A Korean painting by Park Soo-keun was the object of dearest desire at the October 19 sale at John McInnis Auctioneers where it sold for $460,000. The oil and mixed media on board depicted a seated woman contemplating a bowl. The 1956 painting was consigned by a Massachusetts family and had never been out of private hands. The couple who bought the picture raised their bidding card even before the bidding began. The painting attracted significant overseas interest and is returning to Korea.
The 700-plus lot sale was replete with fine offerings and attracted a full house, including John McInnis’s 88-year old mother, Mary, whose ten children and 28 grandchildren include many in the antiques business.
An object of local history was America’s first mathematics book, A New and Complete System of Arithmetic , written by schoolmaster Nicholas Pike in Newburyport, Mass., and first published in 1786. Bidding on Pike’s personal copy opened at $20,000, the low estimate, and ended when a buyer in the gallery took it for an above estimate $80,500. The book, which was consigned by Pike’s descendents, was used in schools in America for the next half century. It was accompanied by a 1788 three-page letter from George Washington to Pike commending the author on his important work; Pike’s journal annotated with notes, drawings and calculations; a Pike family tree watercolor and a broadside advertising the book. The lot attracted much institutional interest but sold to a collector.
Bidders chased what they liked.
An Adams family journal with poems, notes of sympathy and other entries by John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Daniel Webster and other lights sold for $9,200 to a collector.
An Abraham Lincoln presidential appointment of Ammi Giddings as an associate justice of the Supreme Court for the newly formed Montana Territory sold for $5,463. Although Giddings was confirmed despite his resignation due to ill health and he never served, he is memorialized in Montana history.
Bidding on an 1861 oil on canvas portrait of the ship Glendower made at Liverpool by William Gay Yorke opened at $20,000 and raced to $57,500 from a phone bidder. The Glendower was built at Newburyport by John Currier and she sailed under the command of B.C. Emmerton. The painting came from a local family descended from Currier. Also descended from Currier was a Massachusetts Federal mahogany secretary bookcase with flame birch inlay that realized $6,900.
A Portsmouth Federal mahogany bowfront chest with inlay and a drop panel had come from the Card family of Portsmouth. It opened at $3,000 and sold on the phone for $10,350.
One of the first American patented fountain pens, a 14K gold Waterman with a relief floral design, sold to a collector for $16,100. Waterman was granted a patent in 1884 for the feed on the pen, which prevented ink leaks.
An impressive Rye, N.H., collection of some 800 bottles of wine that had been stored in a state-of-the-art facility opened at $4,500. As he sold it for $14,950, auctioneer John McInnis reminded the successful buyer of the auctioneer’s right to test the merchandise.
A Nineteenth Century Philadelphia silver coffeepot made by Bailey and Co., before the birth of Bailey, Banks and Biddle, sold for $4,600. An oval Tiffany silver tray with deep scrolled and leafy edges went for $1,495, as did a Tiffany and Co., footed silver bowl with chased flowers, scrolls and gold washed cartouches with bearded figures.
A quartersawn Victorian oak library table carved fancifully with faces of the North Wind was attributed to R.J. Horner and sold for $2,300.
An Eighteenth or Nineteenth Century wooden doll had been found in a local storage unit and was beautifully dressed and in fine condition. Very fetching, she fetched $4,313.
A Japanese cloisonné and enamel tray with an image of Mount Fuji opened at $5,000 and realized $8,625 on the phone. The tray was made in the 1940s and it sold to an institution.
“Figures in a Landscape” by Pennsylvania artist Samuel P. Dyke was the subject of a bidding competition between two phone bidders. It realized $3,565. As he offered it, McInnis said, “I guarantee that this will be the dirtiest painting you’ve ever bought.” Cleaned up, the picture will sing.
A group of portraits by Boston Impressionist Lilian Westcott Hale included the pencil image of a tree in winter with a cardinal that sold on the phone for $18,400 to the same buyer who paid $12,650 for a charcoal portrait of her sister-in-law Ellen Day Hale. The earliest known portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe, which descended in the Hale family, was unsigned and sold for $4,600. The painting was accompanied by a letter of provenance. A China trade six-panel screen from the Hale family realized $5,175.
“Along the Coast,” a Cape Ann scene by William Lester Stevens, sold for $6,038 to a phone bidder who paid $6,440 for Stevens’s “Winter Morning.” His vibrant “Autumn Farm” brought $5,463 from another phone bidder. The paintings came from the same collection that McInnis sold a few years back.
“Winter Sledding” by Austrian artist Carl Kronberger went to the Internet for $10,350. An English school portrait of an officer was unsigned, but sold on the Internet for $3,450.
A period Sandwich canary yellow lacy glass dish from the collection of Ruth Webb Lee sold for $4,600. A 1786 Pennsylvania fraktur for the Lindenmuth family decorated with birds and a verse sold for $7,245.
A large (40 inches) full-bodied copper and cast zinc weathervane with gilt sold for $13,950 and a full bodied copper Colonel Parker horse weathervane with a molded zinc head brought $3,680. A Nineteenth Century sheet metal weathervane in the form of a sailor with a spyglass standing on an arrow had a fine surface and sold for $10,350.
A 19-inch Minton blue pate-sur-pate vase with gilt decoration had some repair, but sold for $18,400 to a phone bidder, while another phone bidder paid $4,600 for a Nineteenth Century Sevres porcelain urn with gilt bronze ormolu mounts and painted scenes on a cobalt ground that had a repaired lid. A pair of Meissen wall plaques with flowers and putti surrounding centered images of courting couples and bearing the crossed swords mark attracted $2,588.
A large Nineteenth Century KPM plaque depicting lovers went to a phone bidder for $4,600.
A 36-inch bronze figure of a whale by Katherine Lane Weems sold for $7,763, and a bronze of a crouching child holding a whelk by Russian American sculptor Bashka Paef realized $5,875. Both figures were cast at the Roman Bronze Works in New York. The 36-inch bronze figure of a man by Cyrus Edwin Dallin, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory,” was cast by Gorham and sold for $5,750.
A European marble carved with the unusual image of cherubs fighting was unsigned and sold for $1,150. A pair of gilt bronze bookends, each in the form of a seated Buddha and made by Tiffany Studios, sold for $1,093.
A 1920s Persian Sarouk carpet that measured 8 feet 8 inches by 17 feet 3 inches was well over estimate when it sold for $4,600.
All prices quoted reflect the 15 percent buyer’s premium. For information, www.mcinnisauctions.com or 978-388-0400.
