Maine Antique Digest April 2015

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4-A Maine Antique Digest, April 2015
The Meeting Place
THOMAS GILPIN
ATTRIBUTION
Dear Clayton and Lita,
I just read your first overview
of Americana Week of 2015 in
the on-line edition of M.A.D.
(March, p. 32-B) and wanted to
note a correction regarding the
description of the comb-back
Windsor armchair in rare orig-
inal green paint that we sold at
the Winter Antiques Show. The
armchair was not branded by
Thomas Gilpin, but instead was
attributed to him based on other
signed examples. Thanks.
David A. Schorsch
via e-mail
GUN ENTHUSIAST,
EX-SUBSCRIBER
To Whom It May Concern:
I am not renewing my
subscription after many years.
The reason, I thought you should
know, is your editorial last year
(see M.A.D., July 2014, p. 3-A)
clearly showing your anti-gun
stance. You may not have many
that will not renew, but I am one.
Brad Davis
Hamilton, MT
( M.A.D. is not anti-gun. We
editorialized against a proposed
law to change the definition
of an “antique” firearm. We
wrote, in part: “Congress should
reject this bill. The market for
antique firearms is booming, and
the common-sense regulations
outlined in the 1968 Gun Control
Act don’t seem to be restricting
the trade in any measurable way.”
The proposed bill, which died
when the new Congress took over
in January, was reintroduced on
February 26. Ed.)
BUYER’S PREMIUM
Dear Clayton,
I just have to comment on the
innocuous placement of your re-
porting that Sotheby’s raised its
buyer’s premium in the “Frag-
ments” section of the March
edition on pg. 8-A. It is really a
shame that there is such a gen-
eral acceptance of not only these
ever rising fees, but all the other
devious methods that it and its
“partner” Christie’s perpetrate
on the industry.
When the Sotheby’s/Chris-
tie’s duopoly talk, people listen.
When they take advantage of
both buyers and sellers with de-
ceptive formats, fees, and price
manipulation, people still just
listen and enjoy being fleeced
some more.
Lewis J. Baer, Newel, LLC
New York, NY
BROWN FURNITURE
To the Editor:
Maine Antique Digest is one
of the leading trade periodicals
in the antiques business and as
such should advocate for the
enterprise. Instead, I was disap-
pointed again with the “dumbed
down” description of “brown
furniture” in your coverage of
Garth’s auction (page 22-D,
March 2015 issue). What if the
highlighted quote had read,
“How about paint dabbed on
canvas as the top lot of the sale?”
I imagine there would be outrage
among art lovers who recognize
the skill, mastery, and emotion
the artist imbued his/her efforts
with. Likewise, skilled artisans
spent lifetimes learning how to
create not only useful, but beau-
tiful furniture. Understanding
proportions, design, construc-
tion techniques, and wood prop-
erties is no paltry task.
If you want to know what is
wrong with the furniture market,
look no farther than your mirror.
For at least five years, the dis-
paraging catchall description of
brown furniture has been creep-
ing into your newspaper. To quote
from “The Young Collector” arti-
cle on page 22-A of your March
2015 issue, “We don’t construct,
hatch, make, or even manufacture
collectors; we cultivate them.”
What kind of collector can you
expect to cultivate when even the
advocate sweeps aside the excel-
lence of an entire category of dec-
orative arts?
Scott A. Cilley
Richmond, VA
(Our highlighted quote in the
story was “How about brown
furniture as the top lot of the
sale?” We don’t think using the
term “brown furniture,” long
used in the antiques trade, is
disparaging in any way. Ed.)
NEWCOMB OR NOT?
To the Editor:
The brass bookends shown on
page 7-B of the March 2015 issue
are described as being the work
of Newcomb College. I disagree.
Unless Newcomb College made
exact duplicates (which I strong-
ly doubt), they are the work of
the Forest Craft Guild.
As for sources of attribution,
the most powerful is a primary
source. Google Books has a copy
of The American Stationer, Vol.
LXVII, No. 11, dated March 12,
1910. On page 30 of that mag-
azine is an article on the Forest
Craft Guild with a photo of some
of their products including the
bookends in question.
Another source for attribution
is the Dalton’s American Deco-
nation’s premier dealers in Arts
and Crafts antiques, and it has a
signed pair of the bookends in
the “Sold Archives” section of
its Web site.
I’m not an expert in Newcomb
College metal, but the verdigris
finish on the bookends is not
something they normally do.
Verdigris finishes are a hallmark
of the Forest Craft Guild.
Timothy Grier
Arlington, VA
(Neal Auction Company cataloged
the unmarked bookends as
Newcomb College, citing an
almost identical pair shown in
the 2002 book The Newcomb
Style: Newcomb College Arts &
Crafts and Art Pottery Collector’s
Guide by Jean Bragg and Susan
Saward. Pictured on page 154, the
bookends are said to be the work
of Rosalie Roos Wiener, a noted
Newcomb metal craftsman.
David Rudd at Dalton’s
American Decorative Arts,
Syracuse, NewYork, forwarded us
a photo of the marked pair he sold,
and we were able to reproduce a
portion of The American Stationer.
In an odd coincidence, the Forest
Craft Guild products were being
sold at George E. Newcombe &
Co. Ed.)
On page 14-B of this issue,
we used the wrong photograph
to illustrate the Jacob Eichholtz
portrait that sold for $13,750 at
Sotheby’s. The correct photo is
above.
In our story on the Boston
International Fine Art Show
(March, page 10-D), we reported
an incorrect price. Gina Knee’s
(1898-1982) 1947 Southern Sun-
day Afternoon, a 14" x 30" oil on
canvas offered by Susanna J.
Fichera Fine Art, was $26,000.
It has since sold to an institution.
Advertisement from The
American Stationer.
The pair sold for $2868 (est.
$1500/2500) at Neal Auction
Company on November 22, 2014.
Karla Klein Albertson photo.
Forest Craft Guild bookends with
cut flowers, 7 1/8" x 3¼" x 4½"
deep, with stamped mark. Photo
courtesy Dalton’s American
Decorative Arts.
AGAINST THE MACHINE
To the Editor:
It happened again. I had reg-
istered an absentee bid on an
item in an auction several states
away, and it was a tie bid. What
I mean is, it would have been a
tie bid because my bid was the
same price the item sold for, ex-
cept that the auctioneer didn’t
get a chance to place the absen-
tee bid I had left with him. As
always happens, the tie went to
the Internet bid, not to my bid,
even though they were identical.
As I understand it—and I admit I
may not have the correct under-
standing of all the electronics—
this is because Internet absentee
bids have an unfair advantage
over other absentee bids.
This auctioneer, like many
nowadays, allows bidders to
bid in numerous ways, but they
all fall into two categories: ab-
sentee and live. Absentee bids
are placed ahead of time, either
with the auction house itself (via
mail, absentee bid forms, per-
sonal contact, entering bids on
the auctioneer’s Web site, etc.)
or with an independent Internet
service such as Invaluable, Prox-
ibid, LiveAuctioneers, etc. Ab-
sentee bids that are registered di-
rectly with the auction house can
be either entered into the house
computer system or placed live
during the auction by a member
of the staff—a further compli-
cation. Live bids (the tradition-
al method) can be placed by a
living human at the moment the
item is being auctioned: either
from the auction floor (raising
a paddle, screaming to get the
auctioneer’s attention, etc.), via
phone, or via an on-line service
(Invaluable, Proxibid, LiveAuc-
tioneers, etc.).
Competition is an essential
part of this whole process, and
the assumption is that all bid-
ders have an equal opportunity
to make their highest bid known
and have an equal chance of
its being accepted. Usually it
works. When one bidder bids
more money than any other bid-
der, the other bidders might be
disappointed, but they wouldn’t
say that the process was unfair or
biased. After all, that one bidder
was willing to pay more than all
the other bidders, and that bidder
got the item. That’s what should
happen.
But the situation is differ-
ent with tie bids or equal bids.
That’s when two or more bid-
ders intend to bid the exact same
price, which then turns out to be
the highest price, the winning
bid. In this case, it is the bidder
who bids first who gets the item.
By this I mean the bidder whose
bid is the first among all these
equal bids to be accepted by the
auctioneer. And here is where
tie bids on the Internet have a
distinct advantage over tie bids
placed on my behalf by the auc-
tion house, or placed by live bid-
ders on the phone, or placed by
live bidders in the room.
This happens for two reasons.
First, during the auction, as I un-
derstand it, computers are mak-
ing absentee bids in hundredths
of a second; second, when sev-
eral identical absentee bids are
made on line before the auction,
the first bidder has priority, and
any other bids for the identical
amount are canceled. However,
an absentee bid that was made
prior to all of them via the auc-
tioneer doesn’t cancel any In-
ternet absentee bids of equal
amount.
Let’s look at these one at a
time. If you’ve attended a live
auction that’s also accepting
bids on the Internet, you know
what sometimes happens. The
auctioneer opens the bidding.
There’s a flurry of on-line ab-
sentee bidding that rises to a
certain amount and stops. At
that time, live bidders (on line,
on the floor, or on a phone) can
weigh in with their bids. When/
if the bidding continues, a floor
bidder might be bidding against
an Internet absentee bid or a live
Internet bidder or bidders in the
room or on the phone. The result
is the same: the highest bid gets
the item.
But what about this scenario:
the lightning-quick bids rise to
the exact amount you were wait-
ing to bid. Let’s say the highest
bid is a tie at $50. Some Inter-
net absentee bidder registered
a $50 bid several days earlier,
and when bidding opens on the
item, the computers start calcu-
lating all the various absentee
bids: canceling all the $25 bids
and the $30 bids, eventually see-
ing the $45 bids, and applying
the next increment to get to $50,
which only one bidder has regis-
tered. His $50 bid is placed. Un-
fortunately for you and me, he
got first crack at bidding his $50,
and you didn’t have a chance to
compete with him. You couldn’t
get your paddle up fast enough
in those lickety-split moments to
make that bid. The winning bid
was made automatically, a hun-
dredth of a second after the $45
bid. Your bid had the potential
to be the winning bid, but you
couldn’t raise your paddle in a
hundredth of a second.
You, like the auctioneer, have
turned into a spectator at the
real auction, which was happen-
ing on line. The auctioneer was
no longer asking for bids (“Do
I hear $50?”) or accepting bids
(“I have $50”). In fact, he wasn’t
an auctioneer anymore. He was
a mere human who became a
spectator at his own auction. He
had given his legal authority to
accept bids over to another party.
This is like the auctioneer an-
nouncing as the auction starts:
“I’m going to let the people in
the front row bid until they’re
done, then everybody else can
bid if they want to.” This process
Corrections
Letters