Byrdcliffe Chiffonier Sets Record At Bakker/Edwards Auction

ROSE VALLEY, PENN.

:Artists have long sought refuge in the town of Woodstock, N.Y., most commonly known as the site of the great 60s mega rock concert that brought the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin to Max Yasgur's farm, yet few, even today, recognize the name of Ralph Whitehead, an influential figure in the art history of the town. Whitehead, with his wife Jane and son Peter, founded a small Arts and Crafts community in Woodstock in 1903 that they named Byrdcliffe, a moniker making use of their middle names.

The colony had a complex mission that varied vastly from other American Arts and Crafts communities of the time, and together with the community in Rose Valley, Byrdcliffe is considered to be among the most successful. The Whiteheads offered classes in Arts and Crafts and hoped to provide a utopian communal-type environment for their artists, supported by a functional farm and the sales of art and furniture produced there.

Production at the Byrdcliffe colony was short lived and the furniture, pottery and paintings produced there have become highly desirable, fueled originally by the exhibition "Life by Design: The Byrdcliffe Arts & Crafts Colony" at the Delaware Art Museum in 1983, and more recently by Cornell's traveling exhibition "Byrdcliffe: An American Arts and Crafts Colony."

In 1975, with the death of Peter Whitehead, White Pines, the Whiteheads' home at the Byrdcliffe colony, passed to his cousin Mark Wilcox, who along with his wife Jill have worked hard to preserve the legacy. Ultimately the couple transferred White Pines to the Woodstock Guild, and along the way they have also made major donations of Byrdcliffe furnishings and archival materials to major institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Winterthur.

With the recent exhibition having culminated, the Wilcoxes made the decision to sell the remainder of the collection of art, pottery and furniture, some of which had been on tour.

James Bakker and Robert Edwards teamed up and with a small room, a handful of people, four phone lines, and 29 lots of extremely rare material, conducted an auction.

While the auction was well received, for the most part prices fell short of presale estimates and expectations. The sale opened with a Zulma Steele monoprint that went out to a telephone bidder at $632. Photographic portraits of the Whiteheads sold at $1,150 for an image of Jane and Peter, while an image of Ralph brought $2,070, both going to the same phone bidder.

The fourth lot of the auction was the highlight of the sale as the Hermann Dudley Murphy chiffonier was offered. The circa 1904 piece retained sparse remnants of the original transparent green stain and the original hardware, and was decorated with a landscape view of a winding river with mountainous background at sunset. As Bakker offered the lot, he termed it a "masterpiece of the Byrdcliffe Colony" and then opened the rare piece with a bid of $170,000. A single bid came from a couple seated in the rear of the room and after some brief confusion on the telephones it was hammered down for a selling price of $207,000, a record price paid at auction for a Byrdcliffe chiffonier.

The last piece in the auction, a rare blanket chest with carved panels designed by Zulma Steele, also did well, selling to a gentleman in the room for $57,500. Both the chiffonier and the blanket chest were sold with original design drawings. A library table, the same form as the ones in the Woodstock Library, sold to a buyer on the telephone for $7,475.

Two pieces of furniture that did not find buyers: the "Tirol" settle and table, which were designed in a heavy Nouveau style by Dawson Dawson-Watson.

Byrdcliffe pottery brought strong prices with a 14-inch-tall double-handled vase in an aubergine glaze and a paper label attached to the base fetching $4,485, a bulbous vase with cylindrical neck in blue sold at $3,680, a matte blue glazed vase realized $2,990, a six-inch vase with buff ground and leafy decoration $2,070, and a small vase in a sang de boeuf glaze brought $1,840.

Paintings included a "View from Arcady" by Leonard Lester that sold for $2,760, another "View of Arcady," an oil on canvas by Jane Whitehead, went out at $1,725, and a Zulma Steele ink and watercolor of a columbine brought $4,255 after fierce competition from four telephone bidders.

A selection of tiles were offered with the top lot coming as a Halsy Ricardo hand carved tile triptych in a copper frame that was impressed on the verso with the De Morgan's Sands End pottery mark sold for $5,750.

Prices include the 15 percent buyer's premium that was charged. For further information contact James Bakker 508-487-9081 or bakkerart.com. Robert Edwards may be contacted at 610-543-3595.