Treadway Gallery's Auction for Katherine Williams Estate Brings Antique Dolls, Art & More to Market The Gallery of the Dolls: 700 vintage dolls bring $108,724 and one sells for $2,310 despite missing an arm, a tooth and her wig in Treadway Gallery’s first estate sale, a new service the firm offers.
with a flapper-style body sold for $1,980; an 8.5-inch doll, mold #323, with original clothes for $880; and a 7.5-inch ‘Just Me’ doll for $770, even though it was not the original body.
A Heubach & Koppelsdorf, mold #417, a goggle guy doll with toddler body and original clothes, reached $880. A lot of 14 cloth-faced souvenir dolls in original costumes attained $1,320. A lot of five German and Nippon bisque dolls sold for $1,100. A 14-inch French bisque fashion type shoulder head doll brought $1,210. A 23-inch Kley & Hah character doll reached $1,045.
Child-sized sewing machines were of interest as well. One made by Tourist; an early model made from tin; and one tiny sewing machine with intricate stenciling sold together in a lot for $1,760.
Vintage patent prototypes and sample boards were popular. A lot of three patent prototypes brought $1,210. All in working condition, the trio of salesman samples included a Joseph Parr cracker machine from 1876, a windmill, and a Walter Jackson aluminating gas contraption dated 1874. Two sample boards of dollhouse dolls sold in another lot for $660.
Two Gustav Stickley pieces were among the estate’s top sellers: a two-door china cabinet that sold for $7,150 and sideboard for $3,190. Ornately carved furniture was in abundance and also fared well. An oak bow front china cabinet with intricately cut, grotesque lions and clawed feet fetched $1,870. Six lots of mahogany furniture carved with pineapple posts and clawed feet realized a total of $2,035 with the full-size bed selling for $522.
Rook bookends that would have enthralled Edgar Allen Poe were among the most intriguing pieces from Williams’ vast collection of Rookwood. These rooks were not the humdrum chessmen kind, but rather ‘Corvus frugilegus,’ the Old World bird related to and resembling the American crow. The pair featured a stylized rook in low relief in a matte tan glaze and sold for $1,045.
A Rookwood piece by William McDonald, a 10-inch vase dated 1890 in an early Standard glaze with a detailed leaf and berry design, fetched $1,430. Two Vellum-glazed Rookwood vases painted by Fred Rothenbusch sold for $990 each. One featured a landscape scene dated 1920, and the other was a superb winter landscape scene painted in 1916. A Rookwood Native American vessel painted with the portrait of an Apache by Edith Felton in 1900 achieved $880. Two exquisite floral designs for Rookwood by Albert Robert Valentien were notable. A stunning 10-inch ewer he had painted in 1892 and covered in an early Standard glaze sold for $770, and an 8.5-inch vase from 1897 with a Standard glaze brought $880.
A 4-inch tall George Ohr vessel in a handled, tortured form with a red and green glaze fetched $550, even though one handle was broken. From Moorcroft, an 8-inch vase with a pansy design and a 6.5-inch high covered vessel with a magnolia motif in pink against a blue ground sold in a lot for $550.
An extensive collection of Whiting Louis XV flatware,
