NEW YORK – On Thursday, November 2, starting at 6 pm Eastern time, Jasper52 will present its next New Hampshire Antiques Dealers: Americana sale. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers. It features precisely 643 lots, and, as always, the lineup is curated by Clifford Wallach, an expert in folk art, Americana, and tramp art.
Choices include a 1961 horse racing trophy on a base of cherry or mahogany, and weighing 10 pounds; a circa-1900 folk art elephant pull toy, painted a cheery shade of yellow; a circa-1936 Shirley Temple doll, dressed as a Texas ranger; a brass top hat dating to the 1920s; and an original 1990 Looney Tunes cardboard display of eight Christmas-themed figures, still encased in plastic bubbles.Needlework samplers are a staple of these auctions, and the form is ably represented this time by an 1826 silk-on-linen example by Louisa Ann Wright. Whoever wrote its lot notes clearly had fun with the task, judging by these lines they included: “Miss Wright wisely wrought a wealth of Wright family initials which will likely one day eliminate any confusion a bewildered overworked genealogist wizard may encounter by verifying which Wright woman in the right Wright genealogy is the right Wright woman which wrought this wonderful work so in the future this description can be rightly not weirdly written and we can stop worrying wether this wonderful sampler is unwittingly wrongly attributed to the wrong Wright woman.” The piece carries an estimate of $4,000-$5,000.
The work of Virginia-based carver Frank Finney appears fairly often in Jasper52 Americana sales, and the November 2 edition is no exception. An undated rendering of a ruffled grouse at life size, which, from at least one angle, seems to have a smile on its face, has an estimate of $5,000-$5,500. Completing the highlights is a cotton circa-1850s pineapple wreath quilt, which the lot notes promise is ‘even more impressive in real life’. It measures 74 by 74in and is estimated at $1,000-$1,500.
