Maine Antique Digest May 2015

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16-C Maine Antique Digest, May 2015
- AUCTION -
Alate 19th-century 24" diameter D. J. Gale’s
patent rosewood calendar clock was the top lot
at John McInnis Auctioneers’ January 2 and 3
single-owner sale of the lifelong collections of Rob-
ert Rogers of Byfield, Massachusetts. Bidding for the
clock opened at $3000 and jumped immediately to
$9000 then hopped along until it sold to a dealer in
the gallery on the phone with a client for $27,600
(includes buyer’s premium).
The clock was pristine, with an eight-day, time
only, and two-spring pendulum movement, mark-
ing the leap year, month, hour, minute, second, day
of the week, date, and month. A small dial indicates
the number of years since leap year; the single hand
rotates once every 24 years. Like much of the mate-
rial in Rogers’s collections, it had no restoration.
Rogers’s collec-
tions, over 1500 lots
offered over two
days, were wide and
deep and sold far into
the night. Many lots
included more than one item. Objects of local his-
tory had bidders in the Amesbury gallery jumping
bids and leaving many estimates in the dust. Phone
lines and the gallery were packed; the Internet was
buzzing. After an online snafu at the beginning of
the sale, auctioneer John McInnis informed his audi-
ence, “I hate technology.” He observed that this was
an old-fashioned sale, but that he would hold back a
lot rather than sell it under value. Nearly everything
sold—McInnis passed only about 30 lots of the 1500.
Aside from technology, which was minimal, it was
truly an old-fashioned sale. Estimates were conserva-
tive, and objects sold for what buyers wanted to pay
for them—well above estimates in most cases.
Rogers is descended from early settlers of New-
bury, known first as Newbury Plantation, which once
included Byfield and Newburyport. A good part of
his collections, gathered over half a century, had
come from the early families, most of whom have
been interlinked over the centuries. He’s always
bought the best, even when it was a stretch. His col-
lections have long been admired. He had filled his
house and his barn with them.
Rogers has a fine eye for everything, including
clocks. The pendulum door of a 92" Federal mahog-
any tall clock by David Wood of Newburyport
opened to reveal the original 1795 receipt of 18 shil-
lings paid to Wood at that time. Bidding opened at
$5000 and ended when the clock sold to a collector
in the gallery for $9200.
Bidding on a Seth Thomas “Jupiter” oak eight-day
strike clock with a cathedral bell and a 12" dial with
the phases of the moon opened at $2000 and stalled.
The pace then picked up, however, and the 59" tall
clock sold online for $5700.
Not quite a clock, but clock related, a spice cabinet
(22" x 17" x 11") in the form of a clock hood with
a decorated dial painted with an eagle and shield,
signed “T. Moore VT 1828,” and which slid open
between front pillars to reveal three shelves, sold
online for $3900.
A 19th-century locally made (Newburyport) brass-
bound walnut-cased chronometer (9" x 8¾" x 8¾")
by Norman Cummings Greenough was marked
“Newburyport No. 564” and was accompanied by a
carte de visite (CDV) of Greenough. It was one of
about 15 examples that he made over the course of
his career, and it realized $9200.
A quarter-plate daguerreotype (3¼") of a fire-
fighter in dress uniform with his fire hat that bears
the legend “Bunker Hill No. 2” sold for $3450. It
was noted that John Howard was the foreman of the
Bunker Hill Engine Company in Charlestown, Mas-
sachusetts, and is most likely the subject.
A group of Civil War battlefront letters from New-
buryport Captain Edward Olcutt Shepard, 32nd
Massachusetts Volunteers, Company F, to his cousin
Mary (Mrs. S.P. Shepard) between April 21, 1861,
and June 28, 1865, along with two CDVs of him,
his address book, and his diary from September 15,
1863, to December 21, 1863, sold for $8400. A group
of some 85 letters from Civil War soldier Moses M.
Ordway, serving from 1863 to 1865 in Virginia, to
his brother Francis Ordway of West Amesbury sold
for $3737.50.
One lot included more than 40 Civil War CDVs of
such luminaries as Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln
by Mathew Brady and Generals Ulysses S. Grant,
William Tecumseh Sherman, Joseph Hooker, George
Armstrong Custer, Oliver Otis Howard, George Gor-
don Meade, and Daniel E. Sickle, and some 28 uni-
formed soldiers and one CDV of General and Mrs.
Tom Thumb and one tintype; it sold for $6612.50.
The images were made by such photographers as
Ward, Goldin, Gardner, Tomlinson, and Kunst. The
same buyer paid $1265 for two Civil War era CDV
albums and $4887.50 for a photograph album from
about 1880 that included 48 images, most of which
were signed, of San Francisco sites, Salt Lake City,
Pikes Peak, and other western natural wonders.
Two early ceremonial African hardwood plank
spears attracted interest from afar. One opened at
$800 and sold to a buyer in Paris for $7475, and the
other sold to a westerner for $6325.
Abigail Newman’s 1815 watercolor theorem
(15½" x 14") in memory of her grandfather John Hale
(1736-1815) of Newbury, Massachusetts, depicts
a lush setting beneath a willow tree with a pond, a
meetinghouse, and other buildings in the distance; it
sold on the phone for $5175. Abigail later married
David Story Caldwell, whose family owned Cald-
well Rum Company, which was active in the slave
trade. The Rogers collections included some slave
material such as a hand-forged collar restraint that
sold online for $840 and the books Slave Songs of the
U.S., published in 1867 by A. Simpson, and Holm’s
Race Assimilation by John James Holm, published in
1910 by J.L. Nichols and Company, which brought
$316.25.
A 16" tall 18th-century painted pine and pierced
tin lantern with an oak hoop handle in untouched
condition brought $8050. Its latched door with a dia-
mond pane opened to a crimped tin candlestick with
an original tallow candle. There was also a late 18th-
or early 19th-century wooden lantern (15" tall) with
three glass and tin sides and a tin latched door with
wire strapping holding the base to the hood that has a
conical tin vent. This lantern sold for $3450.
The star of the toys was a 19th-century polychrome
tin toy houseboat (9" x 14" x 9"). It was unmarked and
sold for $4887.50 against the estimated $600/1200.
John McInnis Auctioneers, Amesbury, Massachusetts
Calendar Clock Brings $27,600
by Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo
The 24" diameter D. J. Gale’s rosewood calendar clock was
untouched and sold to a dealer in the gallery on the phone with a
client for $27,600.
It was truly an
old-fashioned
sale.
The tin plaque (19½" x 16") advertised Ferris Corset
Waists and sold for $2587.50. McInnis photo.
A Newburyport mahogany bowfront chest of four graduated draw-
ers (32½" x 38" x 21½") with cockbeading, a molded base, and
shaped bracket feet sold to a Northshore dealer for $5175. The chest
had come from Caldwell farms. McInnis photo.
The painted cast-iron Kewpie
doll arcade target (34" long) with
ten figures was rare and sold for
$4887.50. McInnis photo.
Collector Robert Rogers and auctioneer John McInnis are shown
discussing the thousands of lots in Rogers’s collections.
The trotting horse weathervane (20" x 38") with a gilt
and painted cast-iron head, a copper body, and direc-
tionals (not shown) sold for $3450.