Maine Antique Digest, March 2017

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Maine Antique Digest, March 2017 13-A
602 Higgins Ave. Suite 1, Brielle, NJ 08730 • (732) 899-2830 • Cell: (917) 566-9269
•
Randi Ona
Early American Antiques
973-495-3707
A detailed and sensitively drawn
watercolor portrait of woman holding a book.
Inscribed Ann Carhartt, Novr 16, 1843. Period frame.
Antique tiger maple acorn top
bed, queen size, natural finish.
MENDES ANTIQUES
Rt. 44, 52 Blanding Road, Rehoboth, MA 02769
Open daily 9-6, Sunday 12-5
If coming from afar we
advise that you please call in
advance. (508) 336-7381
Please see our website: www.
We carry a general line of
American antique furniture from
the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Specializing in antique four-poster
rope beds in all sizes for over fifty
years. Delivery New England, NY,
NJ, and PA. Shipments anywhere. How to be
100%
certain
99.5%
of the time.
Call or write for a copy of Team’s Tiffany Treasures.
TEAM ANTIQUES
“TIFFANY SPECIALISTS”
P.O. Box 290
White Plains, NY 10605
(914) 686-8147
Consultations & Appraisals 50 Years of Experience
Visit our Web site:
Jonathan Trace for $20,000 (est. $20,000/30,000).
This was the second time Christie’s offered this
church silver, this time with lower estimates.
Even though the buy-in rate for silver was high at
Sotheby’s and Christie’s, Sotheby’s John Ward said
there was widespread new interest, and many buy-
ers wanted to buy the lots that failed. In this period
of readjustment there is a bright spot—southern sil-
ver, like southern furniture, is in demand.
Even before the sales were over, collectors
shopped at the shows. There was plenty of Amer-
icana but not much formal American furniture
at the Winter Antiques Show, which benefits the
East Side House Settlement. What was there sold
briskly. Frank Levy of Bernard and S. Dean Levy,
NewYork City, found a buyer for the Bradlee fam-
ily tea table with slides, made in Boston in 1750,
that had a $425,000 price tag. It had been owned
by Sarah Bradlee Fulton, known as the “Mother of
the Boston Tea Party.” Levy sold a Duncan Phyfe
center table of mahogany and rosewood, 1825-30,
illustrated in Peter Kenny’s catalog for the Phyfe
exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
2011. He also sold a Phyfe worktable, a pair of
Providence, Rhode Island, shield-back chairs, a
card table made by Samuel McIntire, and a Boston
Queen Anne side chair. A blockfront desk signed
by Richard Walker, Boston, in 1739 was on hold
for an institution. On Tuesday Levy restocked, and
later in the week, he sold a Salem tripod table.
Early in the showArthur Liverant of N. Liverant
and Son, Colchester, Connecticut, sold a cherry
serpentine chest of drawers with freestanding
turned and fluted columns, made in New London,
Connecticut, in 1776-1800 and priced at $60,000.
Stuart Feld of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New
York City, sold a dining table made by the Sey-
mour shop in Boston, a Boston worktable in the
Neoclassical taste, a Classical cellaret, and lots of
decorations. Elle Shushan sold portrait miniatures.
The Old Print Shop sold a panoramic view of the
Boston harbor. Graham Arader sold maps and
botanical prints, and the Alexander Gallery sold
to Colonial Williamsburg an Edward Hicks water-
color on paper of a Newtown, Pennsylvania, farm,
the only work on paper known by the artist.
The loan exhibition of folk art masterworks from
the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in
Williamsburg, celebrating its 60th anniversary, set
the standard for folk art. Dealers said they made
sales every day. The first weekend was busy, but
attendance lagged during the week and picked up
again on the weekend. Special evening events held
during the week were very well attended.
Sales were also made at Brad Reh’s Art, Design
& Antiques Show at Wallace Hall (see p. 36-E)
held in the Upper East Side and at Dee Dee Sides’s
edgy NYC Big Flea Market at the Manhattan Cen-
ter Hammerstein Ballroom at 311West 34th Street.
At the New York Ceramics and Glass Fair at the
Bohemian National Hall, dealers in 18th-century
ceramics had their best year ever. The Outsider
Art Fair at the Metropolitan Pavilion chalked up
record attendance and plenty of sales. That show
got pages of publicity in the New York Times arts
section, eclipsing the Winter Antiques Show.
Future stories in M.A.D. will give more details.
If the old adage “as goes January, so goes the
year” plays out, the year ahead looks good. The
Americana market hit bottom during the Great
Recession, and now it appears to be on the upswing,
with more affordable prices and with dealers and
auctioneers predicting that more first-rate material
is in the pipeline. Scholarship is adding to knowl-
edge, and blogs are getting the word out. A lot of
the good things that changed hands in January are
illustrated in this issue of M.A.D ., and more will
be next month.
See more Fragments on p. 36-A