Towards the end of the first day, this Nineteenth Century cut and blown garniture that featured a sulfide bust as well as an acorn finial, strawberry and fan cutting, rose to $20,400; it was the highest price of the two-day event and sold to a local long-time collector on the phone ($300/600).
Review by Madelia Hickman Ring
COLUMBUS, OHIO — The single-owner collections of Audree & Bryce Chase (Port Royal, S.C.) and Cindy Hodel (Metamora, Ill.) were cornerstones of Amelia Jeffers’ March Great Estates Americana auctions, with 71 lots from the Chase collection on Friday, March 21 and more than three dozen lots from Hodel’s collection on Saturday, March 22. More than 97 percent of the 1,031 lots gaveled down successfully, and Jeffers was pleased with the sales’ results.
“I was really happy with the prices we were getting with furniture, and smalls had strong interest across the board. In my 28 years in the auction business, I’ve never seen the quantity or quality coming through the door. Things are really going all over the place; we had buyers in Texas, a lot of interest from multiple buyers in California, Missouri, Iowa and all over New England.”
But, it was an Ohio buyer, bidding on the phone, who Jeffers has known for years, who won, for $20,400, the sales’ top lot, a Nineteenth Century cut and blown glass garniture with sulfide bust of a gentleman.
An Eighteenth Century Connecticut Queen Anne tray-top tea table with a vigorously shaped apron doubled its high estimate and will be returning to New England, to a buyer who paid $6,000 for it.
Local bidders were more successful keeping local a diminutive New England Queen Anne mahogany dressing table or lowboy. Estimated at $400/800, it featured a two-board top, a case with scalloped apron and its original brasses with staple back pins. A buyer from northeast Ohio took it to $5,520.
The weight, pendulum and key were included with this Aaron Willard, Jr, shelf clock, made in Boston. The brass works were stamped “Aaron Willard Jr. 1831,” and it found a new home in central Ohio, for $4,800 ($1/2,000).
The top lot of the Chase collection was a Nineteenth Century mahogany shelf clock, made by Aaron Willard, Jr, that had brass works dated “1831.” It will be staying in central Ohio, with a buyer who paid $4,800 for it. An early pine cricket table catalogued as American, late Eighteenth Century, realized $1,020 to lead the Hodel collection.
Five Zanesville amber green or red swirl-rib blown glass bottles all came to auction from the Ashley, Ohio, collection of Jim Johnston, who Jeffers characterized as “a well-known old name I’ve known since I was a kid; he’s just great.” A buyer in New Jersey won the top lot, paying $5,100 for a 7¾ inch-tall example made circa 1820.
“Other than maybe Slotin, I might have sold more works by Popeye Reed than anyone else,” Jeffers said, sharing that all four of the carved stone animal sculptures in the sale by Ernest “Popeye” Reed (Ohio, 1919-1985) were from the same well-known couple who bought them directly from the artist; their collection will be disbursed over a period of time. A 30-inch-tall carved eagle brought $4,920 from a bidder in Western Ohio.
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as advertised by the auction house.
Amelia Jeffers’ Spring Fabulous Finds sale is currently scheduled for April 25-26. For information, 740-362-4771 or www.ameliajeffers.com.
