The Anne and Jeff Miller Sale

April 25th, 2015

This oil on canvas view of St. Joseph’s Academy, Emmitsburg, Maryland, mid- to late 19th century, with buildings including a church in the landscape, was bought at Northeast Auctions by Milly McGehee in 1998 for $27,600. Fifteen years later it sold for slightly less—$26,400 (est. $8000/12,000) to Lititz, Pennsylvania, dealer Pat Garthoeffner, underbid on the phone by David Wheatcroft.

Two phone bidders competed for this New England painted pine dome-lid box with its original sponge-decorated surface, 11" high x 25" wide x 13" deep. It sold on the phone for $22,800 (est. $1000/1500).

This Baltimore album quilt, mid-19th century, with 25 floral and bird appliqué panels and a swag border, 102" x 102", sold for $20,400 (est. $2000/4000).

This Shenandoah Valley earthenware pitcher and basin, 19th century, with mottled brown, green, and cream glaze, 12" high pitcher, 6¾" high x 17" diameter basin, sold in the salesroom for $12,000 (est. $2000/4000).

This Chester County, Pennsylvania, redware flowerpot and undertray, dated 1825, with sgraffito inscription “Sarah Garrett East Goshen C County,” 8¾" high, is attributed to James Pottery, Westtown. It sold on the phone to the trade for $13,200 (est. $2000/4000). The Millers bought it at Pook & Pook in November 1998. It had some flaking, chips, and repaired breaks.

Four phone bidders and two bidders in the room competed for this Jacob Maentel (1763-1863) watercolor full-length portrait of a woman wearing a brown dress, 11½" x 9". It sold to a bidder in the room for $14,400 (est. $4000/8000).

This Jacob Maentel (1763-1863) watercolor full-length frontal portrait of Catherine Carver Bishop (1803-1872) of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, is dated 1821. She is wearing a blue dress and a patterned scarf and holding a red book. Measuring 11" x 8¾", it sold to a New York collector and member of the Folk Art Society of America in the salesroom for $15,600 (est. $4000/8000).

Pook & Pook, Downingtown, Pennsylvania

Photos courtesy Pook & Pook

Single-owner sales are always memorable. Pook & Pook’s sale of the collection of J. Jefferson and Anne Weiler Miller on April 25 will be remembered as testimony to the joys of collecting. Anne (d. 2014) and Jeff (d. 2005) loved folk art, ceramics, textiles, paintings, wrought iron, decorated boxes, delft punch bowls, and Liverpool pitchers. They also bought antique furniture for their large, comfortable house and arranged it all with great taste to be enjoyed.

Jeff was the major collector; Anne went along for the ride. They bought what they liked, never for investment. Like English collectors, they chose form and rarity above condition. The Millers were retail buyers.

After practicing law for 12 years, Jeff decided he would rather be a museum curator than a lawyer. Dick Wood, a well-known Baltimore dealer, suggested he apply to the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. He did, was accepted, and even though he was married with five children, he commuted from Baltimore to Wilmington, Delaware, for two years, leaving Anne to hold down the fort. He added a master’s degree from the University of Delaware to his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his law degree from University of Maryland and became curator of glass and ceramics at the Smithsonian Institution. He moved his family to Chevy Chase, Maryland, and lived in suburban Washington until he retired from the Smithsonian and moved back to his beloved Baltimore and became director of the Maryland Historical Society for five years. In Baltimore he served on committees at the Baltimore Museum of Art and Homewood, the historic seat of the Carroll family, and was a member of the Folk Art Society of America and the American Ceramic Circle.

Jeff was an avid fisherman and traveled to all parts of the country to fish. He and his family spent summers at their family cottage in Charlevoix, Michigan, and he collected carvings of fish. The Millers hosted family and friends, had weddings for their kids at the Baltimore house, enjoyed their 13 grandchildren, and always found time to collect in a broad range of categories.

In 2001 they donated 333 iron and metal objects from their collection to Winterthur. They said they always collected objects that had a story to tell, but they also had to have aesthetic appeal.

Jeff kept records of every piece he bought, recording on cards who sold it to him, what it cost, mentions of the piece in literature, or anything he learned about it. The family made that information available to Pook & Pook, along with the insurance appraisals done after Jeff’s death. That is why the catalog listed the source of almost every object and many references. The list of dealers reads like a who’s who of the 20th-century Americana trade that created the market that flourished for two generations: Dick Wood, Avis and Rockwell Gardiner, Leonard Balish, George Schoellkopf, Bettie Mintz, W. M. Schwind, Don Walters, the Stradlings, Bihler and Coger, Good and Hutchinson, Ginsburg and Levy, James and Nancy Glazer, William and Connie Hayes, Harry Hartman,
Sidney Gecker, Robert Thayer, Milly McGehee, Stiles Colwill, John Newcomer, Jim Hirsheimer, Ed Weissman, Frank and Barbara Pollack, Chris Machmer, Greg Kramer, Austin Miller, Malcolm Magruder, William and Teresa Kurau, and the list goes on.

The Millers also bought at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Pook & Pook, Northeast Auctions, Skinner, and Garth’s, and they often bought from landmark single-owner sales, including Deyerle, Flack, Shelley, etc.

The Miller sale now enters that history book. Sold at a time when the market is soft, the collection gave a big boost to the middle market. Only seven lots sold for more than $20,000, and only 26 lots topped $10,000. Some things brought less than Jeff paid, and some things brought more. There was something for every pocketbook. Much of the sale went to collectors, but the trade was able to buy. Estimates were ridiculously low.

Of the 535 lots offered, 531 sold; that is a 99% sell-through rate, and the sale brought more than Pook & Pook’s estimates. The total was $1,226,506 (including buyers’ premiums). The estimates figured without buyers’ premiums were $440,200/763,850. Single-owner sales generally bring a third more than various-owners sales, and this one did.

For example, the Millers’ Snow Hill redware bowl, one of the 40 used in the love feasts at the Snow Hill Nunnery in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, probably made by the Bell family pottery in nearby Waynesboro, sold for $10,200; the day before in the various-owners sale at Pook & Pook another similar bowl sold for $4080.

The highest price at the sale was $26,400, more than twice the high estimate, for the cover lot, an oil painting on canvas of St. Joseph’s Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Milly McGehee bought it at Northeast Auctions in August 1998 for $27,600. The buyer at the Miller sale was dealer Pat Garthoeffner of Lititz, Pennsylvania, underbid on the phone by dealer David Wheatcroft of Westborough, Massachusetts.

The same price was paid for a red-painted box decorated with blue and white pinwheel flowers by the Compass Artist. It went to the trade on the phone. The Millers bought it from Chris Machmer in 1984, probably for a lot less. It was once owned by
H.F. du Pont, who kept it at his Long Island house.

A surprising $22,800 was paid for a painted dome-top New England box with green, red, and yellow sponged circles against bold diagonal graining. The estimate was $1000/1500, and two phone bidders wanted it. The same price of $22,800 (est. $10,000/20,000) was paid for a still life painting of fruit, attributed to Severin Roesen, by a private collector on the phone. A primitive still life painting of fruit, possibly by Isaac Nuttman (1816-1872) of Newark, New Jersey, sold for $24,000.

The most expensive piece of furniture was a tiny drop-leaf Massachusetts table that sold to a collector on the phone for $18,000 (est. $2000/4000). It was only 22½" high x 10½" wide x 28½" wide when open. The Millers had owned it since 1961 when they bought it at the Long Ago Shop in York, Pennsylvania, for $725. Four phone bidders competed up to $8500, and then there were two up to $15,000. The buyer’s premium brought the price to $18,000. There are two similar tables of this size at Winterthur.

There was a lot of bidding in the room, on the phones, and on Bidsquare. Bidsquare bidders spent $93,775 and were active underbidders. Friends wanted souvenirs; dealers bought for stock; and collectors competed. The pictures and captions tell a lot more.

For more information, contact Pook & Pook at (610) 269-4040 or check the website (www.pookandpook.com).

This New England painted basswood dome-lid box, early 19th century, the lid painted with large flowers on an ivory ground, the front with flowers made of red and black dots, 5 5/8" high x 8 5/8" wide, illustrated in Dean A. Fales, Jr.’s American Painted Furniture 1660-1880 (p. 214), with a 1997 Harry Hartman provenance, sold on the phone for $14,400 (est. $3000/5000).

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, painted poplar Compass Artist dresser box, early 19th century, decorated with blue and white pinwheel flowers on a salmon-red ground, 4 7/8" x 7", with a Chris Machmer provenance, sold on the phone to the trade for $26,400 (est. $10,000/20,000).

These rare New England dresser boxes have fitted interiors; lids, sides, and fronts decorated with fruits; berry wreath borders; and frontal oval paintings of deer and a man fishing on one and a couple picking apples on the other. One is inscribed inside the lid “Asahel W Wheelock presented by his mother.”Each is 5¼" x 10¾" x 6½". They sold in the salesroom for $19,200 (est. $4000/8000).

This Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, painted pine dower chest, dated 1785,decorated by the Embroidery Artist and inscribed “Catrina Bhilivin,” the lid and front decorated with stars, two ivory drawers surrounded by salmon-painted ground and molding, 25" x 50", sold for $15,600 (est. $4000/8000).

This Pennsylvania 1½-gallon stoneware pitcher, 19th century, 12" high, impressed “John Bell, Waynesboro,”with cobalt speckled tulip decoration, has a provenance of Baltimore dealer Dick Wood. It sold in the salesroom to Alice and Art Booth, New Jersey collectors and dealers, for $15,600 (est. $4000/6000).

This Liverpool Herculaneum Pottery pitcher, circa 1810, is decorated with the Portland Observatory in Portland, Maine, 24 flag signals, and an “Explanation” below, and with an American frigate on the other side. This 8 7/8" high pitcher sold for $10,800 (est. $2000/3000).

This painted tin oversize quail, late 19th century, painted yellow and brown with faint black feathers, 21" high, sold for $12,000 (est. $300/500).

This pair of carved and painted songbirds, early 20th century, on pine perches, 7" high, sold to a collector in the salesroom for $4800 (est. $250/450), underbid on the phone.

This small New England walnut drop-leaf table, circa 1760, with a demilune cutout apron and cabriole legs ending in pad feet, 22½" high x 10½" wide x 28½" deep, was bought in York, Pennsylvania, in 1961. It sold to a collector on the phone for $18,000 (est. $2000/4000).

This still life attributed to Severin Roesen (1815-1872), an oil on canvas in an ornate giltwood frame, 30" x 25", sold to a collector on the phone for $22,800 (est. $10,000/20,000).

The Pennsylvania redware bank with a bust of Abraham Lincoln, 5 1/8" high, sold for $6600 (est. $1500/2000).

A redware bank with a bust of George Washington, 6" high, sold for $3120 (est. $1500/2000). Both came from the landmark Seamen’s Bank collection sale at Christie’s in 1991 and then sold at Christie’s Paul Flack sale in 1997. Both were bought at Pook & Pook by Robesonia, Pennsylvania, dealer Greg Kramer, who had them at the Greater York Antiques Show on May 1 and 2. Kramer, who was showing at the Chester County Antiques Show, and his son Eric, who was at the Antique Garden Furniture Fair in New York City during the sale, had Steven Still and David Horst bid for them.

comments powered by Disqus

Maine Web Design