In a departure from its usual schedule and “modus operandi,” Lincoln Galleries recently conducted a sale billed partly as a “warehouse clear-out sale,” but offering a large selection of porch, patio and lawn furniture, and garden decorations.

The exhibition, in July 26, was a delightful experience. Customers entering the room first encountered a table of refreshments from her Sumptuous Sweets menu befitting the hot summer day: crustless tea sandwiches, dainty lemon rosebud cakes, iced tea and lemonade. The room was filled with bamboo and rattan porch furniture arranged in charming seating and dining groups.

The highlight of the sale came early in the furniture session, when a remarkable Victorian white painted cast-iron potting stand, with a very Gothic look to it, came on the block. The piece stood about 8 feet tall and had small stylized dog-head decorations on each upright. Even with its later coat of white paint, now very much moss- and other-stained, and missing its central drawer, the stand drew incredible presale interest.

Bidding was highly competitive; hopeful buyers on the floor were competing with left-bids and telephone bidders who had commandeered all four available phone lines. In the end, an elated buyer in the room took the piece for $10,925, a “wow” of a buy that drew spontaneous applause from everyone else in the room.

Among the more traditional pieces in Tuesday’s sale, a dark stained grandmother clock by John Thompson of London sold for $2,875; a handsome Chippendale-style mahogany bookcase secretary with individual mullioned glass doors, slant front writing surface and cock beaded drawers brought $1,610; and a mahogany partners’ desk went for $518.

Two other lots worthy of note were a Nineteenth Century framed oil on canvas, a large (601/2 by 38 inches) study of a family grouping, which sold for $518, and a handsome Handel-style reverse painted table lamp on a bronze pedestal base, which brought $460.

Prices cited include the 15 percent buyer’s premium.