Maine Antique Digest, March 2017

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10-A Maine Antique Digest, March 2017
2017 Americana Week Roundup
by Lita Solis-Cohen
When descendants of Alexander
Hamilton realized that the musical
Hamilton brought American history into
pop culture, they knew it was time to sell
their family archive of letters and docu-
ments and called Sotheby’s. The Hamil-
ton papers became the theme of Sotheby’s
Americana Week sales and gave a boost
to a languishing market.
The Hamilton manuscripts were offered
in 77 lots on January 18, the first sale of
Americana Week in New York City, and
brought $2.6 million.
Sales of American furniture and deco-
rations that followed showed an uptick in
that market, with some new bidders and
the regular suspects paying some impres-
sive prices. There were some bargains,
but there were buyers for a broad range
of high-end and middle-market material,
and 80% of the more than 2000 diverse
lots offered at Sotheby’s and Christie’s
sold.
Adding up all the sales of the week,
more than $31.5 million was spent at auc-
tion. More sales were made at the Win-
ter Antiques Show, the Art, Design &
Antiques Show at Wallace Hall, the NYC
Big Flea Market, the New York Ceramics
& Glass Fair, and the Outsider Art Fair.
The total was higher than in the last few
years.
The auction houses do all they can to
promote their sales. Sotheby’s asked
David Korins, the Hamilton set designer,
to come up with a visual image for the
week. His initial idea of wrapping the
entire building in an American flag was
not practical. Korins must have looked
at the work of the minimalist conceptual
sculptor Fred Sandback (1943-2003),
who for three decades created transpar-
ent geometries of yarn sculpture. (Dealer
David Zwirner handles his estate.) Korins
stretched red, white, and blue strings as a
commercial installation and asked view-
ers to follow the strings from Sotheby’s
entrance to four floors where 1300 lots of
Americana were on view.
Sotheby’s found a sponsor for the
exhibition: Majestic Steel of Cleveland,
whose young executive Todd Leebow
wanted to demonstrate that steel is a mod-
ern material, sleek and sexy and prime for
artists and designers. He commissioned
a steel American flag that introduced the
exhibitions.
Erik Gronning, Sotheby’s vice presi-
dent in charge of American furniture and
decorative arts, has an infectious passion
for Americana, and it was evident in his
installation of high chests, chairs, desks,
and tables that were exhibited on pedes-
tals like modern sculpture.
“It’s the best presale exhibition I’ve
ever seen,” said an old-time collector,
smiling as the escalator brought him to
four floors of exhibitions, all color-coded
to the single-owner catalogs.
The installation impressed scholars,
curators, agents, dealers, and collectors,
who spent days upending furniture, exam-
ining silver and folk art, and black-light-
ing paintings. Some returned to bid; oth-
ers left bids with the auctioneer or went
home and bid online during the three
and a half days of sales at Sotheby’s that
competed head-to-head with Christie’s
smaller offering of similar material sold
in two and a half days.
Sotheby’s 1300 lots were offered in six
catalogs and accounted for $19.378 mil-
lion, the Americana department’s high-
est total since 2007. Christie’s offered
750 lots in four small catalogs and added
another $12.178 million to the total.
Prices were down from the market
peaks in the 1990s, 2006, and 2011, when
several billionaires, who are no longer
competing, wanted choice lots. There
was no million-dollar piece of American
furniture this year. Some furniture and
silver sold for the prices of a generation
ago, making those who did not participate
wish they had. The flurry of after-sale
selling of the buy-ins is not counted in the
totals.
The competition between the two
houses is the Super Bowl of Americana,
and it was won this year by Sotheby’s
with its $19.378 total against Christie’s
$12.178 million. John Hays, deputy chair-
man of Christie’s, said good competition
came from longtime collectors and from a
few new ones. He was quick to point out
that Christie’s held two Americana sales
this season. The September Americana
sale brought $2.69 million. Sotheby’s
sold Americana only in January. Like the
academic year, the auction season runs
from September to June.
One Christie’s catalog offered furni-
ture, folk art, decorations, and silver (see
p. 30-A), and there were separate catalogs
Graves and Jobe Accept Wunsch Awards
On January 18 the Eric M. Wunsch
Award for Excellence in the Ameri-
can Arts was presented to Leroy Graves
and Brock Jobe at a packed ceremony at
Christie’s in New York City. The annual
award was created by the Wunsch Ameri-
cana Foundation to continue the legacy of
renowned collector Martin Wunsch and to
encourage greater scholarship and appre-
ciation of American decorative arts.
Margaret Pritchard, senior curator
at Colonial Williamsburg, introduced
Graves. “Leroy Graves is senior conser-
vator of upholstery at Colonial Williams-
burg, and he’s one of the most remarkable
men that I know,” she said. “Leroy is
incredibly talented; he is a superb crafts-
man. His woodcarvings are as impressive
as the pioneer techniques he’s developed
for creating noninvasive upholstery for
antique seating furniture.
“There are a number of us who think
he is the best upholstery conservator in
the world. Leroy is a master of designing
new and unique, often complex systems
that replicate period upholstery coverings,
and he accomplishes this without adding
a single damaging tack to fragile antique
frames…. His journey to get where he is
today is a testament to his dedication, per-
severance, and passion, supported by an
organization made up of leaders that recog-
nized his skills and promoted his success.”
When Graves spoke, he told of being
the son of sharecroppers and how he took
a job at Colonial Williamsburg in 1967,
planning to be employed there for only
two weeks. During his early years, he
worked in maintenance, as an art handler,
and then in the furniture lab.
“Wallace Gusler was the curator of
furniture at the time, and he was a great
teacher,” said Graves. “One of the first
jobs was to make twelve chairs. I thought
he’d gone off the deep end…. He said
‘Listen, I’m going to carve one ball-
and-claw foot and you’re going to carve
twenty-three.’
“It took Wallace about two days to
show me how to do the first ball-and-claw
foot. It took me a day and a half to do a
second, and then I could do two in a day.
“After that I worked as a furniture con-
servator. They weren’t called conserva-
tors back then, but I did that for fifteen
years. Then we started to focus on the
upholstery. Our thought then was if it
took a hundred nails to apply the uphol-
stery, maybe we could reduce it to fifty
nails. One day, I said, ‘What if we tried
an unobtrusive system—to try and reup-
holster objects without the use of nails?’”
Graves said he was told to try, but that it
had to be not only noninvasive, but also
removable.
John and Marjorie McGraw introduced
Brock Jobe and stressed Jobe’s role as
teacher. John McGraw noted that Jobe
had graduated from Wake Forest Uni-
versity, spent four years at Colonial Wil-
liamsburg, received his master’s degree
from Winterthur, had curatorial positions
at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and
Historic New England, and returned to
Winterthur in 1993 as deputy director of
collections and later professor of Ameri-
can decorative arts.
“His years in this position made him
available to all the registered students in
the course…. This was the most effective
way for Brock Jobe to spread the gospel.
He’s been heard to say, ‘I live and breathe
furniture,’ and is never happier than when
crawling under a piece he has studied.”
Marjorie McGraw told the crowd,
“John and I have many, many memories
of wonderful moments with Brock. One
that is closest to my heart is when he
brings students to us to see the collection.
If you could have seen these students as
they climbed under furniture and handled
things and had such fun with Brock. Then
all of a sudden you realize that they got it.
They understood what he’s trying to get
through to them. It’s amazing.”
Jobe, who retired from Winterthur in
2015, gave an impassioned speech. “I
should be dignified, responsible, profes-
sional—but to hell with it. I’m excited.
This award means the world to me.
“I can’t tell you how much I learned
from Leroy [Graves] and everyone at
Colonial Williamsburg. I think about
places like Williamsburg and Winter-
thur and so many other great institutions.
We’re all in this together. We all have a
common goal…to promote what we love,
what we cherish, and what we want others
to enjoy.
“For me, over the last forty-five years,
I have had a gift. It’s a gift that I had no
idea as a youngster at the age of fifteen,
sixteen, or seventeen that I would receive.
That gift came from so many people. It
came from people like Leroy [Graves],
Albert Sack, Morrie Heckscher, Ron
Bourgeault. I could go on and on and
name people who have made a difference
to this field. I’m just one of many, and I
accept this award on behalf of everyone
who is committed to the study and appre-
ciation of decorative arts.
“I implore all of us…. We have an
obligation, we have a duty to make oth-
ers aware and sensitive and sympathetic
to what we love. Because it’s all part of
America’s past. Our past cannot be for-
gotten. We live in a time when you have
to wonder if some of the lessons of the
past will be ignored. We can’t let that
happen. Our field is absolutely crucial to
the future, and so I simply say on behalf
of everyone who is involved in our field,
whether it’s the auction houses, antiques
shops, museums, universities, collectors,
or students, we all have a common goal:
we have to make what we love relevant to
everyone in this country.”
Peter Wunsch and Brock Jobe.
Before the awards ceremony, Christie’s
entertained the crowd with cocktails.
Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner, who made Juil-
liard history at age 14 as the youngest-ever
admittee in the college division, played the
George SchasteyAestheticMovement grand
piano. The event was so heavily attended
that Christie’s moved the awards ceremony
and speeches to the James Christie room,
the largest auction space at Christie’s.
Peter Wunsch (left) and Leroy Graves.
Cabot Mill Antiques
Passes $1 Million per
Annum Sales Milestone
Multi-dealer Cabot Mill Antiques in
Brunswick, Maine, announced on
December 31, 2016, that it had passed
$1 million in sales per annum. Custom-
ers William and Kristen Wing, owners
of Worth & Wing, an architectural and
interior design firm based on Martha’s
Vineyard, Massachusetts, purchased
an 1891 Stanley brass-bound level, a
mounted grinding wheel, and small
brass portholes, among other items, and
that sale put Cabot Mill Antiques over
the mark.
Deborah Stufflebeam, manager of
Cabot Mill Antiques, said, “This is a
major milestone for our antique mall,
which was launched in November of
1996 and has continued a strong and
steady growth for twenty years. It puts
us in a unique position among antique
malls. It’s a tribute to the quality of the
merchandise our antiques dealers pro-
vide to the public, the hard work and
dedication of our friendly and knowl-
edgeable sales team, and our innovative
and consistent marketing.”
Cabot Mill Antiques, located in the
Fort Andross building at 14 Maine
Street, Brunswick, has expanded sev-
eral times over the years and now has
a 16,000-square-foot showroom with
160 displays and nearly 100 antiques
dealers. For more information, visit
Cabot Mill Antiques or call (207) 725-
com>, or check the website (www.
).