Four watercolor portraits of members of the Thurmond family attributed to the Guilford Limner (South Carolina and Kentucky, active 1818-1833), 1824, each 11⅝ by 9⅝ inches framed, achieved the three-day high result of $150,000 ($8/12,000).

Review by Carly Timpson

DOWNINGTOWN, PENN. — “I am absolutely thrilled with the results of the October 1-3 auction at Pook & Pook. The material in this Americana auction included some of the most exciting and unique we’ve taken in all year. We regularly have the honor of selling several big life-long collections in our live salesroom auctions, but this fall we were able to include a half dozen really special groups of antiques and fine art. What made these stellar collections even more exciting to both catalog and photograph, was how very different they each were, one focusing on fine art, another militaria, another European material, and so on,” commented Pook & Pook’s president, Deirdre Pook Magarelli.

The three-day Americana auction featured 1,065 lots of period furniture, fine art, antique firearms and militaria, advertising, textiles, porcelain, pottery, silver, glass, folk art, decorative accessories, Twentieth Century and modern items, ephemera and more. When the final day closed, only a dozen lots had not sold, resulting in a 99 percent sell-through rate and realizing $3,006,320.

Four watercolor portraits depicting Philip, William, Martha and Elizabeth Thurmond, attributed to the Guilford Limner, achieved pride of place at the top of the three-day auction. Each bearing the sitter’s name and dated “1824”, the portraits were hung in matching wood frames. They had provenance to the estate of Daniel I. Keys, Hanover, Penn., and were closely related to portraits of the Gaines family in the collection of the Kentucky Historical Society. The firm’s vice president, Jamie Shearer, noted that Keys purchased the portraits “at a local northern Maryland auction several years ago for a price somewhere in the mid five figures.” This time around, the set was estimated just $8/12,000, but it did much better, selling to a New England collector for $150,000, underbid by a mid-Atlantic museum on the phone, according to Shearer.

This Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson Moses) (American 1860-1961) oil on board titled “Sugaring Off,” 1942, 10⅜ by 13¼ inches framed, brought $68,750 ($20/40,000).

Other artworks topping the sale included an oil painting by Grandma Moses. Titled “Sugaring Off,” the winter scene was signed to the lower right; the reverse was dated “August 8, 1942,” inscribed “#239” and retained the original artist’s label. Having provenance to a Massachusetts collector who purchased the work in the 1970s, the painting sold to a Delaware dealer bidding in the room for a client, for $68,750.

Frank Earle Schoonover’s oil on canvas “Randerson Kills Prickett” was a featured highlight before the sale as the cover image of the catalog, and it performed on par. According to a presale writeup regarding the lot by Cynthia Beech Lawrence, this Schoonover masterwork “is not only one of the finest paintings of an Old West gunslinger created, it is also one of the finest works to come out of the Brandywine School of illustration artists.” The catalog noted that it was illustrated in The Range Boss by Charles Alden Seltzer in 1916; on the cover of The Popular Magazine, October 7, 1926; and in several exhibition catalogs as well as the artist’s catalogue raisonné. With respectable exhibition history and provenance that included notable collections and galleries, the work was bid to $37,500, selling to a Western trade buyer.

More than doubling its estimate to achieve $37,500, an 1870 coastal scene, likely depicting the New Jersey oceanfront, by William Trost Richards sold to a New York trade buyer. The work was signed and dated to the lower left and had been relined, though it was in “very good condition,” according to the catalog.

This luminous oil on canvas coastal scene by William Trost Richards (American 1833-1905), 1870, 13¾ by 26 inches, rose to $37,500 ($10/15,000).

American, specifically Pennsylvanian, furniture also performed well. The second-highest price of all three days was achieved by a Mahantongo Valley, Penn., painted poplar slant-front desk. Detailed with a central potted tulip flanked by standing figures and further adorned with stars, flowers stags and birds on the drawers, this circa 1830 desk had been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City) in its “American Folk Painters of Three Centuries,” 1980; in Bucknell University’s (Lewisburg, Penn.) 1987 “Decorated Furniture of the Mahantongo Valley”; and in the 2005 “Surface Attraction: Painted Furniture” at the American Folk Art Museum (New York City). It had provenance to important Americana collections including those of Joe Kindig, Jr, and Ralph O. Esmerian. Last sold by Pook & Pook in 2014, this time around it sold to an important Pennsylvania collector for $112,500.

A William and Mary tall case clock made by Philadelphia clockmaker Peter Stretch followed with the third-highest price of the series, more than doubling its high estimate to achieve $87,500 and selling to the same Delaware dealer previously mentioned, on behalf of a client. The circa 1725 walnut clock had eight-day works and a brass face that was signed by the maker in a cartouche flanked by cherubs and topped with a crown.

Shearer noted that a circa 1755 Queen Anne walnut compass seat dining chair was “one of the biggest surprises of the sale.” Also made in Philadelphia, this chair’s crest rail was carved with a shell and volutes, having similar carvings on its legs and splat. Its seat was embroidered with abstract fruits and flowers, and it sold to a long-time Pook & Pook client based in Pennsylvania for $48,640.

The $48,640 result of this circa 1755 Philadelphia Queen Anne walnut compass seat dining chair was “one of the biggest surprises of the sale,” according to Shearer ($3/5,000).

A painted pine dower chest from Berks or Lebanon County, Penn., sold to a New England buyer for $25,000. Crafted in the late Eighteenth Century, this chest retained its original floral decoration on ivory-painted panels with blue surround. Measuring only 25 inches high by 39½ inches wide, the catalog noted that “early dower chests of this size are exceedingly rare.” This example had provenance to Olde Hope Antiques and the Brian B. and Elizabeth H. Topping collection.

“One of the rarest and most desirable of Benjamin Banneker’s almanacs with his engraved portrait, age 64, on the cover,” the 34-page Bannaker’s New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanac, or Ephemeris, For the Year of our Lord, 1795 was printed by S. & J. Adams, Wilmington, and it more than doubled its high estimate to achieve $47,500, selling to a Pennsylvania trade buyer. According to the catalog, Banneker was “a mostly self-taught African American astronomer, mathematician, surveyor and author” who “helped lay out the grid for the Federal Territory, now Washington, DC.”

Another Pennsylvania buyer took home an English Delftware charger from the early Eighteenth Century. Shearer also added that this collector, who was bidding in the room, “was an active buyer and bidder on the best Delftware lots that closed out the auction.” This example, which featured a portrait of King George II in a garden, had a blue dash rim and sold for $40,000 against an estimate of just $4/7,000.

Measuring 14 inches in diameter, this English Delftware blue dash King George II portrait charger, early Eighteenth Century, sold to a Pennsylvania buyer in the room for $40,000 ($4/7,000).

A circa 1890 weathervane with firefighting motifs — a helmet and speaking trumpet — sold to a New England collector for $32,500. Retaining old metallic gold paint, the cast and tinned iron weathervane was “a rare form based on illustrated engravings that appear in at least two trade catalogs of New York manufacturers.” This example had been exhibited in several shows in Florida, as well as Colorado and Iowa, and was published in Two Centuries of American Folk Art: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Masterworks from The Collection of Mr and Mrs Robert P. Marcus (Ritter Art Gallery, Florida Atlantic University, 1984).

Another work suited for the outdoors was J. W. Fiske’s cast zinc fountain of Neptune, which sold, for $30,000, “to a Virginia collector on the phone after spirited in house and telephone bidding,” per Shearer. In this fountain, Neptune is depicted, trident in hand, on a rocky plinth, surrounded by sea creatures and oversized shells. Likely cast circa 1898, this example is considered important as there “are very few surviving examples known; another is in the collection of the Dunkirk Historical Society, Dunkirk, N.Y., on display at SUNY Fredonia, Steele Hall natatorium,” according to the catalog.

“I’m tremendously lucky to work with such an incredible team every day here at Pook & Pook. This particular auction was a shining example of what our crew can accomplish in just a few short months. And, for anyone who saw the sneak peek at the back of the catalog, you know we are already hard at work on a very exciting January 2026 Americana auction,” Magarelli closed.

Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, www.pookandpook.com or 610-269-4040.