Article from Antiques & Design -
April/May, 2003 by Bob Frost
Growing up in San Francisco John A Traina Jr. collected coins, arrowheads, stuffed animals, rocks and anything else that grabbed his imagination. "Collecting is sort of a disease," he laughs today. "I caught it early and I caught it bad."
No kidding, a semi-retired investor and businessman, former husband of romance novelist Dannielle Steel, is today one of the most impassioned collectors in Northerrn California, gathering all kinds of wonderful stuff around him at his elegant Pacific Heights home and at his Napa Valley ranch. He owns collections of miniature antique suit of armor and an array of 19th century American wagons, buggies and carriage. He collects vintage automobiles, fire engines and trucks as well as maritime memorabilia, malachite objects and tortoiseshell items. He has put together a fine art collection, including an oil by Rembrandt, South Pacific pieces of various kinds, Western art and about 50 paintings by Ira Yeager, who's based in Calistoga and does a lot of work in the Native American vein.
Most notably, John Traina posseses the world's largest collection of Fabergé cigaretter cases.........
Through extensive travel and research, Mr. Traina has compiled a vast collection of diverse and unique art. He has one of the worlds largest Fabergé collections, along with numerous antique automobiles. Mr. Traina also collects Maritime Art, South Pacific Art, Russian Art, Western Art, Western Farm and Travel Wagons as well as various Arms and Armour. His artwork can be seen all over the world through his museum loans in the US, Russia, Sweden and elsewhere.
Mr. Traina completed a book
called "The Fabergé Case".
The Fabergé
Case
Press release on
reprinting
Sample images
from The Fabergé Case
Order
Directly from: Fabergebookorder@aol.com
Carriage Trade
Article from Forbes Magazine - February 9, 1999 by Robert Goth
The approach to John Traina's Napa Valley hideaway on Highway 29 makes you a little sorry you're driving a car. Flanking the long drive to Traina's 1850 gingerbread house is a motley assortment of vehicles from an era of more leisurely transportation: buggies, work wagons, carriages, a surrey with, yes, a fringe atop it, even an old 1920s circus wagon with its lion cage intact. The driveway is an outdoor museum of California's roadway transportation from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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