Noted Scholar And Dealer William H. Guthman Dies

WESTPORT, CONN.

:William H. Guthman, a noted scholar and dealer in historical and military Americana, died of cancer at his home on Wednesday morning, December 28. He was 81.

Born in Chicago on October 22, 1924, Guthman served in the Army Air Force in China and India during World War II, attending Northwestern University on the GI Bill upon his return home. He worked as a photographer before taking a job in New York as an executive with a manufacturing company. He lived in Westport for the past 49 years.

By the late 1950s, Guthman was an avid collector of American antiques who spent his lunch hours poking through Manhattan shops and his weekends combing yard sales and country auctions.

"It boils down to the fact that I really collect early American history in objects and written words," he once explained. By the early 1960s, Guthman had begun focusing on French and Indian Wars and Revolutionary War artifacts, related Eastern Woodlands Indian material, early pictorial depictions of Native Americans in prints and peace medals, powder horns, hand decorated militia accouterments, and supporting prints and documents.

After buying a tole painted box containing a sheaf of post-Revolutionary War letters written from the Northwest Territory by Jonathan Hart, a member of the First American Regiment, to a fellow officer back home in Farmington, Conn., Guthman quit his job to write a book and become a full-time antiques dealer.

His publications included Drums A'Beating, Trumpets Sounding: Artistically Carved Powder Horns in the Provincial Manner, 1745-1781 (Connecticut Historical Society, 1993), New England Militia Uniforms and Accoutrements with John O. Curtis (Old Sturbridge Village, 1971) and March to Massacre: A History of the First Seven Years of the United States Army (McGraw-Hill, 1970, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize), as well as numerous articles.

His "invaluable scholarship and collecting interests combined to document and celebrate our nation's often anonymous 'citizen soldiers,' the truly unsung heroes of American history," wrote Philip Zea, president of Historic Deerfield. The museum recently acquired 75 decorated American powder horns created between 1747 and 1781 from Guthman and his wife, Elizabeth Stillinger. Sotheby's auctioned the William H. Guthman collection of militia artifacts in January 2003 and his collection of manuscript Americana in December 2005.

As proprietor of Guthman Americana, he exhibited at New York's Winter Antiques Show for 32 years, from 1974 through 2005. As an active member of the leading organizations in his field, he was the longtime head of the publications committee of the American Society of Arms Collectors, a position he held as well in the Kentucky Rifle Association, of which he was also past president.

One of Guthman's greatest contributions was his encouragement of younger dealers, collectors and scholars, among them Ted Trotta and Anna Bono, Hollis Brodrick, Don Troiani, Wes Cowan and Christopher Mitchell. Guthman met Cowan and Mitchell on PBS's Antiques Roadshow, where Guthman appeared as a guest appraiser over the past several seasons.

"What most impressed me was Bill's humor, warmth and absolute willingness to share his expertise," Cowan recently recalled.

Those who knew Bill Guthman will remember his devotion to his profession, his generosity to his friends and family, and his passion for life. Favorite pastimes over the years included lunch at P.J. Moriarity's in Manhattan, dinner at Mario's in Westport, and cozy evenings around the pool in the summer or the hearth in the winter with his many friends from the collecting world.

So avid was Bill Guthman's interest in antiques that, snowed into a farmhouse in rural Maryland, he once walked some distance into town before hailing a cab to take him to the Antiques Forum at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. When the cabbie agreed to go but refused to drive, Bill drove the cab himself.

In pursuit of the best, he once persuaded noted Southport, Conn., folk art dealer Mary Allis to part with a prized painted chest in her personal collection. When, carrying it down the stairs into broad daylight with his friend Rocky Gardiner, Bill detected that the chest was not original as represented, back upstairs went the chest.

A friend of Antiques and The Arts Weekly, Bill Guthman was an avid reader who encouraged the publication from its earliest days. When we recently visited Bill, his family was at his side. Talk naturally turned to memories of good times well spent.

Scott Guthman recalled his father's generosity in throwing him a bachelor's party, even opening his collections room, normally off-limits, for the occasion. The dealer remained composed even after several revelers emerged from the sacrosanct chamber cloaked in antique militia regalia.

His daughter, Pamela Guthman Kissock, recalled her dad's kindness in buying her a Mary McFadden gown for her prom, making her the only teenager in her class wearing couture; his dismay when, recruited in middle school to help him with book research, he found her reading Dear Abby at the Pequot Library in Southport; and her dismay when she encountered him in his office hallway wearing a toupee, a tonsorial affectation he fortunately soon abandoned.

A little known chapter is Guthman's brief arrest with Antiques and The Arts Weekly editor and publisher R. Scudder Smith in the late 1970s. On a post-Winter Antiques Show vacation with their wives on St Eustatius in the Netherlands Antilles, Guthman and Smith went scavenging for cannon balls and other antique treasures at a historic fort. Apprehended by local police, the rogues landed in jail, their metal detector confiscated. Guthman negotiated their release and the return of the metal detector by promising, and delivering, a tape recorder to the officials. Guthman's ingenuity and skill as a trader served him to the last.

In addition to his wife, daughter and son, Guthman is survived by his stepdaughters Alice and Amelia Stillinger and his stepgranddaughters Rachel and Marlaice Shoemate.

A memorial service is planned for late April. Contributions for William H. Guthman can be sent to PBS for The Antiques Roadshow, Historic Deerfield or the lung cancer department at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.