Maine Antique Digest, April 2017

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10-C Maine Antique Digest, April 2017
- AUCTION -
Pook & Pook, Downingtown, Pennsylvania
Americana and Fine Art
by Lita Solis-Cohen
Photos courtesy Pook & Pook
Pook & Pook held a winter sale on
Friday, January 13, and luckily it
did not snow. James Pook decided
to sell 341 lots in one long Friday evening
sale, knowing that many in the trade and
some collectors were headed to NewYork
City in the following days to face the
daunting task of previewing about 2000
lots of Americana (1300 at Sotheby’s
and 750 at Christie’s) and that a few of
the regular dealers were setting up or
attending the shows in Manhattan. The
warmup auction for pre-Americana Week
at Pook was followed by a 900-lot online
auction the following Monday, January
16.
After the usual reception with plenty
of good food and wine, a sizable crowd
filled all the seats in the salesroom, and
the small battalion of dealers congregated
at the back of the room. There was
competitive bidding on the phones and
plenty of action from Bidsquare. Of the
341 lots offered, 316 sold for a grand
total of $954,275. That was 93% sold
by lot and just about in the middle of the
presale estimates. According to Deirdre
Magarelli, a Pook & Pook vice president,
of the 300 active bidders on Bidsquare
on Friday night, 86 were successful. The
following Monday the online Americana
auction had 257 successful bidders who
spent $238,661—making it a million-
dollar-plus week for the auction house.
Some rare pottery, fraktur, a few
paintings, and some painted furniture
sold over estimates. A tall-case clock by
Benjamin Chandlee of Chester County
with its sarcophagus top intact, its center
finial and base molding replaced, sold
with buyer’s premium for a $34,160 (est.
$20,000/40,000). Quilts and furniture
with new tops or new feet were ignored
or sold at the low end of estimates.
Provenance mattered in some cases and
didn’t matter at all in others. Southern
pottery and a Virginia curly maple server
once owned by Titus Geesey sold well
over estimates. Titus Geesey (1893-1969),
a York County, Pennsylvania, native, was
the personal secretary for Pierre du Pont,
president of the DuPont Company. Geesey
was an enthusiastic collector of mostly
Pennsylvania Dutch household gear.
He filled his house outside Wilmington,
Delaware, with Pennsylvania German
pottery, furniture, metalware, and textiles
and in 1953 gave a large part of it to the
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Although Pennsylvania collectors
remembered Geesey, whose heir is a
frequent consignor to Pook sales, they
seemed to have forgotten about pioneer
folk art collectors Stewart Gregory and
Jean and Howard Lipman. A folk art
carving of a group of musicians that had
sold for $1900 at the landmark sale of the
Stewart Gregory collection at Sotheby
Parke Bernet in January 1979 sold for
$1500 on Bidsquare at Pook & Pook in
2017. A Berks County painted blanket
chest, attributed to Jacob Blatt (1801-
1878) and illustrated in Dean Fales’s
American Painted Furniture (1975),
where it was called New England, from
the collection of Jean and Howard
Provenance mattered in
some cases and didn’t
matter at all in others.
Sledding by Harry Leith-Ross (1886-1973), a 30" x 38" oil on canvas, depicts how
children could use roads to enjoy sledding before the snowplow era. It is signed “Leith-
Ross” and has a Golden Door Gallery label on the back as well as a secondary label “No.
23” with the artist’s name and painting’s title, and the original receipt dated 1974. It sold
on the phone for $85,400 (est. $80,000/120,000).
From a New Jersey collection came this clean 15" x 29" oil on board landscape,
signed lower right by Ben Austrian (1870-1921), which sold on the phone for $5124
(est. $1000/2000).
The Rain Barrel by Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946), a signed watercolor, 19" x 24", sold on
the phone for $26,840 (est. $25,000/35,000), underbid in the salesroom.
All the bidding was on two phones for this gouache, pen, and ink on paper by Winslow
Homer (1836-1910), Defense of the Baggage Train. The reverse is inscribed in two
handwriting styles with the title and the presentation of it to A.B. Homer. The 9½" x
17½" drawing sold on the phone for $39,040 (est. $25,000/35,000). It is included in the
catalogue raisonné of Homer’s artworks compiled by Gerdts and Goodrich. A letter
from Gerdts accompanied the lot, which has a Gavin Spanierman and Gerald Peters
Gallery provenance.
Sold together, six
mocha yellowware
pepper pots with
seaweed decoration,
some with flakes and
one with repairs, went
for $2074 (est. $500/1000) to dealer Greg Kramer of Robesonia, Pennsylvania. Not shown,
five pepper pots with banded decoration sold on the phone for $976 (est. $400/600).