MARLBOROUGH, MASS. — Amongst the outstanding items in the respected Arthur and Sybil Kern collection, which was included in the first day offerings of Skinner’s two-day Americana sale August 12–13, was a mid-Eighteenth Century overmantel with leaping stags in a landscape. It is a well-known example, having been removed from a Framingham, Mass., house in 1840 and illustrated and discussed in Nina Fletcher Little’s American Decorative Wall Painting 1700–1850 and also included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition of wall paintings in 1952–53. It sold for $67,650, more than twice its estimate, in a strong sale. Other works that finished well above estimate included a colorful fireboard that brought $55,350 and a pair of portraits by Rufus Hathaway, which took $39,975. A full report will follow.