“The Wine Glass,” an etching by Whistler, sold for $4,025.
Nineteenth Century weathervane, $4,255.
The contents of several local estates were sold July 12 at Fairfield Auction. The Saturday evening event offered 354 lots of furniture, accessories and fine art that attracted bidders from several states. The gallery reported a full house as well as numerous absentee and phone bidders, with a total of 234 bid cards issued.
Artworks attracted considerable interest. A charming country landscape by Henry Pember Smith, found in a local home, brought the top price among paintings with a price of $6,900. A group of etchings from a Newtown consignor who purchased them from Kennedy Galleries in New York in the 1950s came to the block with seven phone bidders and several additional bidders who traveled to the sale at the ready.
Victorian furniture included the top lot of the evening, a rosewood marble-top parlor table, possibly by Belter. With several phone bidders at the ready the table opened at $400, but climbed swiftly to a final selling rice of $11,500 to a phone bidder. From the same home came a Belter sofa in the scroll pattern that sold for $1,150. A Victorian walnut étagère consigned by a local museum earned a top bid of $2,013 and a monumental Austrian marble-top sideboard in the rococo revival style was a great buy at $2,013.
A sailor-made pie crimper signed and dated 1805 brought a final bid of $2,300, a cherry graduated chest with carved quarter columns earned $1,955, a cherry wood sugar chest was purchased at $2,300, a room size hooked rug made $1,610 and a Regina music box made a happy tune at $1,668.
Other rdf_Descriptions of interest included a 1968 VW convertible that went to a Newtown resident at $3,163. A pair of Regency paint decorated klismos chairs were highly sought after and climbed to $1,265. A 27-inch marble grouping of Psyche and a cherub brought $2,875, a Roseville “luffa” jardinière and pedestal earned $690, a French farm table earned $2,070 and a pair of Rookwood bookends was $633.
Prices include a 15 percent buyer’s premium.
