Roy and Ruth Nutt began attending auctions as an inexpensive way to furnish their home with hardy, practical pieces that had stood the test of time. Roy was a computer engineer and Ruth was a nurse. They had four young children and no fanciful notions of starting a collection.
Ruth discovered her love of antiques by chance, shopping one day in Pound Ridge, New York. She wandered into an antique store and became besotted with silver. She began to collect American silver spoons, buckles, bidets, salvers, swords, tankards and pots. She enlisted Roy in her search and they began spending their vacations touring East Coast antique fairs.
Their home soon filled with beautiful pieces of porcelain, hooked rugs, small boxes, Early American needlework, embroidery and other traditional women’s crafts. As Roy’s company grew, they added fine art as well. Roy was color blind, so many of the paintings they selected feature a bold spark of red.
Ruth began working at The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles as a museum docent. She relished the volunteer work, finding that “docent programs at museums are an ideal way to learn more as a collector.” In her many years as a docent, she gave tours of every department, but the American History halls were her favorite. She became President of two Antiquarian Societies in the Los Angeles area, and an executive committee member of both the Seattle Art Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery.
Despite being smitten with silver, Ruth still upheld practical notions of utility and comfort, perhaps a relic of her nursing days, making people feel at home and soothed by the objects around them. She believed a house should be lived in. A concern for and emphasis on form and function was a hallmark in all of the objects she chose.
She studied the social history of objects. She loved to read about how a piece was used and made. When her son brought his girlfriend to the house for the first time he told her “Don’t ask about anything you see, you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know.”
Roy and Ruth, now both deceased, were such significant collectors that they warranted not one, but two single owner sales at Sotheby’s in 2015. Works in their collection range from a rare American silver two-handled cup which sold at Sotheby’s last year for $389,000, to a silver eraser, a lot in our upcoming October 29-30th auction, estimated at $500-700.
We are pleased to be offering a large group of English and American silver from the Nutt Family Collection in our October 29-30th Fine Sale.
For inquiries regarding the items in this sale please contact us at 518-751-1000 or info@stairgalleries.com.