Stair Galleries, Hudson, New York
A beautiful, sunny Saturday provided the backdrop to the auction of furniture and decorative arts at Stair Galleries on May 25 in Hudson, New York. With early viewing starting at 9 a.m., potential bidders had three hours to make final decisions before the sale of 339 lots began at noon. At 9:15 a.m., only two men had taken advantage of this morning opportunity, adding to staff concerns that a long holiday weekend might have an adverse affect on the size of the crowd in the room. By 11 a.m., though, attendance was significantly improved, and the appearance of several known dealers provided a measure of comfort for the coming sale.
Although the business of Stair Galleries is located in nearby Claverack, New York, the auction itself was held at the Elks Lodge in Hudson. It was filled to capacity, with registered bidders overflowing onto lot-tagged chairs and sofas.
The sale started 15 minutes late, as heavier-than-usual phone bid and absentee bid requests tested the limits of the auction house. Estimates for the 339 items totaled $216,395/328,020, and the auction realized $507,000 (includes buyer's premium).
"Our past sales have seen strong, good, fair prices within the estimate, but these started to feel like real prices," said Colin Stair of the May 25 sale. "A lot stronger--I think it was advertising, and the word is out that we run a nice, clean, professional game and the things were here to sell."
The star lot of the sale was a Wisconsin watercolor on paper farm scene by Paul A. Seifert (1840-1921). The landscape was inscribed in pencil in English and German "Farm von Herrn F. Adolph Sprecher. Town Troy. Wis." It was unattributed in Stair Galleries' on-line catalog prior to the sale. Several bidders nonetheless recognized Seifert's work in Stair's advertisements for the sale. Estimated at $3000/5000, the watercolor quickly rose to the $10,000's, then $30,000's, with one phone bidder jumping increments. It landed at $66,700 (including buyer's premium) from Westborough, Massachusetts, dealer David Wheatcroft, who was on another phone. The price is a record for the artist at auction.
"I didn't even get a bid in until the forties!" remarked Wheatcroft later.
The watercolor was in overall excellent condition. In addition, the details that enhanced interest in it were horses prancing in the foreground, a peacock perched on the roof of the central barn building, and a brilliantly rayed sun rising in the background.
"It's the best Seifert I've seen on the market," Wheatcroft said after the sale. "This was an early one. It had wonderful color, including those big yellow swatches of land and red horses. It was among the best of Seifert's output and one of the best available in twenty years. A very good one was at Sotheby's about ten years ago that sold for around thirty-five thousand. There were two at auction more recently, but they were late. The copper oxide sometimes turns and it becomes a little ugly." When asked why he went so strong on the watercolor, Wheatcroft replied, "You have to compare it to what's been available, not what's in a museum, because they aren't coming up for sale. Compared to that, this knocks them dead. I thought it was an extraordinary thing and was prepared to go higher. I bought it purely from the heart, not for a client."
Born in Dresden, Germany, Paul Seifert came to the United States in 1867 and worked raising flowers, fruits, and vegetables for sale and helping farmers establish fruit groves. Seifert also painted farms itinerantly in Wisconsin from the late 1860's until about 1915, charging a maximum of $2.50 for his work. His watercolors are in the collections of the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the New York State Historical Association, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, and the American Folk Art Museum. Seifert was included in the Whitney Museum's seminal 1974 traveling exhibition on American folk art (see Lipman and Winchester, The Flowering of American Folk Art: 1776-1876, 1974, p. 282).
While the auction house didn't recognize the artist in its initial on-line cataloging, it clearly recognized the quality of the work. The watercolor was the catalog cover lot, it was advertised in print, and it was the primary image introducing the sale page on the Stair Galleries Web site. "[Sotheby's vice chairman] Bill Stahl came up and laughed at me," said Colin Stair regarding the oversight.
By the time of the sale, the farm scene was attributed correctly in the 21- page unillustrated printed catalog. Breathless from the success of the Seifert, Rebecca Hoffmann, the auctioneer for the first half of the sale, exclaimed to the crowd, "Surely that's the most expensive thing I've ever sold, and I need a moment!"
The eclectic mix of furniture, decorations, and paintings was organized to keep the room lively while providing breaks for bidders. The sale order was constructed according to discrete sections of approximately 20 to 25 lots each, beginning with rugs and moving to American folk art, ceramics, decorations with an emphasis on lighting devices and fireplace equipment, looking glasses and silver, ceramics with an emphasis on Chinese export porcelain, decorations concentrating on European smalls and papier- mâché, and finishing with ceramics. The thematic run of lots systematically alternated with furniture, ranging from six to 25 lots at a time. The items in the sale with the highest estimates were an American Queen Anne cherry highboy and a Steinway & Sons mahogany Louis XV-style baby grand piano. Each was estimated at $5000/7000. The highboy sold to a phone bidder for $8050, and the baby grand sold in the room for $16,100.
While few other lots did as well compared to their estimates as the Seifert did, several lots brought prices sufficiently robust and above their high-end estimates to raise the question: how much does location matter to a well- promoted auction?
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An American engraved powder horn inscribed "Daniel Read's Powder Horn Made in Lisbon and State of Connecticut March ye 3rd 1802" was estimated at $4000/6000 and sold for $16,100. The powder horn sold to New York City dealer Michael Black, who recognized it as early abolitionist memorabilia and bought it mostly because "the abolitionist aspect was foremost in my mind. There is lot of interest in early abolitionist material, and the powder horn was purchased for sale."
Not noted in the catalog was the powder horn's history in the marketplace. Once the property of Michigan collector Stanley Paul Sax, whose estate was sold by Sotheby's in New York City in January 1998, the powder horn was acquired by Sax from noted military antiques expert and author William Guthman. The powder horn was estimated at that time at $25,000/35,000 and was unsold. Returned to the market four years later in Hudson, New York, with an estimate on either side of one-fifth of what it had been, the powder horn found its mark.
"I thought it was a very strong sale, and it marks in a sense a turning point for Colin," Black said after the sale. "He had the strongest buyers there. Everything brought what it was worth or more. If you extrapolate from this sale, he's going to have a major gallery overnight. If you draw a line from Doyle up to Skinner, who's in between? I wish I'd given him my entire warehouse!"
A pair of side chairs cataloged as late George III-style carved mahogany side chairs and estimated at $600/800 went to Woodbury, Connecticut, dealer Thomas Schwenke for $2415. After the sale, Schwenke explained that he believes the chairs are Philadelphia and products of the Haines-Connelly shop.
A Charles II stumpwork picture estimated at $1000/1500 sold to a couple in the room for $9775. When asked about the needlework, the couple, private collectors of Pilgrim-Century furniture who wished not to be identified, said needleworks such as the example for which they spent almost ten times the low end of the estimate were "rare pieces, difficult to come by."
Amid grumbling from some dealers that the sale was too
well promoted and that material has sold for less in New York City since September 11,
several lots brought prices comparable to or better than what similar forms have
traditionally brought at city auctions. These included a 19th-century American school
portrait of Tyler Briggs, M.D., a folk portrait whose catalog entry included a reference
to having been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum Fair (no date given). The painting was
estimated at $2000/3000 and fetched $6612.50.
A relatively simple Philadelphia-area Chippendale walnut tilt-top stand with reeded and suppressed ball support and a 20 1/2 inches diameter top that seemed to have been repaired was miscataloged as a tea table and estimated at $2000/3000. The stand brought $4025 from a buyer who was not in the room. A George I silkwork picture whose catalog entry noted that the needlework was in a period frame was estimated at $1000/1500 and sold to an absentee bidder for $5175. A pair of French tole mantel urns estimated at $800/1200 attracted enough presale interest that the auctioneer opened the bidding at $2000. The urns sold for $5462.50 and were described by one dealer who did not get them as "worn but still great." The urns retained an old sale tag reading "Plaza Art Galleries, Catalogue 506, Ref. No. P475."
"We're only about a year old," said Colin Stair, the president and founder of Stair Galleries, "but we are swiftly becoming the auction house in the Hudson Valley. A lot of big local homes are using our company for cleaning out and estates," Stair continued. "The consignors for this sale were all people in the area who had sold their houses and were moving, or they were estates."
Offering the same appraisal, auction, and private sales services that the more established auction houses provide, Stair Galleries was born out of its sibling company, Stair Restoration, the former Sotheby's Restoration, which was closed by its parent company approximately a year ago. Between Colin Stair, the company's president and the former managing director of Sotheby's Restoration; Rebecca Hoffmann, an auctioneer who is a veteran of Skinner, Inc. and James Bakker; and Rupert Fennell, an auctioneer who spent 29 years with Sotheby's, including 12 as the head of the West Coast division of Sotheby's Appraisal Company, Stair Galleries brings almost 60 years of experience in the auction business to its operation. Its uniformed staff kept material in the auction moving smoothly, and each lot in the sale was shown for bidders in the room.
"Our first sale was a tag sale of Fred Hughes' estate on October seventh, and we really had to wonder if this was a good idea," recalled auctioneer Rebecca Hoffmann, who went on to note that the events of September 11 provided doubt among staff as to the viability of their new auction house. "Fortunately, things are going well and we keep getting fresh merchandise. We have a rather devout following in a rather short time."
The May 25 sale was the fourth Stair Galleries auction since inception. The auction house intends to hold eight to ten sales a year. One hundred nineteen bidders registered in the room for the Memorial Day weekend sale, with an additional 130 registered to the phones; at press time, the number of left bids had not yet been calculated. Thirty to forty percent of the buyers on May 25 were private. Previous Stair Galleries sales have averaged totals between $200,00 and $250,000, and Saturday's half-million-dollar results suggest a promising future.
Stair Galleries is specifically targeting property in the $100 to $20,000 value range that New York City auction houses increasingly do not wish to sell. To this end, Colin Stair has joined forces in a symbiotic relationship with his former employer; what business Sotheby's prefers not to handle, it sends to Stair Galleries. By this arrangement, Sotheby's retains its competitive viability for consignments in which a portion of the material may not meet minimum lot values, Stair Galleries gets business, and sellers are spared finding a secondary auction house: one-stop selling.
Stair Galleries, Hudson, New York
The July 27 Stair Galleries sale in Hudson, New York, proved, as one dealer who wished to remain anonymous stated, "The auction market is alive and well."
Attendance in the room appeared to be mostly families weekending in the area and local Warren Street dealers, with the 255 registered bidders breaking down into an almost even split of trade and private buyers. Of those registered bidders, 35 were on the phones and 65 were absentee. Some felt competition for lots was a little restrained due to several simultaneous events taking place nearby as well as the following weekend's kickoff of ten days of antiques mayhem in Manchester, New Hampshire. Nonetheless, the 413 lots of furniture, paintings, and decorations were almost 90% sold and brought a total of $283,417.50.
Of Stair Galleries' five live auctions, Saturday's sale represented the second-highest per lot average ($778.61) in the company's 13 months of operation.
"Considering the economy, we did pretty spectacularly," said Colin Stair after the sale. "With everything going on, I'm amazed it's our fifth sale and we can get bidding from all over the world. Our prices were relatively strong, and we're building a good solid audience with a lot of private buyers. There's a little bit of everything here—there was a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art here and a bidder from Germany—and this is the Elks Club in Hudson!"
The top ten highest-priced lots of the sale were all European furniture and decorative arts and in general went to trade buyers scattered locally, throughout the eastern United States, and in several foreign countries as well.
"We're just getting warmed up and building some pretty fantastic momentum," said Stair, who noted that 3% to 5% of the auction house's sales go to foreign countries. This sale had particular interest from the London trade for smalls, silver, and some furniture.
The top lots included a Regency mahogany and parcel gilt center table, estimated at $2000/4000, that sold for $9775 (includes buyer's premium); an Italian school 18th-century rococo-style lobed triptych painting described as "an architectural fantasy with figures" that sold for $8625 (est. $2000/4000); a handsome German marquetry inlaid commode cabinet that sold for $5635 (est. $3500/4500) to a dealer in Germany; and a Continental school painting titled Shepherd and Dog with Animals that sold for $4887.50 (est. $3000/5000).
A 201-piece porcelain part-dinner service marked KPM, probably made during the late 19th or early 20th century, sold for $4887.50 (est. $2000/3000). A William and Mary oak refectory table sold for $3737.50 (est. $1000/1500). A Swiss-made Stella disc music player in a mahogany case, retailed by Jacot Music Box Co., New York City, sold for $3680 (est. $1000/1500). (At least one similar vintage floor model version of the Jacot Stella disc player presently retails for almost $10,000 on the Internet.)
A Régence style carved giltwood mirror (est. $1500/2500) sold for $3680; a
Brussels tapestry border fragment (est. $2000/ 3000) sold for $3450 to a Canadian private
collector; and a Napoleon III gilt bronze mounted and brass inlaid ebonized
Although none of the top prices broke $10,000, bidding was competitive for many of the more modest lots, with prices often exceeding two and three times the high ends of the estimates. These results at the lower, more decorative end of the market suggest a healthy interest in antiques on the part of less-experienced "Sunday" bidders and a strong belief in profitable turnaround among the dealers active during the sale.
Comparing what the auction house promoted prior to the sale with what actually sold well is one measure of how accurate the Stair Galleries team was in gauging their material against the pulse of their audience for this auction. In addition to its print-media blitz in several trade publications, Stair Galleries produced a glossy color postcard promoting the sale and featuring two painting lots, six smalls lots, and four case furniture lots.
When what the auction house pushed was compared with what bidders really wanted, it appeared the house was accurate half of the time. While a 19th-century British school pastel, Portrait of a Boy Petting Dog Seated in a Chair, brought $1610, about twice its high estimate of $800, the cover lot of the sale, a painting after Thomas Cole's The Voyage of Life: Youth, brought only $3335 on a $3000/5000 estimate. Likewise on smalls, three lots featured on the postcard brought above the high ends of their estimates and three brought within or below the estimates.
The disappointing return was in furniture, where only one of four promoted lots was competed for. Two of the lots brought below estimates, and one well-promoted lot, a Colchester, Connecticut, chest-on-chest, failed to sell.
"Some believe it was married," said Colin Stair. "I contend that if it was, it was done very well or that one half was made by one person and the other was made by someone else in the same shop. Having done a lot of restoration, I can think of thirty reasons why that would happen. The secondary woods were the same, and the primary woods were cut from the same boards. It was not a cut-and-dry piece of furniture."
An unhappy marriage was not the only concern that made bidders wary of the otherwise handsome form. One dealer said of the chest-on-chest, "There was an antique in there somewhere. I just couldn't find it."
Another impressive form whose condition discouraged aggressive interest was a Hudson Valley gumwood kas (est. $2000/4000) that sold for $2070. Lacking its massive architectural cresting, the form was still imposing with its paneled doors, molded facade, and giant compressed ball feet. The kas was consigned locally from Bay Farm in Claverack, and the consignor had bought it at auction in the mid-1980's. The kas was missing its top even then. "One person said they thought the feet alone were worth two thousand on that!" Colin Stair said of the kas.
"Our original recipe of low estimates and no or low reserves works best," noted Stair of the sale overall. Adhering to this formula produced just over a dozen lots that performed substantially better than expected, providing a few pleasant surprises for those consignors and a good old-fashioned bidding war for auction attendees.
Among these were a pair of humorous cast-iron candlesticks in the form of French soldiers that sold for $1725 (est. $150/250); a New England bird's-eye maple bowfront chest, $1955 (est. $500/700); a French Provincial carved oak buffet, $1955 (est. $400/600); a pair of English watercolors, the first showing a shepherdess with her flock and the second showing a young girl with a setter, $1380 (est. $300/500); and a lot of three blue and white delft "Peacock" plates, possibly Sinclair, $1725 (est. $500/700).
On the more random and humorous end, paddle 54, a Chihuahua-carrying bicoastal couple, purchased lot 181, a Rococo Revival upholstered mahogany banquette, for $316.25 (est. $100/150). Weekend residents of the Hudson area (despite one half of the couple currently residing in Los Angeles), the pair and their friends announced that the dog would use the miniature serpentine bench and that they came to the auction because it seemed like a fun thing to do on a weekend day in the country.
Others have the same idea. The weekend's area events included the 180-dealer Rhinebeck Antiques Fair, a two-day auction at William J. Jenack's in Chester, New York, and an auction in Saugerties, New York, among others. Weekenders could also look forward to the opening on September 1 of Hudson's own Antique Warehouse, a facility that will feature over 60 antiques dealers.
Hudson, New York, is increasingly known as a popular arts and antiques center for greater New York and the Hudson Valley. It is easily accessible to residents of the New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and even Vermont border areas. Within five blocks of Stair Galleries's sale located at the Elks Lodge, 601 Union Street, are almost 75 shops dedicated to art, antiques, architectural elements, and interior design, including Mark McDonald's recently opened shop, 330, the reincarnation of his New York City 20th-century modernism gallery, Fifty/50.
A brochure published by the Hudson Antique Dealers Association, which was available at the entrance to the Stair Galleries sale, identifies the majority of these shops on Warren Street and, along with Stair Restoration in nearby Claverack, also promotes art conservation and transportation services in Hudson and other nearby towns. Amtrak's Hudson station is only a few blocks from the town's antiques-shop-saturated center.
Whether by car or train, the two hours from New York City to such an oasis of decorative opportunity could be a more appealing summer day trip than battling for beach space in New York City's more popular weekend locales, some of which require an even longer commute, dealing with excessive traffic, or a train switch.