CINCINNATI – Main Auction Galleries sold the collection of dealer Ron Tackett (1945-2021) on July 21 – its primary focus antiques of a Midwest or Southern origin. Tackett, who first began buying in the 1960s, had a true passion for sugar furniture, a variety of chests, desks, and boxes made specifically for the storage of sugar by cabinetmakers in Kentucky from about 1790 to 1850.
Several examples beat their estimates but subject to most competition was the austere 2ft, 6in-wide desk attributed to Bourbon County, just northwest of Lexington. Made in local cherry and poplar between 1795 and 1805, it assumes a simplified Sheraton style with splayed feet, a shaped apron, and a slated fall front opening to reveal a bank of shelves. The space below was used to hold the refined white and brown sugar made in nearby plantations.
Estimated at $400-$800 to reflect some evidence of alteration and replacement, this was nonetheless among the most-watched items in the sale and eventually hammered at $13,000, or $16,380 with buyer’s premium.
Sugar furniture is a Midwest American idiosyncrasy. Prominently displayed in Kentucky parlors and dining rooms, it was used to store the sugar that was grown, harvested, and refined by slaves. The first exhibition devoted to the subject, staged at Louisville’s Speed Art Museum in 2007, brought together more than 40 pieces under the title The Bitter and the Sweet: Kentucky Sugar Chests, Enslavement, and the Transatlantic World 1790-1865.
MORRISTOWN, NJ – The top lot in the sale at The Magnussen Group on July 24 was a bronze by the Estonian sculptor Amandus Heinrich Adamson (1855-1929).
Walfbanger, signed and dated 1898, depicts a Russian ice fisherman with a harpoon and stands 21in (53cm) high. Adamson’s work carries particular resonance in his native Estonia. Although he worked for much of his life in Imperial Russia – this piece is very much in the tradition of the Peoples of Russia series – in 1918, during the Estonian War of Independence, he returned to his hometown of Paldiski in northwestern Estonia. The many patriotic monuments he created during that period were destroyed by the Soviet authorities in the 1940s and 1950s, but since Estonia regained independence in 1991, most of them have been restored.
This smaller-scale bronze was estimated at $1,000-$2,000 and hammered to a bidder via LiveAuctioneers for $25,250, or $31,562 with buyer’s premium.
Edinburgh, UK – This Celtic silver ‘ribbon’ torc, or armlet, was made – perhaps in Ireland – sometime between circa 500BC and 500AD. Although similar jewels from this period are not uncommon, this particular style, with a chased chevron pattern throughout is known from only one source: a single hoard discovered near Rathcormack, County Cork, Ireland in 1882.
The hoard was first described the following year in the ‘Proceedings’ section of the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, where it was noted that Ralph Westropp of Cork exhibited a silver torc with the accompanying note: “It seems that this was found near Rathcormack, county of Cork, with five others of similar make, about the close of last year or early in the present one, by a peasant, beneath a stone in a field, when ploughing.”
The three recorded examples from the Rathcormack Hoard are in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
It seems likely that the armlet offered by Lyon & Turnbull as part of a sale titled Antiquities and African & Oceanic Art on July 31 was also from this source, although that is unproven. Instead, it is known to have been part of a Scottish private collection since the 1920s and by family repute was originally owned by Robert Carfrae (1820–1900), an early curator of the Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, who gave his name to the Carfrae Collection of ancient Greek and Roman coins at the British Museum.
A scarce object with a provenance at least a century old, it was modestly estimated at £2,000-£3,000 ($2,550-$3,825), but hammered for £36,000 ($45,925), or £47,160 ($60,150) with buyer’s premium.
CHICAGO — The July 30 Essential Design sale at Wright was led by a 1964 Clairtone Project G stereo unit that appeared at auction for the first time since it was bought new in 1964. Estimated at $5,000-$7,000, it hammered for $16,000, or $20,690 with buyer’s premium.
With its distinctive Brazilian rosewood cabinet and rotating sound globes, the Project G looked like nothing else available on the market at the time. Its Scandinavian-inspired aesthetic was the work of designer Hugh Spencer, who had been tasked with producing something that could be used in promotional campaigns for Clairtone. In an early example of product placement, one was featured in the 1967 film The Graduate.
Although something of a Sixties icon, only around 300 of the G1 units were ever produced. The example at Wright had been acquired in 1964 by Dr. Thomas Krembs (1930-2023), who operated a dental practice in Merrill, Wisconsin from the 1950s. It had been well cared for and was thought to be in very good condition.
MARLBOROUGH, MA – The children’s author Richard Scarry (1919-94) was at the peak of popularity when he published Nicky Goes to the Doctor in 1972. The latest installment of his beloved Busytown series, it charmed his audience with its tale of a young rabbit and his first visit to a medical practice.
More than half a century later, an original watercolor drawing from the book was offered in the books and manuscripts sale at Bonhams Skinner on July 25. Teaming with industrious anthropomorphic animal characters in a range of vehicles – including Busytown regulars such as Huckle Cat, Police Sergeant Murphy, and Hilda Hippo – it had occupied a double-page spread in the book.
Still retaining various printing instructions and crop marks, it had been bought by the vendor from the specialist dealership Every Picture Tells a Story circa 2005. Offered at $800-$1,200, it hammered for $10,000 and sold for $13,200 with buyer’s premium.