A dealer bidding by phone won, for $20,160, this 48-inch-long model of the Charles W. Morgan by Peter Ness ($14/18,000).
Review by Madelia Hickman Ring
EAST DENNIS, MASS. — “I was happy to see lots of new bidder participation, either brand new this sale or people who have just started bidding with us over the past year or so. It seems a much higher than normal percentage of the sale sold to these ‘new’ buyers, which is encouraging. There was a lot of nice material at the mid- to lower range price points, so there was a lot of opportunity to buy items that establish the foundation of a collection.”
Such was the report that Cheryl Stewart, Eldred’s head of marketing, gave Antiques and The Arts Weekly following the firm’s Winter Marine Sale, a two-day, 426-lot event February 26-27, that had an 85 percent sell-through rate and realized $576,000 overall.
Ship models in a broad range of sizes and ages were plentiful with 34 examples for bidders to compete after; two sold well enough to earn top-lot and second-place standings. At the head of the sale was a four-foot-long model of the Charles W. Morgan, the mid Nineteenth Century whaler that survived and is on display at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn. The model was made by Boston ship model builder, Peter Ness (1890-1976) and featured six whaleboats and a copper-sheathed bottom on its hull. The top bid of $20,160 beat the lot’s $18,000 high estimate and came from a trade buyer bidding on the phone. Interestingly, another Ness model was also in the sale; his clipper ship Flying Cloud also exceeded expectations, sailing to $6,930.
The three-masted vessel Sir Lancelot was recreated in highly detailed scale by Donald McNarry and offered in a glass case. A Massachusetts collector steered bidding to $18,900 ($14/18,000).
A model of the three-masted vessel Sir Lancelot carried the same estimate as the Charles W. Morgan and also surpassed its high estimate, going out for $18,900. It was made by British model ship master builder Donald McNarry (1921-2010). A Michael Wall catalog and copy of McNarry’s 1975 book, Ship Models in Miniature, also accompanied the lot. Stewart noted the buyer, who was also bidding on the phone, was a private collector in Massachusetts.
Two Napoleonic prisoner of war bone models, each depicting three-masted British ships, also finished among the top lots. Trade buyers dialed in their bids on those, with a triple-decker example with carved stern and figurehead and fitted with 94 guns achieving $11,340. The other model, which sold for $9,450, featured a nicely carved figurehead and two anchors off her bow.
Though most of the ship models were offered on the second day, there were a few that sold on the first. A whalebone model of the US Navy ship Tecumseh that dated to the second half of the Nineteenth Century, multiplied its $400/800 estimate and sold, to a Virginia collector bidding online, for $5,985.
Scrimshaw whale’s teeth, tusks and objects made wholly or in part of whalebone are a staple of the firm’s Marine sales, and this edition featured nearly 150 lots under the “Scrimshaw & Whaling” subheading. A 77½-inch-long narwhal tusk on a custom wood stand led the category with a $17,640 result. The auction catalog noted it could only be purchased by a Massachusetts buyer; Stewart confirmed it was consigned to the sale from a private collector and was staying in-state with a trade buyer bidding online.
This 5¾-inch-long whale’s tooth was scrimshawed on one side with scenes of whaling ships and a panoramic harbor scene. It sold to a buyer from the Midwest, for $8,820 to be the highest price paid for a tooth ($8/10,000).
A buyer in the Midwest, bidding on the phone, won the sale’s two highest-priced whale’s teeth. The higher priced of the two at $8,820 was a mid Nineteenth Century polychromed example that depicted whaling scenes on one side and a panoramic harbor on the other side, possibly the harbor at Newport, R.I. The second was a tooth of similar age that was inscribed with the verse, “She hears me not She cears me not Nor will she list to me While hear eye ly Aloan to dy beneh The willow tree (She hears me not, She sees[?] me not, Nor will she list to me, While here I lie alone to die beneath the willow tree)”; it closed at $6,930.
Bill Bourne, the firm’s head of Americana, noted that the scrimshaw market had changed, sharing that most of the deep pocketed collectors had “filled their shelves and stepped back,” with comparatively fewer new bidders than in other categories.
One of Bourne’s favorite lots in the sale was a pair of carved and gilded nautical boards that measured 50 inches long and dated to the Nineteenth Century. “They were found in a basement and there wasn’t much information on them,” he said. Stewart added that they came from a family collection in New York state and generated “quite a bit of discussion.” Possibly made for use in a ship’s cabin, they sold to a collector in Pennsylvania for $11,340.
About 125 lots of fine art were offered and depicted harbor scenes, ship portraits and coastal views, in a variety of media, by some of the genre’s most prominent artists, including William Robert Davis (Massachusetts, b 1952), Antonia Nicolo Gaspario Jacobsen (American/Danish, 1850-1921), Frank Vining Smith (Massachusetts, 1879-1967), Reginald Eugene Nickerson (Massachusetts, 1915-1999) and Roy Cross (British, b 1924), to name a few. Jacobsen’s painting of a ship under sail brought $9,450 while his painting of the screw steamer Pieter De Coninck achieved $7,560. “Topsail Schooner off White Island” by Davis made $10,080, besting the $8,820 finish achieved by his “Racing, New York Harbor.”
Bernard Woodman’s (Massachusetts, 1920-1896) complex sailor’s valentines are highly sought after by collectors; this 20-inch-wide example sold to a local collector, for $9,450 ($2/3,000).
Half a dozen lots of sailor’s valentines crossed the block, achieving prices ranging from $756 for an octagonal example made in 1997 by Richard Lee, to $9,450 that a Cape Cod collector paid for Bernard A. Woodman’s eight-sided valentine that centered a circular pen and ink drawing of a mermaid and merman in a seashell chariot.
Nautical instruments — sundials, barometers, sextants, telescopes, compasses, binnacles and chronometers — were also part of the sale, with two dozen lots presented across both days of the sale. A cased Dollond navigational sundial, made in the late Eighteenth or early Nineteenth Century in London, came to Eldred’s from a private collection in Wisconsin but will be traveling even farther to its new home in California, to a buyer who won it on an absentee bid for $3,402.
Another absentee bid prevailed to win, for $5,040, a Nineteenth Century knife box of canted dovetail form that had a whale-ivory handle and single drawer with unusual locking mechanism and whalebone braces on the interior front edge. Stewart confirmed it sold to a Connecticut collector making their debut purchase at Eldred’s.
Eldred’s will sell Americana April 3-4; the firm’s next Marine sale will take place over the summer, date to be announced.
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, 508-385-3116 or www.eldreds.com.
