: - A last-minute call from a local resident yielded two top lots
at Nadeau's on September 20. "It was a good sale. Given where the
economy is today, we were pleased with results," said Edwin
Nadeau, who grossed just over $700,000 on 350 entries.
His total was bolstered by two consignments that came in 11 days
before the auction. "A Windsor woman called. She said she had
heard that we had an auction coming up and wanted to put some
things in it," remembered the auctioneer.
"We went out to her house and took a look," said Nadeau, who left
with a carved pine box with traces of its original brown paint
and a pair of decoys. After consulting books and colleagues,
Nadeau determined that the box, whose loose top had originally
been secured with cotter pins, was a rare, untouched Connecticut
River Valley artifact made between 1690 and 1700, somewhere
between Deerfield, Mass., and Stratford, Conn. Nadeau put an
estimate of $10/15,000 on the piece, but expert opinion varied
widely on how much the box would actually sell for.
The decoys, a desirable pair of old squaw examples by Oscar
Bibber of Harpswell, Maine, were also estimated at $10/15,000.
On Saturday, bidding on the crease-molded, chip-carved relic
opened at $6,000 and rapidly escalated to $25,000, when Wadsworth
Atheneum curator Trina Bowman dropped out. Competition continued
to $32,200 including premium, when the piece was knocked down to
Ohio dealers Sam Forsythe, bidding from the back of the room, and
his partner, David Good, who remained in their stand at the Fall
Hartford Antiques Show. Connecticut dealer Harold Cole was the
underbidder.
Although the box had been in the house on Prospect Hill in
Windsor for at least 70 years, it is not known exactly where it
was made. "Most people think it's from Windsor," noted Nadeau,
who calls a blanket chest currently on view in "The Woodworkers
of Windsor," organized by Historic Deerfield and on display at
the Windsor Historical Society, its "second cousin."
This chip-carved pine documents box sat in a house in Windsor
for more than 70 years before Ohio dealers Sam Forsythe and
David Good purchased it for $32,200.
The decoys had an equally interesting history. The
consignor's father had acquired them on Cape Cod when he bought a
shed at auction for the firewood it contained. After getting the
decoys back to his gallery, Nadeau identified them as old-squaw
ducks by carver Oscar Bibber.
In July 1998, Ted Harmon of Decoys Unlimited, West Barnstable,
Mass., auctioned a Bibber old squaw decoy from the same rig for
$17,050 including premium, a record for the carver. From the
collection of Dr George Starr, the bird had been pictured in
Starr's early text, Decoys of the Atlantic Flyway.
Harmon was the underbidder on the Bibber pair at Nadeau's, losing
them to the phone at $17,825. "They are pretty rare. I haven't
sold any since 1998," Harmon told Antiques and The Arts
Weekly afterwards. "The price was justified. I would have
gone higher if they had been in original paint. To my eye, they
had 80-year-old repaint. But they were very strong formwise."
Nadeau's, which prides itself on being an estate auction house,
included the best objects culled from nearly 40 different sources
in this most recent sale. From a house near the Connecticut shore
came the most expensive lot of the day, a Massachusetts
serpentine front chest on ball and claw feet. It went to an
absentee bidder for $39,100.
From the estate of Charles P. Cooley, a Hartford banker, portions
of whose collection was illustrated by Wallace Nutting in his
Furniture Treasury, came two mirrors, $10,925 and $4,600;
an assembled set of 12 George III chairs, including six antique
chairs and six Twentieth Century reproductions, $20,010; and a
desk and bookcase, $9,775.
Ellsworth Grant, former president of the Connecticut Historical
Society, consigned a tiger maple chest-on-chest, $8,050; a
Constitution mirror; some oriental rugs; and several
tables and stands.
Charles Ethan Porter still life, $20,700.
Other top pieces of furniture included a New York Federal
inlaid mahogany and mahogany veneer sideboard, $26,450; a
Philadelphia side chair, $20,700; a Connecticut Queen Anne cherry
highboy, $10,350; and a Federal inlaid mahogany and mahogany veneer
serpentine front card table, $5,463. A set of Federal dining chairs
went to Woodbury, Conn., dealer Thomas Schwenke for $8,050, while
an assembled set of six black Windsor side chairs garnered $5,520.
The most expensive painting was Charles Ethan Porter's still life
with pink roses in a green vase. Exhibited at the Connecticut
Gallery in 1987 and published in the C.E. Porter catalogue
raisonné, it fetched $20,700.
"We had a great selection of silver from several sources, most of
it from a collection in New Haven," said Nadeau, who dispensed
with a six-piece sterling tea and coffee service by S. Kirk and
Son of Baltimore for $8,913. Among a slew of Georg Jensen silver
was a 17-inch-tall Art Deco-style sterling ewer, $10,925; a
73/4-inch compote, $6,613; and an 111/4-inch water pitcher,
$5,750.
