Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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30-B Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
- AUCTION -
Mebane Antique Auction Gallery, Mebane, North Carolina
Picker of the Year at Mebane
by Pete Prunkl
Photos courtesy Mebane
In 2013, at his annual Americana
and Continental sale, auctioneer
Jon Lambert tried something new.
He provided registered bidders with
a catalog containing lot numbers,
descriptions, and condition reports.
In the years leading up to this change,
Lambert had distributed an itiner-
ary noting when large categories of
unnumbered lots would be sold. The
catalog was a vast improvement. For
his December 2014 sale, Lambert
tweaked the catalog again. Now there
are two distinct options: robust and
skinny.
The robust ver-
sion with complete
descriptions, con-
signor information,
and lot numbers has
now moved on line,
and anyone with a
smartphone or iPad
could easily follow
the sale. Unfortu-
nately only six patrons out of 120
at the December 5, 2014, sale were
looking at their screens. The rest
had to rely on a free but skinny sin-
gle-spaced list of items by lot number.
Lambert made other alterations
in the conduct of his sales. New for
2014 were Internet bidding, a quieter
auction setting, and the elimination of
the requirement that absentee bidders
visit the Mebane, North Carolina, gal-
lery in person.
To his credit, Lambert has resisted
one other nod to auction modernity. In
an era when more and more lots are
encumbered with inflated consign-
or-imposed reserves, at Mebane there
are no reserves; nothing is passed.
For those with the catalog list,
Lambert filled the information gap
by describing many lots in detail
from the podium. The result was an
11-plus-hour sale for 550 lots. Long-
winded explanations and exorbitant
initial asking prices tried the patience
of some seasoned veterans who other-
wise love Lambert’s energetic, excit-
ing, and endlessly surprising sales.
Regulars who hung with him until
the ninth hour found the sale’s big-
gest surprise. Two weeks before the
sale, staff member Donald Whitfield
went on a very successful picking
expedition in the hamlets of western
Orange County, North Carolina. The
American Pickers must have missed
the house where a circa 1820 walnut
inlaid corner cupboard was gathering
dust. Brass hardware, locks, glass, and
dust all appeared to be original. Bid-
ding opened at $1000 with phone and
on-site bidders participating. Mebane
regular John Barr of Sanford, North
Carolina, bought the cupboard for
$4070 (includes buyer’s premium).
Jon Lambert could not resist telling
the story of the pick and introduced
Whitfield as “the Picker of the Year.”
Donald Whitfield found a sec-
ond treasure at the same residence:
a 93¼" high 12-pane walnut country
cupboard possibly from the Brower
school of Chatham County, North
Carolina. John Barr purchased that,
too, for $1045.
The sale’s top lot debuted an hour
earlier: a 2.09-carat diamond in an
18k gold and platinum setting. It sold
to a happy bidder in the second row
for $12,650. (The appraised value was
$32,000.)
Two other jewelry lots made the
sale’s top ten: a wedding set with
interlocking diamond engagement
and wedding rings, and a Cartier love
bracelet. Twelve round cut diamonds
in the wedding ring flanked the one-
carat center engagement diamond.
An absentee bidder claimed the set
for $3850. Cartier produced the love
bracelet in the 1970s as a flat band
studded with screws that locks to
the wrist. In its original red leather
case with the essential screwdriver,
the bracelet went to the Internet for
$3740.
Five fresh-to-the-market framed
prints by Currier & Ives of steam
locomotives stirred interest across all
bidding venues. Of the five, Amer-
ican Express Train was the oldest
(1864), largest (20½" x 29"), and the
most dramatic. At $5500, it was also
the priciest. Prairie
Fires of the Great West
(1871, $1760), The
Express Train (1870,
$1100), American
Railroad Scene: Snow-
bound (1871, $1100)
and The Great West
(1870, $880) trailed
behind.
A 7¾" high script-signed Loetz
vase also attracted a lot of attention. It
opened at $1800 with absentee, Inter-
net, and on-site bidders in the race.
Glass collector David Whitlock threw
in the towel at $3400. A phone bidder
prevailed at $7040.
One painting, an oil on canvas by
Václav Brozik (Czech, 1851-1901),
made it to the top ten. For on-site
bidder Nathan Sapp the chase for the
portrait of a young girl was start, stop,
start, and stop. When he hesitated, an
Internet bidder responded with light-
ning speed. The Internet took it at
$6710.
Not to be outdone, Sapp returned
later in the sale to purchase three
paintings signed “Helen Maas/ New
Orleans.” The subject matter and
style of the Maas paintings were rem-
iniscent of those of prolific southern
painter William Aiken Walker (1838-
1921). If the Helen Sophie Koehne
Maas (1873-1922) listed on AskArt is
“Helen Maas/ New Orleans,” she and
Walker were contemporaries. Sapp
may have bet on a connection when
he paid $2640 for a Maas painting
of an African-American man, $1485
for Uncle Piastus, New Orleans, and
$1595 for a southern landscape with
barn.
The sale’s best sterling silver was
a stunning example of Victorian ele-
gance. The service for 12 by Whiting
Manufacturing of New York in the
Louis XV pattern was housed in a fit-
ted bird’s-eye maple case with white
silk interior. A plaque on the lid was
marked “CAN/ June 26, 1895.” A
phone bidder captured it for $2750.
Two elegant machines rounded out
the sale’s top ten. A lighted and work-
ing circa 1915 Wurlitzer coin-oper-
ated nickelodeon in a tiger oak cabinet
with leaded stained-glass windows
would feel right at home in many
American man caves. It opened at
$2000, and after challenges from the
floor, it sold to the Internet for $3960.
A monumental European eight-day
time-and-strike bracket clock was
covered with carved leaves, feath-
ers, scrolls, rosettes, faces, roaring
lions, male and female figures, and
a dragon head. A matching shelf was
equally well carved. On the clock face
were three dials used to regulate the
chimes. It sold to an absentee bidder
for $2970.
For more information on Mebane
Antique Auction Gallery, visit the
Web site )
or call (919) 563-2424.
Regulars who
hung with him
until the ninth
hour found the
sale’s biggest
surprise.
There is a tear in this 18" x 12¾" oil on canvas
profile portrait of a young girl by Czech artist
Václav Brozik (1851-1901). The painting opened
at $500, a long way fromwhere it stopped—$6710.
This circa 1870 hair wreath in a 16" x 10"
walnut shadow box frame came from a
collection of 14 mourning wreaths, lock-
ets, and jewelry. Five mourning lots,
including this example, were purchased
by Betty Clark, a dealer from Smithfield,
Virginia. Clark paid $385 for the wreath,
which has a hummingbird in its design.
Another circa 1870 wreath (not shown)
was opened at $600 by an Internet bidder
but received no advances.
An Internet search of Weller
umbrella stands found only
one other example in Baldin
Apple. The 22½" x 11" stand
sold to an Internet bidder for
$319. Dealer Betty Clark was
an underbidder.
There was a fair amount of foxing to this Currier & Ives litho-
graph titled American Express Train. The 20½" x 29" print was
dated 1864 and sold to an absentee bidder for $5500.
The Edgar Allen Poe (1858-
1934) who made this jug was
not the “Nevermore” Poe. This
gentleman hailed from Fayette-
ville, North Carolina, and Rob
Pearce from Natural Connec-
tions Antiques, Knoxville, Ten-
nessee, bought the 11¾" high
salt-glazed jug for $825.
Kids who watch Nickelodeon, the cable television net-
work, may never have seen the real deal. Lambert
plugged in this 53" x 36" x 18¼" Wurlitzer nickel-
odeon and played it during its time on the auction block.
Powered by a Westinghouse motor and marked “The
Rudolph Wurlitzer Co., Cincinnati, O No. 42606,” it sold
to the Internet for $3960.