Items from the estate of noted musical conductor Anthony Morss will be sold Feb. 25 The entire contents of a seven-room home and three-room guest house of Anthony Morss, the noted music director and principal conductor, will be sold on Saturday, Feb. 25, in Litchfield, Conn., at 1 pm
News-Antique.com - Feb 14,2012 - (LITCHFIELD, Conn.) – The entire contents of a seven-room home and three-room guest house of Anthony Morss, music director and principal conductor of the New Jersey Association of Verismo Opera in Fort Lee, N.J., will be sold at auction Saturday, Feb. 25, starting at 1 p.m. (EST), at the former Morss residence, located on Brooks Road in Litchfield (preview from 11-1).
The contents of the home are packed with fine furnishings and decorative accessories, most of them in near immaculate condition, in keeping with Mr. Morss’s standards of excellence. One item certain to attract bidder interest is Mr. Morss’s prized mahogany Steinway grand piano (the desirable Model L, 5 feet 9 inches in length), originally given in 1928 as a wedding present to his mother from his uncle Noel. The piano has remained in the family ever since and carries both real and sentimental value.
The auction will be conducted by Tim’s, Inc., based in nearby Bristol, Conn. (and now with a branch office in Litchfield). “This will be one of the nicest and most spectacular decorative home contents we have ever sold,” said Tim Chapulis of Tim’s, Inc. “This house is completely full – even the contents of the closets and breakfronts will be sold – and everything shows off beautifully in their naturally kept settings.”
Mr. Chapulis added, “The uniqueness of this auction is that Mr. Morss and his wife chose this property in Litchfield as their dream getaway home more than twenty years ago, a place they could retreat to from the hustle and bustle of New York City and relax in a country environment. To show the merchandise on-site – which very few auction houses do – is a huge plus, both for the owner as well as the buyers.”
Some expected star lots will include a Japanese scroll screen estimated to be 125 years old, a gorgeous rosewood one-door music cabinet with ornate mirror, a folk art duck decoy in original paint, a John H. Belter side chair with beautiful needlepoint seat with roses, an ornate carved griffin library table, a lift-top music box with bells, and several love seats, one of them with carved eagles at the crest (probably an Exposition piece).
Other items will feature furnishings, original artwork, Oriental rugs, glass and china, antique lighting (to include banquet lamps and reverse painted table lamps), garden statuary and large planters, antique clocks (to include an early 19th century Eli Terry pillar-and-scroll clock, an Elmer Stennis banjo clock, a swinging statue clock and other 19th century clocks), and window treatments (some with stunning flower rose patterns).
Also sold will be fine diamond jewelry, gold and silver coins (to include a rare $20 St. Gaudens gold coin, a $5 Indian head gold coin and a $2 ½ Indian head gold coin) mirrors, bedrooms, dining room sofas, pullout couches, decorative floral arrangements, a wonderful baker’s rack, an oak corner hutch, a two-door oak hutch, many serving plates, bowls and dishes.
Additional offerings will feature fireplace accessories (to
