The top lot in the September 11 Chic & Antique auction was this Queen Anne carved maple high chest that descended in the Morton, Smith, Wharton or Fisher families of Philadelphia and had been owned by Martin Wunsch. It realized $40,000 and sold to a private collector in New Jersey ($30/50,000).

Review by Madelia Hickman Ring

BLOOMFIELD, N.J. — Furniture made in Colonial Newport and Providence, R.I., occupies a special place in American material culture, where pieces made for the Brown family continue to hold auction records (Nicholas Brown’s nine-shell desk-and-bookcase sold for $12.1 million in 1989, a record that has been unbroken since then). Times have changed, but when property that descended in, or was collected by, the related De Wolf, Herreshoff and Brown families came to auction at Nye & Company on September 10, buyers still took notice. All 411 lots in the auction sold and Andrew Holter had nothing but good things to say about the sale.

“The bidding was very strong, which slowed bidding, and we were selling for over 10 hours with the sale finishing about 8:15 pm. We were pleased to see the interest in historical objects and traditional Americana ran deep and wide! I am optimistic. Especially after the strength of the New Hampshire antiques shows, this was a great way to kick off the fall season. Our combined estimates for the auction were $266,010 to $449,790 and the sale achieved $391,087; we are grateful to the family and to their advisor, Leslie Keno, for entrusting us with the sale.”

A private collector from Maryland, who was new to Nye, was the successful buyer of the sale’s highest priced lot: a Pembroke table made for John Brown (1736-1803) circa 1805 that achieved $21,250, four times its high estimate. The table had been published twice by preeminent furniture scholar and former Winterthur curator, Wendy Cooper, first in her 1971 master’s thesis and again in an article titled “The purchase of furniture and furnishings by John Brown, Providence merchant, Part 2: 1760-1788,” that ran in the April 1973 issue of The Magazine Antiques.

Bringing $21,250 and the highest price in the De Wolf, Herreshoff and Brown Families’ collection was this Federal inlaid and figured mahogany Pembroke table that descended in the Brown and Herreshoff families ($3/5,000).

Other pieces published by Cooper also realized prices high enough to figure in the sale’s top ranks. A trade buyer pushed the John Brown Chippendale mahogany and marble slab table, made circa 1770 in Providence or Newport and sporting a cross stretcher, to $8,125 while a Midwestern private collector won for $6,875 a set of three Federal carved mahogany shield-back side chairs attributed to John Carlisle and Sons of Providence.

Interest in the sale was not limited to US buyers, and a Spanish buyer outbid other interested bidders on a Seventeenth or Eighteenth Century Chinese intaglio carved and lacquered hardwood strong box that had history in the Herreshofff family. Estimated at $300/500, it gaveled down for $13,750.

One of the sale’s lots that had a lot of interest, from both trade and private bidders, was a framed silk on linen needlework of children and animals that had provenance to Louise DeWolf and found a new home with a New Jersey private collector, for $13,750.

Holter noticed the biggest surprise of the sale was the interest in two lots of brass doorknockers, both of which were engraved “John Brown, Esq.” One that crossed the block first sold to a New York private collector for $7,500, while the second one brought $8,750 from a Rhode Island bidder.

Two brass doorknockers in the sale were engraved “John Brown Esq”; this one made the most: $8,750 from a Rhode Island private collector ($300/500).

A blue-painted sack-back Windsor armchair that had also once belonged to John Brown rose to $8,125. Its publication history by Nancy Goyne Evans, in her seminal book American Windsor Chairs (Hudson Hills Press, 1996) and in Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830 by Patricia E. Kane (Yale University Art Gallery, 2016), undoubtedly drove interest and a trade buyer, bidding for a private collector, had the top bid.

Nye’s September 11 sale was a 419-lot Chic & Antique auction that was made up of property from various owners property as well as the second part of objects from the collection of Richard Welch (the first part of which the house offered in mid June). The sale totaled $303,600 and achieved its low estimate. Holter noted, “ironically, the contemporary art was soft in this auction and the more traditional items showed strength.”

Three pieces that had provenance to preeminent collector Martin Wunsch had among the highest prices of all, including a Queen Anne carved maple high chest of drawers that Wunsch had acquired from Christie’s New York in 2013. Attributed to Philadelphia or Chester County, Penn., it sold for $40,000 to a private collector in New Jersey.

Joseph K. Ott included this Chippendale mahogany stop-fluted pier table, made in Newport between 1780 and 1800, in two articles in The Magazine Antiques (September 1968 and May 1975) and it had been exhibited at the John Brown House in Providence from 1967 to 2011. A private collector in Rhode Island won it for $25,000 ($40/60,000).

A buyer in Rhode Island is bringing home a Chippendale mahogany stop-fluted pier table Wunsch had purchased from Christie’s in 2012; it sold in Nye’s sale for $25,000.

Also from the Wunsch collection, an early New York silver two-handled Brandywine bowl realized $13,750.

Making $15,000 and its high estimate from a New Jersey buyer was an Eighteenth Century gold snuff box made by Jean Marie Tiron that had sold at Sotheby’s twice, first, in February 1978 as part of the Collection of Henry Ford II, then again in June 1994.

Nye will sell another Chic & Antique sale October 22-23, followed in December by a single owner sale, the collection of Nancy and Robert Stein.

Prices quoted include the buyer’s premium as reported by the auction house. For information, www.nyeandcompany.com or 973-984-6900.