This Compass Artist decorated dome lid box, 10½ inches high and 13½ inches wide, charted the sale’s high price of $30,000 and sold to a long-time Pennsylvania collector ($8/12,000).
Review by Madelia Hickman Ring
DOWNINGTOWN, PENN. — Pennsylvania collector Barry Hogan’s collection crossed the block at Pook & Pook on May 17. All but one of the 384 lots of Pennsylvania folk art and early Americana sold from the podium for a $576,864 total that easily topped the aggregate low/high estimates of $255,700/408,250. Trade buyers were persistent, winning many of the top lots in the sale.
Hogan’s connections with Lancaster County ran deep, so it was fitting that a Nineteenth Century dome lid box painted by the Compass Artist of Lancaster County led the sale with a $30,000 result. Sporting the sought-after red and white dotted pinwheel flowers on a blue-green ground, the box was similar to an example Pook & Pook sold on May 21, 2021, for $11,070. According to Pook’s vice president Jamie Shearer, the box from the Hogan collection was acquired by a long-time Pennsylvania collector.
Frakturs were a small but important segment of Hogan’s collection and the sale gave bidders nearly 30 examples to fight over. And fight they did, taking most of them beyond presale expectations. A Bedminster Township, Bucks County, example made for Abraham Stauffer and dated 1793 was characterized as “unusual” and depicted two saluting soldiers with birds and flowers. Estimated at $4/8,000, it achieved $25,000. A second fraktur, made in Dauphin County in 1797 for Philip Brecht, earned $13,750 and featured a large heart enclosing script with small script-enclosing hearts in the corners and birds, suns, moons and flowering tulip vines filling out the rest of the composition.
The third highest price of the day at $18,750 was realized from a trade buyer for this Lebanon County painted pine dower chest, made in 1794 by Johannes Rank ($4/8,000).
The quintessential dower chest was also a form Hogan collected; Pook & Pook offered four. Earning $18,750 was a dated 1794 Lebanon County example signed by maker Johannes Rank that retained its original painted decoration. A blue-painted dower chest from Berks County that was fitted with three drawers and decorated with tulips, pinwheels and columns rose to $12,500.
Three watercolor and ink on paper portraits by the perennially popular folk artist Jacob Maentel (American, 1763-1863) were offered together and achieved $17,500, more than tripling the lot’s low estimate. The group represented the Hottenstein family of Berks County: Jacob Hottenstein in a Revolutionary War uniform, Henry Hottenstein and Doretha Hottenstein, who was depicted wearing a long blue dress and with a bird perched on her finger.
Varying furniture forms were in the sale, from case pieces and clocks to tables and chairs. A circa 1800 Pennsylvania Chippendale cherry tall chest with diamond, barber pole and trailing vine inlay realized the category’s highest price of $8,750. It was followed at $6,875 by a Pennsylvania painted poplar tall case clock from the early Nineteenth Century with 30-hour works signed “Peter Miller.” The dished and scalloped edged top of a Pennsylvania figured cherry candlestand were among its desirable features and it scorched its $1/1,500 estimate to end at $5,000. Rounding out the category at $2,500 was a circa 1790 Pennsylvania sackback Windsor armchair that retained an old reddish-brown surface.
This Pennsylvania full stock flintlock long rifle with maple stock and dated to the early Nineteenth Century shot to $10,625. A trade buyer had the winning bid ($1,5/2,500).
Bidders took up their paddles to fight for a Pennsylvania full-stock flintlock long rifle that dated to the early Nineteenth Century and had a tiger maple stock with engraved brass fittings. Estimated at $1,5/2,500, the gun topped off at $10,625. It was not known if the same buyer purchased, for $8,125, a Nineteenth Century scrimshaw powder horn depicting a well-dressed hobo on one side and an American eagle with arrows on the other.
A half-dozen weathervanes provided sculptural variety. Driving to $6,250, within estimate, was an early Twentieth Century copper and zinc automobile-form weathervane that measured 31 inches in length. It was the third time the vane had driven across an auction block, first in January 1997, then again in January 2010, both times at Sotheby’s, New York.
Pook & Pook will conduct an online-only decorative arts sale in two sessions, June 26-27.
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, www.pookandpook.com or 610-269-4040.
