$1 Million Dollar Sampler, $3.5 Million Highboy Star at Sotheby's
- January 22, 2012 19:47
A John Townsend high chest, inscribed Newport 1756, had it all: original finish, hardware, and finial; impeccable provenance; and style representing the pinnacle of colonial American craftsmanship.
The Exceptional Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Arnold Queen Anne Shell-carved and Figured Mahogany High Chest of Drawers with Open Talons, previously undocumented as it passed down through the original owner's family, generated the attention it deserved at Sotheby's Jan. 20 Americana sale. From a $2-3 million presale estimate, the piece soared to $3,554,500 (with buyer's premium).
Sotheby's Important Americana sale tallied $13,510,758. The total was also boosted by folk artist Ammi Phillips (1788 - 1865) whose Portrait of a Winsome Young Girl in Red with Green Slippers, Dog and Bird, painted in 1840, brought $806,500 (est. $300,000-500,000).
View of John Hancock House, Beacon Hill, Boston, a 30 1/2 by 50 1/2 fireboard or overmantel, swept to $614,500 from a low estimate of $150,000.
The collection of Betty Ring, the foremost scholar and collector of American schoolgirl embroidery, brought $4,389,503 on January 22. This historic sale offered coveted examples of needlework assembled by the author of Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers and Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850 (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993), the definitive reference book in the field.
Mrs. Ring's reputation for near 50-years of research, scholarship and connoisseurship in the field of girlhood embroidery sent several top-tier examples of mourning pictures, schoolgirl samplers, and other embroidery far beyond estimates.
Notably, the top lot of the sale was a rare and important needlework sampler made by Mary Antrim, and dated 1807. An ex-Garbisch collection piece, last sold in 1974, the sampler belongs to a recently recognized important group of samplers made by girls in Burlington County, New Jersey.
From an estimate of $80,000 to $120,000, the work soared to $1,070,500 (with buyer's premium). (In 1996, the Hannah Otis over mantel canvas-work sampler went for a record $1,200,000 at Sotheby's.)
