Starting the auction off on the right note, the first lot of the sale, an A. Elmer Crowell wood duck with a slightly turned head and fine tail feather carving in relief, made $570,000 ($120/180,000).
Review By Andrea Valluzzo
EASTON, MD. — By numbers alone, Guyette & Deeter’s annual summer auction of decoys and sporting art conducted July 24-25 was impressive. Thirteen decoys each sold over the $100,000 mark, and this baker’s dozen of birds alone accounted for $2.1 million, about one-third of the auction’s overall total. Nearly 600 lots crossed the block between both sessions.
Don’t bother asking owner Jon Deeter about the auction’s sell-through rate though. That’s one number that has never interested him. “That’s something I don’t care about or pay attention to,” he said after the auction. “If we worry about a sell-through rate, we don’t try new and different objects like those rowing boats that we had, so we just try to present cool things at the right prices, and the sell-through rate is determined by the market.”
Decoys drove the bidding in both sessions with the best birds featured on day one, led by the usual suspects of esteemed carvers making the auction’s top ten, including A. Elmer Crowell, Joseph Lincoln, John Blair, Sr, and Charles Perdew. Nearly all performed at or above estimates — way over estimate in some cases. Several of the top selling birds were represented in Decoys by Gene and Linda Kangas, usually the exact decoy in the book.
This important Joseph Lincoln long-tail duck, rigmate to the record-setting wood duck Guyette & Deeter auctioned in April, did well at $330,000 ($120/180,000).
The top lot was a fitting example. The Crowell wood duck decoy with a slightly turned head and relief tail feather carving more than doubled its $180,000 high estimate to bring $570,000. It had provenance to the Tony Waring collection and to the Jim and Diane Cook collection. This sale featured the second session of the Cook collection; part one brought $9.8 million in April.
“Quality decoys continue to exceed expectations,” Deeter said. “I think the estimates we are putting on decoys are realistic, and they just continue to blow past them.” A wave of new collectors hitting their stride in the last few years, having the discretionary funds to join the field to become decoy collectors, has impacted the market, he added. “They’re having a major role in what’s happening. I also think people are seeing that of all the collectible segments in antiques and folk art, decoys have performed as well or better than any of the segments. That’s been fun.”
Not to be outdone by finely carved birds, sporting art also performed well. While there was much less of it — only about 30 paintings — these fine artworks depicting hunts, birds soaring over frothy seas or tranquil rivers and the like also mostly sold over estimate.
A watercolor by Ogden Pleissner (1905-1983) that depicted two men engaged in the historic practice of rail shooting from a boat on the Delaware River sold just over its high estimate at $51,000. The signed painting was published in Harper’s Weekly in 1890.
Leading a compact but select grouping of sporting art was this Ogden Pleissner watercolor that sold for $51,000 ($30/50,000).
And those boats that Deeter mentioned? One in particular worth noting was an early model of a four-person racing boat with shaped seats that slid, measuring 60 inches long. Estimated at $2/3,000, the model raced to $6,000.
Guyette & Deeter’s next auction will be September 10-11.
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, www.guyetteanddeeter.com or 410-745-0485.
