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26-CS Maine Antique Digest, May 2015
- AUCTION -
A
t the midpoint of Neal’s Louisiana Pur-
chase auction last November, company
president Neal Alford was already talking
about the important estate he had on the schedule
for early 2015.
Alford was talking about what he referred
to as the Service collection of Grant A. Oakes
(1938-2010), a businessman in Warren, Ohio,
who started a company called Service Guide
Inc. Oakes liked 1932 Fords as well, but he will
always be best known for his
collection of 19th-century
Rococo Revival and Renais-
sance Revival furniture and
lighting. A selection of lots
from his estate in the Janu-
ary 31 and February 1 sale
accounted for over $800,000
of the $2.4 million total.
Alford said, “Throughout
the 1980s, he was the strong-
est collector of American
Rococo nineteenth-century
furniture, primarily focused on known Belter
works.” Oakes obviously admired accomplished
carving, and he bought the best of the best of his
chosen period. Some find the style a bit much,
but Rococo Revival is seductive, and the artistry
captures the imagination. Alford is president
and auctioneer, but he is also Neal’s enthusiastic
19th-century furniture guy. Notable in the Service
collection were two small round tables, both esti-
mated at $20,000/30,000, which sold on Sunday
morning for $54,970 (includes buyer’s premium)
and $60,945.
“There are two small circular tables that are
drop-dead gorgeous,” Alford said. “You can see
in those that John Henry Belter…was having an
innovative moment. He had a genius for doing
what he does. The delicacy of the lamination in
those small tables is phenomenal. Whoever Belter
was, he had a great understanding of the eight-
eenth century—of the forms, of his sources. He
was somewhat of a purist in his understanding of
Rococo design. The guy was a genius and an aes-
thete, and the laminating process got him to where
he wanted to go.”
Discussing the collection as a whole before the
sale, he continued, “This material was very care-
fully chosen by someone with the wherewithal to
make choices and be able to afford them. Oakes
wanted the best, was able to pay for the best, and
ended up with the best. There’s no collection any-
where that has the quantitative consistency that this
does. It’s representative of the very best work by a
maker who has a very short tenure—so it’s even
more intense than the way we’re talking about it.
I think the marketplace for this particular group,
which is…very sophisticated, I think the market
for this material will be competitive with collectors
of nineteenth-century American furniture and dec-
orative arts. I think they’re going to be enamored of
the qualitative superiority of this group.” Alford’s
opinion was justified by the results. The estimates
proved accurate and were consistently met or sur-
passed, sometimes in spectacular fashion.
Collectors had long known about the Service
collection because so many individual pieces had
been published. Many of them had appeared in the
Dubrows’
American Furniture of the 19th Cen-
tury, 1840-1880
. Lighting of the period had been
another passion of Oakes,
and a number of those lots
had been illustrated in
19th
Century Elegant Lighting
:
Argand, Sinumbra, and Solar
Lamps
by Gerald T. Gowitt.
As noted, Oakes had been
avidly collecting back in the
1980s, a decade when another
great Rococo Revival collec-
tion, that of Gloria and Rich-
ard Manney, who had begun
collecting in the 1960s, went
on view at Winterthur. While
agreeing that prices may have
been very strong in the ’80s
and ’90s, Alford pointed out
that collections returning to the
market are part of the regular
auction cycle: “You’re going
to see more and more of that, I
suppose. Collections that were
built thirty or forty years ago
are coming to auction. A lot of
the material will be deacces-
sioned from those collections,
throughout the marketplace.
Certainly, you hit the nail on
the head in regard to a certain
aspect of this group here com-
ing to sale. Theywere collected,
generally speaking, thirty years
ago—and that’s what sales
looked like then. What you’re
seeing now is a pretty tight col-
lection in this particular sale.
It’s something we’re going to
experience over and over. And
this type of quality typically
will attract newcomers to this
area of collecting.”
While the Service collec-
tion made up most of the
top-20 lots, the two-day sale presented several
other strong collections, including historic maps,
prints, and books from the estate of Donald E.
Pierce, who was a physician in Greenwood, Mis-
sissippi, before retiring to Santa Fe. Marc Fagan
at Neal handles these specialties and made sev-
eral trips to New Mexico to examine the collec-
tion. Fagan found that Dr. Pierce had been an
Neal Auction Company, New Orleans, Louisiana
Neal Rolls the Dice on Rococo
Revival—and Wins
by Karla Klein Albertson
Photos courtesy Neal Auction Company
“This material
was very care-
fully chosen by
someone with the
wherewithal to
make choices and
be able to afford
them.”
Big and boisterous, this nine-
piece bedroom suite (partially
shown) from the Service collec-
tion is in the Renaissance style
referred to as “Henry II.” Alto-
gether it’s a great deal of carved
oak furniture for $52,580 (est.
$15,000/25,000).
A phone bidder who acquired other lots of Rococo Revival fur-
niture in the sale won this rosewood center table for $54,970 (est.
$20,000/30,000). A related group of carved tables by Belter is in
the “Rosalie” pattern, named after one in the parlor of that great
house in Natchez.
Grant Oakes pur-
chased both chan-
deliers and table
lamps for the Ser-
vice
collection.
Most ornate—with
figures of Nike
holding the shades
aloft—was this pair of late Regency sinumbra lamps,
circa 1830, Messenger & Sons, Birmingham, England,
which brought $25,095 (est. $7000/10,000).
Like many other French artists, Alfred L.
Boisseau (1823-1901) spent several years
painting in New Orleans. This ethereal
1845 portrait of a young lady, possibly
Mrs. Alfred LeMore, née Marie Xavier
Athenais Chretien, sold for $11,950.
While paintings were not the focus of this auction,
The Bayou
at Lafitte
by New Orleans artist Clarence Millet (1897-1959)
was a perfect expression of Louisiana life on the water. The
work, which brought $53,580 (est. $10,000/15,000), had
been purchased from the artist when he presented it at the
National Art Week Exhibition in New Orleans in 1941.