Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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28-CS Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
- AUCTION -
Every November for the past nine
years, Samuel T. Freeman &
Co. in Philadelphia has offered
American furniture and decorations in
a big fall sale divided into two parts.
The “Pennsylvania Sale” is usually
filled with 18th- , 19th-, and 20th-cen-
tury furniture and decorations made
in Pennsylvania and books and prints
published in Pennsylvania or related
to Pennsylvania history. The American
furniture, folk art, and decorative arts
sale, held the next day, usually contains
Americana not made in Pennsylvania,
Chinese export porcelain and English
china not made for Philadelphians, and
20th-century material made elsewhere.
Generally, all the Pennsylvania mate-
rial is offered on the first day, but last
November some desirable Pennsylva-
nia material was offered the following
day in a large consignment from a gen-
tleman’s town house in Washington,
D.C.
Billed by department head Lynda
Cain as one of the strongest since its
inception, the Pennsylvania session,
held November 12, 2014, began with
20th-century furniture by George
Nakashima, Mira Nakashima, and Paul
Evans and featured Wharton Esherick’s
life-size sculpture of his daughter Mary
carved from cocobolo, a tropical hard-
wood. Esherick depicted Mary in her
role of Essie in George Bernard Shaw’s
The Devil’s Disciple, a production at
the Hedgerow Theater in Rose Valley,
Pennsylvania. Esherick later named the
figure Genesis XXIV. 16 and sold it as
Rebecca. The figure holds a bottle, sug-
gesting the Biblical story of Rebecca at
the well as told in Genesis (“And the
damsel was very fair to look upon, a
virgin, neither had any man known her;
and she went down to the fountain, and
filled her pitcher, and came up”). Esti-
mated at $60,000/80,000, the sculpture
sold on the phone for $123,750 to the
Modernism Museum in Mount Dora,
Florida.
After a George Nakashima Minguren
coffee table (est. $8000/12,000) sold
for $23,750, as did a Nakashima slab
table (est. $20,000/30,000), the sec-
tion of books and prints generally sold
below estimates to collectors and the
trade with a few surprises. An engraved
pilot’s license for Isaac Smith to pilot a
ship on the Delaware River and Dela-
ware Bay, engraved with a vignette of a
lighthouse in the border, sold for $4063
(est. $150/200), and a German Bible
printed by Christopher Saur in 1776
sold for $2304 (est. $1200/1800), but
most lots sold for a few hundred dollars
each.
One young collector in the salesroom
was thrilled to get the account sheets of
the printer Lydia R. Bailey, for printing
certificates for spirits, wines, and teas
imported into Philadelphia in 1819. It
cost him $313 (est. $200/300). “Lydia
Bailey took over her husband’s printing
business and turned it into a thriving
business; she was Philadelphia’s offi-
cial city printer,” he said. From 1813
to the 1850s, she also did job printing
for the University of Pennsylvania and
various bank and canal companies,
churches, and charities.
The Pennsylvania sales are always an
educational experience because things
that have never been seen before turn
up. For example, the canvaswork chest
cover stitched by Mary Flower, worked
in Irish stitch in worsted yarns and bear-
ing her initials and the date 1767, sold
to the Winterthur Museum for $35,000
(est. $20,000/30,000). It was missing
some fringe. Linda Eaton, Winter-
thur’s John L. and Marjorie P. McGraw
Director of Collections and curator of
textiles, told Lynda Cain that Amanda
Isaac had discussed Mary Flower’s
table cover in her Winterthur master’s
thesis, “An Unlimited Fancy: Ann
Flower’s Sketchbook 1753-1765,” and
in an article in the Summer/Autumn
2007 issue of Winterthur Portfolio;
these facts were noted in the catalog.
“The cover is related in both design
and technique to Mary’s sister Ann’s
embroidered prayer book cover, which,
like her sketchbook, is in the Winter-
thur collection,” said Eaton. “It is an
extremely rare form of needlework, and
we look forward to undertaking further
research on it.”
A group of 18 pieces of China trade
porcelain decorated with a Quaker
farmer and his cow and dog, the design
associated with the Morris family of
Philadelphia, sold on the phone to the
trade for $26,250. It is among the most
desirable patterns of China trade por-
celain made for the American market.
A Pennsylvania redware plate deco-
rated with well-placed sgraffito tulips
splashed with green glaze, attributed
to John Neis of Upper Salford Town-
ship, Montgomery County, sold to a
collector in the room for $33,750 (est.
$3000/5000).
Two collectors, one in the room
and the other on the phone, wanted
James Fuller Queen’s watercolor
scene of skaters on the Delaware River
during the severe winter of 1856 (est.
$8000/12,000). They battled until it
was knocked down to the phone bidder
for $25,000. A collector in the room
paid $36,250 (est. $10,000/15,000)
for a large U.S. International Centen-
nial Exhibition chair that had a print of
Memorial Hall behind glass on its back
and other views of the fair framed on
its crest rail.
The following day, November 13,
five phone bidders competed for Wil-
liam Russell Birch’s 4" x 5 7/8" water-
color View of Springland, his country
estate on the Delaware River, and a col-
lector on the phone won it at $28,750
(est. $3000/5000). He was the under-
bidder for the other 4" x 5 7/8" Birch
watercolor in the sale, a view from
Springland, which sold for $20,000 (est.
$1000/2000) to an institution, accord-
ing to Freeman’s. Another institution,
a New England university, bought the
white marble bust of Washington by
the Italian sculptor Raimondo Tren-
tanove (1792-1832) for $40,625 (est.
$8000/12,000); it did not go back to the
Boston Athenaeum, for which it was
made in 1820. All three lots came from
the Washington, D.C., town house, and
they made up for the furniture and dec-
orations that sold under estimates or
failed to sell, so the client was pleased
with the way Freeman’s handled the
sale.
Three phone bidders and a bidder
on the Internet wanted the circa 1812
presentation sword awarded to John
Tayloe IV by the Virginia legislature
for gallant conduct during the battle
between the U.S. frigate Constitution
and the British frigate Guerrière. It
went for $50,000 to the Internet bidder,
said to be a European. Toward the end
of the sale, collector Charles Santore of
Philadelphia came into the salesroom
and stayed long enough to buy a pair of
American portraits of a Cape Cod, Mas-
sachusetts, couple by a yet unidentified
artist for $37,500. Santore said they are
among the best paintings he had seen in
a long time. He said they are untouched
Samuel T. Freeman & Co., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania and Americana Auctions
by Lita Solis-Cohen
Photos courtesy Freeman’s
The Pennsylvania
sales are always
an educational
experience.
Rare canvaswork chest cover by Mary Flower (1744-
1778), initialed and dated “MF 1767,” of colored
worsted yarns worked in Irish stitch and with wool
fringe (some fringe missing), 19½" x 42" (including
fringe), descended in the family of Mary’s sister Ann.
This wool embroidery, which fits on a dressing table
or chest of drawers, sold to Winterthur for $35,000
(est. $20,000/30,000).
Mary Flower and her sisters, Ann and Elizabeth,
are well known for their needlework. The sisters’
needlework was the subject of Amanda Isaac’s Win-
terthur master’s thesis (2004), which was published
in Winterthur Portfolio 41: 2/3 (2007). The sisters’
parents were Enoch Flower, a Philadelphia cutler,
and Anne Jones Flower, daughter of a Philadelphia
brewer and merchant. Enoch’s grandfather was the
first schoolmaster appointed by William Penn and
the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, a founder of
the Library Company of Philadelphia, and a member
of Benjamin Franklin’s Junto club and the State eat-
ing and fishing club in Schuylkill.
At Christie’s January 1995 auction of the Eddy
Nicholson collection, silk needlework pictures by
Mary Flower sold for $123,500 (shepherd and shep-
herdess) and $145,500 (a hunting scene).
Queen Anne walnut
side chair, Philadel-
phia, circa 1750, with
trifid feet, solid splat,
and yoke-shaped
crest rail, 38¾"
high, descended in
the family of the
original owner, with
an engraved brass
plaque reading
“Belonged to my
Grandmother Deb-
orah Fisher Whar-
ton, Joanna W Lip-
pincott,” $2560 (est.
$2000/3000).
Deborah Fisher
Wharton (1795-
1888) was an advo-
cate of women’s
rights, a founder of
Swarthmore Col-
lege, and a friend
of fellow Quaker Lucretia Mott (1793-1880). She
lived with her husband, William Wharton, at 336
Spruce Street in Philadelphia and summered at
Bellevue Mansion in North Philadelphia, which was
bequeathed to them by William’s father, Charles
Wharton, a Philadelphia merchant. One of their
sons, Joseph Wharton, founded Swarthmore College
and the Wharton School of the University of Penn-
sylvania and cofounded Bethlehem Steel Company.
His daughter Joanna (1858-1938) married publisher
Joseph Bertram Lippincott (1857-1940).
Crewelwork work bag panel, “Jane
Hoopes / October 13 1768,” Goshen-
ville, Chester County, Pennsylvania,
29½" x 19¾", ex-Price estate, $7500
(est. $2000/3000) to a phone bidder. A
woolwork sampler that sold at Skinner
in November 2006 records her parents’
names, John and Christian, and the
name of the Hollis School in Goshen.
Queen Anne mahogany dish-top,
tilt-top candlestand, Philadelphia,
circa 1760, with a suppressed ball
on its shaft and pad feet, 28½"
high x 23½" diameter, $10,000 (est.
$5000/8000) to a phone bidder. It
came from the Wells estate with the
same descent as the Mary Flower
needlework through the Morris and
Brown families.
This 18th-century Philadelphia school watercolor
on ivory miniature portrait of Benjamin Flower
(1748-1781), a colonel in the Artillery Artificers
Regiment and later the commissary general
of military stores, 1¾" x 1 3/8" (sight size)
in a later gilt-metal case, sold for $21,250
(est. $6000/8000) to someone who left a
bid with the auctioneer. Known for sav-
ing the Liberty Bell from British capture
in 1777, Flower ordered that the bells be
removed from public buildings in Phil-
adelphia and conveyed to safety. He is
depicted his regimental uniform.
Flower was painted full length by
Charles Willson Peale. That portrait is in
the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House in
Baltimore. Maryland; from 1807 until 1857 it
was the home of Flower’s niece, Mary Young Pick-
ersgill (1776-1857), daughter of Benjamin’s sister Rebecca Flower
Young, an early flag maker and the sewer of the flag hoisted over
Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812.
C e l a d o n - g l a z e d
prickly melon vessel
by Cliff Lee, Stevens,
Pennsylvania, 2004,
signed and dated, 13"
high x 6" wide, $1250
(est. $1000/1500).