In 1986, New Hampshire businessman Eddy Nicholson purchased the Willing-Francis-Fisher Cadwalader family Philadelphia wing chair at Sotheby’s for $1.1 million, breaking the record for American furniture he set himself set nine months earlier. In January 1995, Christie’s auctioned the Nicholson collection.
:"The only thing that I can promise you is that you will never be bored," Christie's consultant Ralph Carpenter told Dean Failey over lunch one day in 1979 at Bailey's Beach, an exclusive Newport, R.I., club.
The 32-year-old Winterthur-educated curator had recently taken a job with Christie's, then vigorously expanding its North American operations. Failey feared commercial experience would jeopardize his standing in the museum field. He consulted the collectors George Kaufman and Martin Wunsch, and Stuart Feld, who left The Metropolitan Museum of Art to join Hirschl & Adler Galleries.
"I have never regretted my choice," Feld said reassuringly.
Twenty-eight years later, Failey is still at Christie's and, as Carpenter predicted, life has been anything but dull.
A senior director of the firm, Failey presided over the 1986 sale of the first piece of American furniture to surpass $1 million. His department holds current auction records for American furniture, folk painting and portraiture, as well as for a single-owner sale of American decorative arts. After three decades, Failey marvels at the exceptional people, places and things that, from one fall of the gavel to the next, pass through an auctioneer's life.
"Dean, you will never be bored,” Christie's consultant Ralph Carpenter, left, told Failey when he joined the auction house in 1979. Their first major sale was the contents of The Lindens in January 1982. "It established Christie's as players in the Americana field,” says Failey.
"Christie's had been in the business of selling fine European and Asian art for centuries. Americana was something new for us. We are in a relationship business and Dean is a relationship guy. Our good start in the field of American decorative arts is thanks to him," says Stephen S. Lash, chairman of Christie's Americas.
Failey is a published scholar with a deep affinity for objects, as well as for those who care for them. Dealers, collectors and curators respect the affable auctioneer's judgment and value his candor. Their appreciation made him a natural choice for the 2007 Award of Merit, to be presented by the Antiques Dealers Association of America (ADA) at a dinner in his honor at the Philadelphia Antiques Show on April 14. Past winners include R. Scudder Smith, Betty Ring, Wendell Garrett, Elinor Gordon and Albert Sack.
Americana collectors from around the country crowd Christie's Rockefeller Center showrooms in January. Many wait patiently to speak to Failey, a round-faced man in blue blazer with a ready laugh, a droll wit and a penchant for storytelling.
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