This Hepplewhite harvest table retained its original paint and was in good, age-appropriate wear. A trade buyer from New England took it to $1,800 ($800-$1,200).
Review by Madelia Hickman Ring
LIMINGTON, MAINE — Siblings Rachel and Joshua “Josh” Gurley are about as rooted in the antiques business as it is possible to be. Their parents — David and Nan Gurley — were noted dealers and Nan herself was a longtime show promoter. In addition to carrying that particular banner, the two oversee the multi-dealer Gurley Antiques Gallery dealer shop in Scarborough, Maine, and Josh has been an auctioneer in Parsonsfield, Maine, for 25 years. With all that experience, there was still one antiques-world box the two had not done: conduct an auction online.
On October 28, that box was checked when Josh sold nearly 750 lots from the estate collection of Maine collector Charlie Huntress (1941-2024). The unreserved sale had a few passed lots and realized more than $135,000. Antiques and The Arts Weekly reached out to Gurley for his thoughts on the collector, the auction and what prompted the firm’s leap to an online auction.
“Charlie was a pillar of his community and an all-around great guy and scholar; I’d known him for years,” he shared. “Because it was a curated collection, we wanted to reach very specific people and holding it online made it possible for us to accomplish that goal. It went very well and some of the categories I was most concerned about performed really well.” When asked to specify what he meant, he said, “I recognized the glassware — Charlie had more than 100 pieces of opaque-twist stemware — as a shrinking market, with some older buyers, but it did fantastic; the book section also did very well, with most going halfway across the country. The art did very well — both the signed and unsigned things — and the family is very happy.”
This pair of paktong candlesticks had arm and hammer engraving and realized $1,560, or what Josh Gurley deemed “gold old-fashioned pricing” ($600/800).
“I greatly prefer the sales with an audience in the room, but there’s a time and a place for online auctions and this was one of them. As a first-time online auctioneer, there’s a bit of a feeling of utter helplessness when you’re used to being in control, but we trusted the process and it worked very well.” He said he would consider conducting other curated collections similarly.
One of the top lots at $1,800 was a Hepplewhite harvest table in original paint that sold to a New England dealer and beat its $800-$1,200 estimate. The same estimate for a Queen Anne high chest of drawers resulted in a similar outcome: $1,800 and also won by a New England trade buyer. Gurley described the $1,680 price for a Philadelphia Chippendale side chair to be a “fantastic” result, as well as the $1,200 achieved by a Windsor bowback armchair that had a layer of old blue paint over an earlier red-painted surface.
Artwork was led at $1,080 by an oil on canvas board landscape by Benjamin Champney that was signed “B. Champney” and cataloged as “probably White Mountains in N.H. and Artist’s Brook.” It was closely followed at $960 by a Nineteenth Century oil on board seascape by Harrison Bird Brown.
This New Hampshire landscape by Benjamin Champney, oil on canvas board, 8-5/8 by 17½ inches, rose to $1,080 ($250/450).
“Old-fashioned pricing” was how he categorized the $1,560 result of a pair of paktong candlesticks that featured arm and hammer engraving; a monogrammed coin silver coffee pot by New York City silversmith William Adams topped off at $960, while bidders chased a circa 1800 American coin silver cup to $720.
Ceramics saw the category led at $840 by a Nineteenth Century redware butter stamp offered at the top of the sale, followed by a redware pitcher with manganese decoration attributed to Merrimacport, Mass., potter William Pecker ($780). A group of two slip-glazed redware milk pans, each with a diameter measuring 13 inches, nearly quadrupled their high estimate when the lot brought $720.
That glassware Gurley was so pleased with? Huntress’ collection was divided into 52 lots that reached its apex at $720, a price realized by two lots, each of four Eighteenth Century opaque-twist wine glasses.
There were two nearly identical groups of four Eighteenth Century opaque twist-stem wine glasses; each had been estimated at $800-$1,200 and each sold for $720.
Sold together, four books relating to Rhode Island furniture and furniture makers realized $510 to set the high bar for one of about 120 lots of books, the totality of Huntress’ library. A group of 17 volumes of the Chipstone Foundation’s American Furniture journal — 2004-2024 with a few omissions — realized $450, while a late Nineteenth to early Twentieth Century ledger from Limington, Maine, closed at $330.
While Gurley hasn’t yet announced another online auction, Josh and Rachel Gurley have a busy schedule of upcoming antiques shows, including the annual Thanksgiving Sunday Antique show in Marlborough, Mass. (December 1); the Dover, N.H., Wednesday Flea Market (December 4); and the Bath Antique Show in Bath, Maine (December 15).
Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, www.gurleyantiqueshows.com.
