If it’s spring in New Hampshire, you can be sure Ron Bourgeault of Northeast Auctions has an Americana auction on the schedule. His March 28 auction lived up to his standards, offering a fine group of furniture, decorative arts, paintings and Chinese Export from several estates. The auction totaled an impressive $1.6 million in sales.
The darling of the sale was a rare William and Mary gate leg table, noteworthy for its diminutive size and its mahogany construction. The table, 27 inches tall and 33 inches long, had a rectangular top with rounded ends and demilune drop leaves and was inscribed in pencil, “This table came into&f Benj. T. Livingston in 1852. It was an old table then.”
After opening at $18,000, the table was chased on the phone to more than double its high estimate, with a determined buyer winning it for $88,500.
Another furniture standout was a Philadelphia Chippendale carved ribbon-back side chair that led a grouping of seven items that were deaccessioned from the Connecticut Historical Society. The chair is thought to be one of a two dozen “strong, neat and plain but fashionable table chairs” according to a 1783 letter from George Washington and was likely bought by Martha Washington in Philadelphia. Six chairs from the same set are in Mount Vernon.
The chair went to a phone bidder for $20,060 with Bourgeault hinting to the audience that the chair was going back to Connecticut. He cryptically quipped, “We just move things from one museum to another.”
Other highlights from this grouping included a William and Mary carved and black-painted banister-back side chair with a Prince of Wales feather crest above five banister slats ($800․1,200) that went to $17,700 and a New England Federal inlaid mahogany single-drawer oval top table, branded J. Wells, possibly Portsmouth, that fetched $11,800.
Also a key player in the furniture category was an important Massachusetts Chippendale block-front, slant-lid desk in mahogany, Boston area, with provenance to the Townsend-Guerney family, which sold just under its high estimate at $37,760. A set of 12 Federal carved mahogany shield-back dining chairs, including two armchairs, probably New York, went out at $30,680.
The sale started off with a bit of an uproar over silver and then with a bang. At the start of the sale, Bourgeault announced, to the disappointment of those who had come just for Baltimore silver, that 18 lots cataloged as “formerly in the collection of the Maryland Historical Society” that were to cross the block here had been pulled from the sale after an “uproar in Baltimore” occurred regarding their pending sale. The ever-unflappable auctioneer said he gave back all the lots to the consignors, telling them to sort out what they wanted to keep.
The silver that did cross the block went out with a bang though, as evinced in a Paul Revere, Boston Federal silver sugar urn and cover, circa 1800, that attained $64,900 from a phone bidder. The urn in a cylindrical fluted form featured an engraved border of medallions holding up tasseled drapery swags and the initials “WMH.”
The urn was immediately followed by a Joseph Blackburn (British, active 1752‷8) oil portrait of Abigail Russell Curwen wearing an embroidered blue “stomacher,” which went out at $11,800.
Another fine art standout was Charles Willson Peale’s oil on canvas portrait of Mrs Thomas Leiper and her daughter, Helen Hamilton Leiper, circa 1794. The portrait came out of the Irving and Dorothy Minett collection of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and sold to a phone bidder from Michigan at $44,840.
Also from the Minett collection came a pair of Philadelphia Chippendale carved mahogany side chairs with a serpentine crest atop rolled ears and a central scroll and shell carving over a pierced splat that fetched $20,060 and a Northwest Persian Tabriz carpet, Late Nineteenth Century, 12 feet 5 inches by 8 feet 1 inch, that sold at the top end of its estimate at $16,520.
Halfway through the sale came a plate from the earliest group of porcelain decorated for the Order of the Society of the Cincinnati that more than doubled its high estimate when it realized $37,760. The plate was bought by Society founder Henry Lee for himself and George Washington, according to the catalog.
The circa 1785 plate, with a scalloped rim and blue Fitzhugh-type borders, featured the figure of “Fame” blowing her trumpet and holding a white bowknot with a trace of blue coloring. The bowknot held up the eagle and insignia of the society.
Other auction highlights included a pair of wedding portraits by Zedekiah Belknap (1781‱858) of Obed and Nancy Hale, circa 1813, descended in the Hale family, going out at $35,400 to a bidder in the room. Obed Hale was born in Winchedon, Mass., in 1788. He and Nancy Davis were married in 1813 in Stoddard, N.H., and had seven children.
Chinese Export porcelain was well represented in the auction, with many lots coming from a private New York collection. Highlights included a famille rose octagonal plate bearing the arms of the Penn family, circa 1750, painted in iron-red, rose, white and black enamels and gold, which attained $11,210 and an armorial deep dish for the Portuguese market, circa 1765, in vibrant famille rose enamels, at $10,620.
The leader of the Chinese Export category, however, was a famille rose punch bowl depicting European subjects from the Irving and Dorothy Minett collection that achieved $18,880. A similar bowl sold at Sotheby’s in 1985 and was described as the largest known harvest bowl.
The 15½-inch diameter bowl features fine painting within green “bamboo”-bordered panels showing a harvest scene of men and boys cutting and sheaving hay or wheat and in the other panel, a woman leans on a pannier and watches the men stack the grain.
A set of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America in eight volumes and The Quadrupeds of North America in three volumes sold together for $28,320, the same price a Massachusetts Federal inlaid mahogany tall case clock realized. The clock was inscribed for its maker, Elnathan Taber, Roxbury.
The top lot among a grouping of Oriental rugs that crossed the block near the end of the auction was the Mohtashem Kashan carpet, Central Persia, late Nineteenth Century, 13 feet 6 inches by 10 feet 3 inches, at $31,860.
Rounding out the auction was a pair of Continental Miquelet-lock pistols ($1,2/1,8000) made for the Persia market, with ornate Persian engraving, leafy scrolls and geometric motifs that fired at $15,340 and the auction catalog’s cover lot, a Mary Russell Smith oil on board of chicks and a bird’s nest, that was small at 9¾ by 11½ inches but fetched an impressive $8,260.
All prices reported include the buyer’s premium. For information, 603-433-8400 or www.northeastauctions.com .
