G.K.S. Bush, Washington,
D.C.
NEW YORK CITY - The Winter Antiques Show, now in its 47th year,
has become so exquisitely diversified that to wander through its
gilded aisles is to pass from culture to culture, epoch to epoch
without ever really coming to rest. Here there is Greco-Roman
sculpture; over there is European Modern decor. Beauty is the
point, beauty that transcends time and place, beauty that crosses
cultural lines. In sum, the show articulates an international
style whose merits are formal and whose appeal is broad.
Even so, organizers think of the Winter Antiques Show as an
"American" fair, a fact underscored by the quintessentially
American themes of recent loan shows. Colonial Williamsburg was
honored this year; Nantucket Historical Association, last year;
Historic Deerfield the year before that. This year's fair, which
opened for 11 days on January 18, paid generous dividends to
Americana dealers, not surprising given the coincidence of
Americana Week activities, which draw buyers to New York from all
over the country. But by all accounts, Winter Antiques Show
exhibitors in every category were pleased with their results, and
the show's charity sponsor, East Side House Settlement, enjoyed
outstanding attendance.
American Folk Art
Highland Park, Ill., dealers Frank and Barbara Pollack pulled out
all the stops with an artful display of exceptional folk art and
painted furniture. "It's been wonderful. I sold quite a bit on
opening night, through the weekend, and into the beginning of the
week. Everything went to different people, a lot of whom I
haven't met before," said Barbara Pollack, who parted with "quite
a few portraits of children, a beautiful little country card
table, really good decorated Windsor chairs, a great big
gameboard, and a paint-decorated Hoadley tall clock."
Olde Hope Antiques of New Hope, Penn., found a new home for a
pair of decorated New Hampshire wall boxes, $35,000. Only one
other pair exists, at SPNEA's Cogswell Grant. A tall chest of
drawers from Alexandria, N.Y., circa 1800, $145,000; a Maine
painted chest of drawers, $48,500; and a four-gallon stoneware
watercooler by H. Myers of Maryland, circa 1825, $85,000, were
other treasures in Olde Hope's stand.
Decoy collectors have always been an impassioned lot, but folk
art enthusiasts have sometimes overlooked these elegant
sculptures. Fred and Kathryn Giampietro are changing that. The
Connecticut dealers mounted a decoy display, selling most of
their shorebirds in prices ranging from $2,500 to $50,000.
Ex-collection of Nina Fletcher Little was a Greater Yellowlegs by
Thomas Wilson, $18,500. A pony-tailed Red Breasted Merganser by
Oscar Bibber, circa 1900, was $24,500.
Another ready-made collection was in store at Guthman Americana,
where the diary, portrait, desk, apothecary case, and other
belongings of Captain Thomas Brown (1801-1828) were offered for
one price. Brown served in the Blockade of Tripoli in 1804-5, and
commanded the schooner Governor Tompkins in engagements on
Lake Ontario in 1814. Among the Westport, Conn., dealer's many
sales were a commission issued to the officer who succeeded
General Wolfe and an 1885 rifled musket outfitted with its
original bayonet, $27,500.
Before preview night was over, an institution put a hold on an
Eastern Woodlands war club of circa 1620-1680 in the booth of
Donald Ellis, Dundas, Ontario. With incised decorations and
inlays of brass and shell, the 24-inch long weapon was collected
by Lt. John King of Northampton, Mass., during a raid to recover
prisoners taken during the burning of Deerfield. The club, priced
at more than $250,000, descended in the family of a King
descendant, Dr Timothy Dwight, president of Yale. It is one of
only a half a dozen Deerfield war clubs. Only one remains in
private hands.
American Furniture
"What's left?," American furniture dealer Wayne Pratt asked,
looking around at his mostly spoken-for booth. "We've sold a
four-drawer chest, two blocked-end chests, a William and Mary
highboy, a set of four Chippendale ball-and-claw foot chairs, a
mahogany slant-lid desk with a shell-carved lid, Windsor chairs,
a really great weathervane, several pairs of andirons, Nantucket
baskets, and a plaque of George Washington." The Woodbury, Conn.,
dealer featured a Connecticut River Valley cherry bonnet-top
desk-and-bookcase, $235,000, and the Wendell Family Chippendale
blockfront chest of drawers, stamped I. Salter, Portsmouth.
Leigh Keno began selling soon after the show opened and never
stopped. Gone was a rare Bermuda table, priced $95,000; a Federal
Philadelphia card table, $175,000; a Roxbury tall-case clock; a
New Hampshire candlestand, $110,000; and two tray tables. One,
the booth's centerpiece, was a New York walnut example of 1720,
priced $385,000, from the Elting-Beekman shop, near Kingston,
N.Y. A group of tables from the same shop were published by
Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Peter Kenny in a 1994 article
for Chipstone's journal, American Furniture.
The warm tones of wood glowed against green felt walls at G.K.S.
Bush. The Washington, D.C., dealer featured a Pennsylvania
Chippendale tiger maple valuables chest, a New York Chippendale
ball-and-claw foot table of circa 1760, a Queen Anne japanned tea
table of circa 1740, and the Garvan family Connecticut
Chippendale chest-on-chest, Windsor, Conn., circa 1780.
Towering above Peter Tillou's exhibit was a scroll-top high chest
of drawers made in the Mid Atlantic states between 1775-85.
Ex-collection of Joe Kindig, Jr., it was $195,000. Sales of
Southern furniture included several pieces of Virginia furniture,
among them a pedimented desk, $225,000, and a writing-arm Windsor
chair at Sumpter Priddy III, Alexandria, Va.
One of the handsomest stands belonged to Anthony Werneke, whose
olive-paneled enclosure was studded with William & Mary and
Queen Anne furniture, blown glass, and Delft pottery. Werneke's
sales included the Governor Talcot Hadley chest, $485,000; a New
York Queen Anne looking glass; a circa 1650 needlework casket; a
pair of brush-foot side chairs; a veneered flat-top highboy; a
pair of William and Mary New York carved banister back side
chairs; and an English needlework picture of circa 1700.
Carswell Rush Berlin, a New York dealer in American Federal and
Classical furniture, unveiled a new find, a rosewood and
cast-iron gueridon attributed to Duncan Phyfe & Sons, New
York, 1837-40. Discovered in Rhode Island, the inscribed piece,
$25,000, may be both the earliest documented piece of American
cast-iron furniture as well as the only piece of iron furniture
by Phyfe. Berlin also had a New York City sideboard of 1820,
$175,000, and companion cellaret. The sideboard resembles one at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hirschl & Adler Galleries chose the Winter Show to take the
wraps off of its latest find, a Duncan Phyfe work table of great
sophistication. The tambour-front table of satinwood and burl
satinwood dates to 1810-15 and was marked $225,000. A cozy
classical interior from the inside, Hirschl & Adler's booth
outside supported large paintings. "Afternoon Reverie" by
Rosamond Smith Bove, an oil on canvas of 1908, chased away the
winter chill with its warm-weather splendor.
English Furniture
Gary Young, whose packed stand is always mecca for shoppers
looking for English furniture and accessories, thought this year
was a bit slower than last year's banner fair. "A lot of people
bought on Sunday who would have purchased at the preview or the
first day. Maybe it was the inauguration," he speculated. The
Maryland dealer parted with his best piece, a George II William
Kent mirror, dating to circa 1735 and measuring 67 inches tall.
"We've also sold across the board - lots of tables and chairs,
and a wide range of accessories, prints, pictures, and
miniatures."
Philip Colleck, Ltd., centered their booth with a mid-Eighteenth
Century eight-paneled painted screen with a tooled gilt
background and chinoiserie scenes imitating a coromandel lacquer
screen of the late Seventeenth Century. "We've had dozens of
screens in the twenty years that we've been in the firm, but this
is the largest and most beautifully realized example," said Mark
Jacoby, who sold four pieces on opening night.
"Because of the economy, we were very nervous, but the worst
didn't happen," said Chicago dealer Taylor Williams. "So far,
this is our second best show. We've sold straight across the
board - American and English furniture, glass, porcelain, lots of
enamels, pictures, watercolors and needleworks."
Winter Antiques Show exhibitors for 26 years, Georgian Manor
Antiques sold not only to longtime clients but also to their
children, now grown. "About forty percent of our sales were to
new customers," noted Enrique Goytizolo. For many years in
Manhattan, Georgian Manor Antiques is now based in Fairhaven,
Mass., about 45 minutes from Boston or Providence.
Paintings
Barbara Israel Garden Antiques, Katonah, N.Y.
Schwarz Gallery of Philadelphia brought a large oval portrait of
John Williams, a major work painted in 1766 by Benjamin West, the
Pennsylvania-born artist who spent most of his life in London.
"It's the first I've ever had," said Schwarz. "West didn't do
many portraits." The artist was the second president of the Royal
Academy and a history painter to George III. For 40 years, every
American painter who had the chance traveled to London to study
with West. One of his disciples was Thomas Sully, whose portrait
of George Nugent, painted in 1827, was also a highlight of the
Schwarz display.
With the help of designer Ralph Harvard, Elle Shushan gave her
booth the inviting look of a print room. Though her inventory of
miniature paintings is evenly distributed among American, English
and Continental works, Shushan sold mostly American things this
year. A highlight was the portrait of Elbridge Gerry, a signer of
the Declaration of Independence, by John Ramage. At $35,000, it
seemed a bargain, what with Ramage's portrait of George
Washington fetching a record $1.2 million at Christie's on
January 19.
The Fine Art Society's inviting presentation mingled a Fortuny
evening coat, $28,000, with William Morris textiles, Christopher
Dresser pottery, and a St Ives harbor view by Peter Moffat
Lindner, oil on canvas, $35,000. The London dealers sold a
Nevison painting and a Thomas Jeckyll cast-iron fireplace
surround in the Aesthetic manner, circa 1876, each for five
figures.
His booth studded with canvases by Sanford Robinson Gifford,
George Inness, William Trost Richards, and Charles Harold Davis,
New Haven and New York dealer Thomas Colville sold ten paintings
before the show was half over. Meanwhile, the Julius Lowy Frame
& Restoring Company outdid itself with an exhibit devoted
entirely to Spanish Baroque picture frames and antique Spanish
furniture.
Prints and Documents
The Old Print Shop boasted two brilliantly colored Currier &
Ives rarities, "The Mississippi in Time of War" and "The
Mississippi in Time of Peace." "We've probably owned only
two in our entire career," said dealer Robert Newman.
Enshrined in a case in Bauman Rare Books' high-ceilinged,
book-lined library was a first collected edition of Shakespeare's
poems, London, 1640, $250,000, and an inscribed first edition of
Winnie-the-Pooh, $135,000.
Print dealer Graham Arader III of King of Prussia, Penn., sold
four views of New York; a collection of Eighteenth Century
designs of Greek and Etruscan vases; and a botanical watercolor
by Redout.
Sales at manuscript dealer Kenneth W. Rendell ran the gamut, from
an Evita Peron inscribed photograph, to a Noel Coward letter, to
a document on the Japanese surrender in World War II.
Silver and Jewelry
All around town, Colonial American silver enjoyed a fantastic
surge as three pieces of hollowware at Sotheby's and one at
Christie's sold in excess of $452,500, the previous record. The
old benchmark was established by upstate New York dealer Jonathan
Trace, a key player at the latest round of sales. "We've had a
lovely opening night," Trace's partner, Paige Inslee, said from
their booth at the Winter Antiques Show. Noted Trace, "I believe
the market's up for everyone. We've sold some important silver: a
Myer Myers sugar bowl, a Joseph Richardson sugar bowl, a Philip
Syng salver, among other items."
S.J. Shrubsole Corporation had one of its best shows ever,
selling jewelry; four silver coffee pots from London, 1710 to
1745; and a Queen Anne monteith by Richard Syng, London, 1705.
Also sold was a silver chocolate pot, circa 1690, marked
$120,000.
"The show's going very well for all of us," Robert Israel, of
Kentshire Galleries Ltd., New York, cheerfully noted. "We've sold
a pair of library chairs in the manner of Henry Holland and some
wonderful jewelry." Jewelry specialist Ellen Israel found
customers only too happy to claim a fantastic corsage brooch of
1860, made of diamonds and rubies in its original case; a Cartier
Art Deco citrine and diamond brooch; a Fontenay Etruscan Revival
necklace, circa 1860; and an enamel and gold old-mine cut diamond
brooch, circa 1840.
"We came here slightly nervous. We were worried that the decline
in the stock market might affect our clients but we've found a
firm resolve to buy the best, the rarest, and the most unusual.
We've sold to several new clients," said Peter Finer, the show's
only dealer in English and Continental arms and armor. Sales
included a Nineteenth Century Spanish casket decorated entirely
in gold, a Japanese Edo period dagger, and a German processional
sword, circa 1580.
Textiles
Stephen and Carol Huber were also vigorous on both the auction
and show fronts. Having picked up a rare Philadelphia sconce
embroidered by the daughter of one of Philadelphia's best known
schoolmistresses at Sotheby's for $170,750, the Connecticut
dealers also found time to sell a Seventeenth Century English
mirror whose frame enclosed embroidered panels under glass,
$165,000; an important Bristol, R.I., sampler; and a pair of
Norwich, Conn., samplers.
Peter Pap Oriental Rugs sold a Bakahshaish carpet woven in
Persia, late Nineteenth Century, priced $120,000. Balour,
meanwhile, hung huge embroidered Ottoman panels outside its
tented enclosure. To similar effect, L'Antiquaire and The
Connoisseur affixed a pair of Armorial trophy panels from
Piedmont, 1670-90, on its outside walls.
Asian Art
In the decade since he joined the Winter Antiques Show, Patrick
Connor of Martyn Gregory, London, has found an increasingly
knowledgeable audience for "good China trade paintings." Not only
can Americans train their eyes at the Peabody Essex Museum, but
there are also wonderful collections in New York, Nantucket and
elsewhere. Highlights of Connor's exhibit this year included a
portrait of a Chinese emperor, dating to the late Eighteenth
Century and probably by a Jesuit artist; a circa 1770 set of
gouaches including four major China trade views; and one of the
best gouaches of Shanghai.
"We've had lots of knowledgeable people through," said Roger
Keverne. His compact display contained two first-rate Imperial
portraits, a huge Tang horse, a big blue and white Ming jar, and
a Sixteenth Century Ming chair. "We've sold across the board,"
noted the London dealer, "including a pair of glazed Tang pottery
figures, priced $85,000, and a pair of Chinese vases, marked
$20,000." Villanova, Penn., dealer Elinor Gordon sold a Chinese
export bowl painted with two sailing ships flying American flags
to West Coast museum.
"All my best things are gone," said Joan Mirviss, a dealer in
Japanese art who divides her time between New York and Tokyo.
"I've sold all my screens, over 50 woodblock prints, and my
bronzes. Several things are on hold for museums. This was
probably my second best fair across the board."
Few things were more venerable than five pieces of Neolithic
pottery, circa 3000-2500 BC, at Ralph M. Chait of New York. "This
is as old as it gets in Chinese," explained Andrew Chait. The
pieces were $5,500 to $10,500.
At the other end of the spectrum, Barry Friedman, a New York
dealer in European avant-garde design, sold a 1928 Swedish
Neo-classical collector's cabinet made of precious woods; a
Gilbert Poillerat bed and floor lamp; and an Arbus table.
Geoffrey Diner, an Arts & Crafts specialist from Washington,
D.C., parted with a Donegal carpet attributed to Voysey and a
Stickley hexagonal table with a leather top, $85,000. Maklowe
Gallery of New York wrapped a Tiffany paperweight vase, marked
$175,000.
The Best Is Not Too Good For You
Having committed to the major undertaking of bringing staff and
collections to New York, Colonial Williamsburg went all out,
mounting an impressive display and hosting several events for
friends and supporters of the Virginia institution.
Stephen and Carol Huber, Old Saybrook, Conn.
"We wanted to show the quality and depth of our collections and
provide a regional cross-section. Many objects were taken off
view so they could be here," noted Colonial Williamsburg's chief
curator, Ron Hurst.
Created by Stephen Saitas, the talented designer responsible for
reinstallations at the New York State Historical Association,
Historic Deerfield, and Yale, "The Best Is Not Too Good For You"
celebrated 75 years of collecting at Colonial Williamsburg.
"We've brought in 48 of our top-ten favorite things," joked
furniture curator Phil Zea. From a collection of 60,000 objects,
the curators chose such high-style furniture masterpieces as a
Newport tall clock by William Claggett, housed in a shell-carved
Goddard-Townsend case; and a Thomas Affleck Philadelphia
Chippendale chest-on-chest. Equally appreciated was a rare
Virginia tea table with a folky, scalloped skirt. A Cherokee pipe
excavated at the site of the Charlton Coffeehouse in Williamsburg
was one of Williamsburg's least expected offerings.
Satisfied exhibitors sighed with relief when the show was over
and praised their host, East Side House Settlement. "The show's
never been more beautiful," said Mark Jacoby, chairman of the
Winter Antiques Show dealers committee. "Opening night was
packed. We're very happy with our new publicist, Susan Magrino
Agency. At the dealers' meeting, complaints were few and minor.
That speaks very highly of the show's director, Catherine Sweeney
Singer."
Observed Taylor Williams, "In the 19 years that we've done the
Winter Antiques Show under our own banner, I've always considered
it a barometer for the year to come. I sure hope that's the case
this year."
