Sue Cunningham Blair (1930-2015) was born during the affluence and grace of pre-war Kansas City, Missouri, the child of two obsessive collectors, John and Dorothy Cunningham, who lived and traveled the world together for more than sixty years. Dorothy had the eye and John loved the deals. Good Catholics, mass every morning, they developed a love for the Baroque, bizarre and everything in between. Apart from travels, Mississippi sailors had brought home the world and house sales were good. They had four children and a large house to fill, and they never parted with a thing. They passed the collecting bug onto their youngest child, Sue, and she spent her life collecting as well.
Sue’s life abroad began after she married New York Times foreign correspondent, William G. Blair, and eventually moved to Paris where she met (via journalist friend John Fairchild of Woman’s Wear Daily) the fashion designer François Crahay, and she became a model and his muse first at Nina Ricci and then at the House of Lanvin.
John and Dorothy would come to visit, stopping at flea markets before they even dropped their luggage. They traveled by ship and took home crates. Sue collected along with them.
In 1962, Bill Blair was transferred as bureau chief to Jerusalem. They were there for three years and Sue found more flea markets, thus her collection of Middle-Eastern furnishings and objects also began and grew. She continued to model and work for Crahay doing press and PR as well, returning to Paris one week a month.
In 1965, they moved to London on assignment for the New York Times, and then in 1967, back to New York. Sue brought everything back and put things in their apartment and storage. She and her husband divorced in 1969, and in 1971, she moved her children to Geneva, Switzerland for two years, and then back to Paris until 1977. All the while, she continued to collect wherever she lived.
In the 80’s, she was back in New York City, working as personal assistant to Bill Blass and living in an enormous loft in Chelsea that could hold all of her possessions. Through an artist friend, she befriended many young artists and started a salon of sorts, throwing many dinners and parties for them. She was given or bought a lot of their art, which was cheap. She collected for fun more than value and enjoyed mixing things up, antiques, Middle-Eastern, Baroque, Pop Art, antlers… you name it, and she made it work and filled every nook and cranny of her house, and then some. She was once quoted as saying that “empty wall space made her nervous”.
After her mother died in 1988, she moved to the Hudson Valley to a house where she could fit and store all of her own, and now many of her parent’s possessions, which she had inherited.
In 2001, she decided to de-acquisition and move back to France, this time to Provence. She had an enormous sale at her home, selling all but the things she cared most about from her parents’ and her own collections.
When she returned to the US in 2005, she moved back to the Hudson Valley to a much smaller house, which she filled top to bottom, plus a storage cottage.
Sue passed away in June of this year, and her family is now selling much of what she had kept and added to while in Provence.
We are pleased to be offering Property from the Estate of Sue Cunningham Blair in our Saturday, September 26th auction.