LAMBERTVILLE, N.J. – A rare Marblehead vase, circa 1910, was the runaway star in Rago’s American art pottery auction on June 20, selling for $150,000 against an expectation of $25/35,000. Crafted by Arthur Hennessey and Sarah Tutt for Marblehead Pottery, the glazed earthenware piece, 6¾ inches high by 4 inches in diameter, is one of very few known examples of this form, one of which is in the permanent collection of the Newark Museum, Trenton, N.J.

The work features crisp, deeply carved conventionalized flowers, is impressed manufacturer’s mark to underside “MP” with ship symbol and incised with a signature to underside “HT.”

“Skinner sold a piece for about $300,000 so this is at best the second highest price for Marblehead,” Rago co-principal David Rago told Antiques and The Arts Weekly. He said there were four bidders on the phone and one in the room, and that the vase went to a private collector.

Of the four or five known examples, “this was a particularly strong example,” said Rago, “in perfect condition, precisely fired, and with more than the usual amount of modeling of the design. They can be relatively flat, and the gentle incising and tooling really helps bring out the nuances of the design. I have sold two more of these at auction, about $130,000 all in. The price is definitely a record for the form.”

Rago characterized the overall sale as a “barn-burner” – 90 percent sold and more than $1.3 million total for 200 lots of pottery.

A full review will follow later.