Maine Antique Digest April 2015

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Maine Antique Digest, April 2015 19-B
- AUCTION -
Ruth Nutt loved to collect. Her primary
collection was silver, but she needed
to furnish a house for her husband
and four children, so she collected furni-
ture, paintings, needlework, iron for the fire-
place, and candlesticks and boxes. Dealers
said she never left an antiques
show empty handed. She had
the means. Her husband, Roy,
was a math whiz who as a young
man wrote programs for the
very first mainframe computers
and formed a company with Fletcher Jones
known as Computer Sciences Corporation
(CSC). In 1963 CSC became the first IPO
for a software company, and in 1968, when it
was listed on the NewYork Stock Exchange,
it was the first software company to be pub-
licly traded.
The Nutts had houses on both coasts. In
the 1980s they bought a house in Darien,
Connecticut, and they spent five months a
year there before deciding to retire to a cove
on Orcas Island off the coast of Washington.
Roy Nutt died in 1990, before the island
house was finished, but Ruth Nutt moved
there and continued collecting, coming east
every January to add to her collections at the
winter shows and sales.
The Nutts bought most of their furniture
from Israel Sack, Inc., needlework from
Amy Finkel and Ruth Troiani, porcelains
from London dealer Jonathan Horne, China
trade objects from Hirschl & Adler Galler-
ies and Elinor Gordon, and silver and boxes
from a variety of dealers.
Before Ruth Nutt passed away in 2013,
she had given the Seattle Museum of Art
a sizable gift of silver. Her heirs sold most
of what remained at Sotheby’s this January.
Reportedly, there are still 400 lots of silver
to be sold.
In her last years Ruth Nutt suffered from
Alzheimer’s disease. During that time, much
of her best needlework was sold privately,
but her furniture and decorations remained
in her house and were offered in 294 lots on
Friday afternoon, January 23, to a full sales-
room that saw 234 (79.6%) of them sell for a
total of $1,873,120.
The sale began with a selection of English
brass candlesticks and brass, silver, and
wooden boxes of all kinds; patch boxes,
snuffboxes, tobacco boxes, vinaigrettes,
pomanders, nutmeg graters, nécessaires, tea
caddies; boxes made of shells, ram’s horn,
rock crystal, amber, mother-of-pearl. All
found buyers; many went to buyers on the
phones, and some sold to collectors, deco-
rators, and dealers in the room. A Dutch or
German traveling writing set in an engraved
brass box, dated 1594, sold for $4375 (est.
$800/1200) to an absentee who left a bid
with the auctioneer.
Some instant collections were formed.
Eight assorted 18th- and early 19th-century
wood snuffboxes sold as one lot for $2500 (est.
$1200/1800), and eight 18th- and 19th-cen-
tury silver-mounted horn snuff mulls, mostly
Scottish, one carved as an elephant’s head,
sold together for $4063. A collection of 14
18th- and 19th-century nutmeg graters went
at $4688; six silver-mounted shell snuffboxes
fetched $2500; and four shoe-form snuff-
boxes, plus two others of different forms, sold
for $1250 (est. $600/800).
One British dealer in New York City
for the New York Ceramics & Glass Fair
came to the auction to buy salt-glazed and
agateware ceramics. Garry Atkins of Lon-
don paid $13,750 for a rare circa 1760 Staf-
fordshire white salt-glazed stoneware “Bac-
chus on a Barrel” teapot and cover; Ruth
Nutt had bought it from Jonathan Horne,
who had bought it at Christie’s May 1990
“Rous Lench Collection” sale in London.
A phone bidder paid $5938 for a circa 1745
camel-form white salt-glazed stoneware
teapot and cover, outbidding New
York City dealer Alan Kaplan, but
Atkins got a circa 1750 agateware
silver-form salver for $6875 (est.
$4000/6000) and a rare circa 1755
agateware quatrefoil spoon tray for
$2813 (est. $2000/3000).
The Nutts’ rarest piece
of China trade porcelain
was a tree shrew sauce
tureen and cover, circa
1760. The tree shrew is
affixed to a leaf-shaped stand with
its young to one side, and a tiny
seated shrew is the finial on the leaf-
shaped cover (est. $10,000/15,000).
It sold for $68,750 to a bidder on
the phone. A similar one sold the
following Monday at Christie’s
for $40,000 (est. $30,000/50,000).
The Nutts’ China trade porce-
lain made for the American mar-
ket sold well indeed. An early
19th-century punch or cider
jug with a portrait of George
Washington on its side sold on
the phone for $118,750 (est.
$15,000/20,000) to Todd Prickett
of C.L. Prickett, Yardley, Penn-
sylvania; Ruth Nutt had bought
it at the Winter Antiques Show
in NewYork City from Hirschl
& Adler Galleries in Janu-
ary 2003. A group of Chinese
export wares decorated en gri-
saille in the “Quaker Farmer”
pattern, circa 1810, sold for
$31,250 (est. $4000/6000),
and a Chinese export porcelain
three-part vegetable tureen
painted with a Washington
memorial sold on the phone
for $40,625 (est. $7000/10,000).
The same price was paid for an 1810-
20 Chinese export porcelain orange
Fitzhugh oval soup tureen, cover, and
stand that Ruth Nutt had bought from
Hirschl & Adler Galleries in January
2004.
Rarities performed well. A silk embroi-
dered terrestrial globe made in the early
19th century by Mercy Smedley when she
was a student at Westtown School in Ches-
ter County, Pennsylvania, sold on the phone
for $13,750 (est. $800/1200). It is similar to
one illustrated by Betty Ring in Girlhood
Embroidery (1993).
The star piece of furniture, illustrated on
the catalog cover, was the Capen family
bombé slant-front desk made in Boston,
Massachusetts. It was bought in the sales-
room by Stonington, Connecticut, dealer
Roberto Freitas, who paid $635,000 (est.
$500,000/700,000). The Nutts had bought it
from dealer Milly McGehee in June 1983.
The small mahogany serpentine-front
sideboard with the remains of a label of
Major Benjamin Frothingham, Jr. (1734-
1809), made in Charlestown, Massachusetts,
circa 1805, is a document of Massachusetts
furniture. It sold to a private collector in the
room for $59,375 (est. $40,000/60,000).
Exeter, New Hampshire, dealer Peter
Sawyer paid $37,500 (est. $15,000/25,000)
for the Mottley family walnut dressing table
made in Salem, Massachusetts, circa 1760.
With an old surface, its original hardware,
and an Israel Sack, Inc. provenance, the
table came from the same collection as the
signed Benjamin Frothingham high chest
and dressing table at Winterthur. The Sack
firm said it was “one of the finest New
England Queen Anne lowboys we have ever
had the privilege to offer.” It exhibits classic
Puritan design.
For more information, contact Sotheby’s
at (212) 606-7000; Web site .
com).
Sotheby’s, New York City
The Nutt Collection of American Furniture and
Decorative Arts
by Lita Solis-Cohen
Photos courtesy Sotheby’s
Rarities
performed
well.
A Chinese export porcelain famille rose tree shrew
sauce tureen and cover, circa 1760, 8½" long, the
tree shrew affixed to a leaf-shaped stand with its
young to one side and surrounded by molded fruit-
ing sprigs and painted peony sprays, all within a cell
border, the cover similarly decorated with a seated
tree shrew finial, $68,750 (est. $10,000/15,000).
Another example sold at Christie’s three days later
for $40,000 (est. $30,000/50,000).
Rare Chinese export porcelain
American market punch jug, early
19th century, 9" high, painted
with a portrait of George Wash-
ington in an oval surrounded by
a gilt band and bead border, the
surround repeated on the opposite
side enclosing a monogram “BH,”
the gilt band repeated around the
rims and foot, the domed cover
with a foo-lion finial, $118,750 (est.
$15,000/20,000) to Todd Prickett
of C.L. Prickett, Yardley, Pennsyl-
vania, bidding on the phone. Ruth
Nutt bought it from Hirschl &
Adler Galleries in 2003.
A similar punch jug with a por-
trait of George Washington but
bearing different initials is in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York City and is illustrated in
Jean Gordon Lee’s Philadelphians
and the China Trade 1784-1844
(1984). According to Lee, the por-
trait of George Washington is based
on an engraving by David Edwin
(English, 1776-1841, active in Phil-
adelphia 1797-1841).
Capen family carved and figured mahog-
any bombé slant-front desk, Boston, Mas-
sachusetts, circa 1785, 45" x 49½" x 22",
$635,000 (est. $500,000/700,000) to Stoning-
ton, Connecticut, dealer Roberto Freitas on
the phone with a client, underbid by Penn-
sylvania furniture advisor Alan Miller in the
room. It is one of 14 known examples of the
form and the most highly embellished.
Federal inlaid and figured mahogany serpentine-front sideboard, labeled in the
top drawer by Major Benjamin Frothingham, Jr., Charlestown, Massachusetts,
circa 1805, 37¾" high x 59¼" wide x 25 3/8" deep, ex-Israel Sack, Inc., $59,375 (est.
$40,000/60,000). It has a rich old surface; the serpentine-shaped top has a line-inlaid
edge; the case consists of a top row of three rectangular drawers, the lower section
with two graduated center drawers flanked by end cupboard sections, the drawers
all with crossbanded and line-inlaid borders with beaded edges. It is supported by
six square tapered legs terminating in tapered feet with banded cuffs, the front four
with line inlay and a single inlaid bellflower.
According to the catalog, “Major Benjamin Frothingham (1734-1809), one of the
most important 18th-century Massachusetts cabinetmakers, crafted this remarkable
sideboard of diminutive stature during the last decade of his life. It is notable with
the center section composed of three graduated drawers rather than the ubiquitous
paired hinged doors. Frothingham used the same label, engraved by Massachusetts
silversmith Nathaniel Hurd (1730-1777), throughout his life. Very few pieces survive
with his label, and this is only the second documented piece of Frothingham furni-
ture in the Neoclassical taste.”
☞