, vehicles including vintage motor cars and boats, Native American art, carpets and textiles, books and manuscripts, entertainment memorabilia, taxidermy, coins, stamps and musical instruments.

For expertise in Asian art, we work with Dan Herskee of Herskee Asian Art.

For expertise in high valued fine art and large fine art collections, we work with Susan McDonough, AAA of McDonough Fine Art Appraisals.