The chest of drawers attributed here, but not by the auction house, to the Philadelphia joiner John Head sold at Sotheby's this past Thursday. The hammer price was $26,000. With the "buyers premium" now at 25 percent, the total price was $32,000. This was more than 2 and a half times the high estimate but … Continue reading Chest of Drawers at Sotheby’s
Joinery
“To a Chest of Drawers”
In January 1990 Christie’s sold the collection of May and Howard Joynt of Alexandria, Virginia. Lot 469 was described as “A Fine William And Mary Walnut Chest Of Drawers, Pennsylvania, 1720-1740” and carried an estimate of $6,000-$9,000. On January 19th, 2017, Sotheby’s will sell the same chest now described as A Very Fine and Rare … Continue reading “To a Chest of Drawers”
John Head, Joyner
In May 1999, during research on other material in the George Vaux Papers that in 1992 had been deposited at the American Philosophical Society, Jay R. Stiefel discovered an extraordinary record of the shop production and barter of goods and services of the immigrant joiner John Head (born Suffolk, England 1688 – died Philadelphia 1754.) … Continue reading John Head, Joyner
To a Spice Box
Tomorrow Freeman’s will be selling the Estate of Andre and Nancy Brewster of Maryland, a small collection of 33 lots. Lot 24 is a rare spice box made in Philadelphia that can be attributed to an anonymous joiner’s shop that produced some of the most opulent furniture made in Philadelphia during the 1720s. The appearance … Continue reading To a Spice Box
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” Cormac McCarthy
In 2011, a wide audience was introduced to a genre painting by Thomas Hicks (1823-1890) of a kitchen interior while it was on loan to Winterthur Museum as part of the exhibition “Paint, Pattern and People, Furniture of Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1725-1850”. It was also included in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition as figure 3.1, heading … Continue reading “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” Cormac McCarthy
In Proportion to the Trouble 