Federal mahogany Pembroke drop-leaf table hits $36,800 at Nadeau's Auction Gallery A lovely Federal mahogany Pembroke drop-leaf table, probably made in New York sometime between 1790-1810, sold for $36,800 at a two-day, two-session sale held Oct. 20-21 by Nadeau’s Auction Gallery.
News-Antique.com - Nov 07,2012 - (WINDSOR, Conn.) – A lovely Federal mahogany Pembroke drop-leaf table, probably made in New York sometime between 1790-1810, sold for $36,800 at a two-day, two-session sale held Oct. 20-21 by Nadeau’s Auction Gallery. The auction was held in the firm’s spacious facility located at 25 Meadow Road in Windsor. The Federal table was the top lot of the auction.
The Saturday, Oct. 20 session featured American antiques, custom mahogany, silver, pewter, redware, stoneware, fine art, prints, decorative accessories and Oriental rugs. The Sunday, Oct. 21 session was dedicated to firearms and fishing reels (including fin noir), with the firearms featuring long guns, shotguns, pistols, modern ammunition, gunpowder and gun scopes.
“In the American antiques auction there was strong interest in our best pieces and even substantial interest in furniture, which surprised us because that category has been soft recently,” said Ed Nadeau of Nadeau’s Auction Gallery. “But we did very well with furniture, with strong bidding throughout the day. I’d say this was our strongest American antiques sale in 3-5 years.”
The first session featured 453 lots, whereas there were just over100 lots offered the following day. “There weren’t many items,” Nadeau observed, “but it was quality merchandise and bidders responded in kind with robust in-house bidding, phone bidding and Internet bidding, through Artfact.com.” Nadeau’s is the only auction firm in Connecticut licensed to sell firearms.
The Federal mahogany Pembroke drop-leaf table was all-original and had been found in an unassuming home on West Haven, Conn. It had a conservative pre-sale estimate of $3,000-$5,000, but it opened at $5,000 and quickly escalated to the hammer price of $36,800 (including the buyer’s premium). In the end, a bidder in the room won out over all seven telephone bidders.
The second top lot was also a nice piece of period furniture: a cherry four-drawer chest with an exaggerated serpentine front, probably made in Norwich, Conn., around 1800 ($25,300). The chest, 36 inches tall by 39 inches wide with pine as a secondary wood, featured flat block corners over a conforming case on cutout bracket feet, and drawers with the original brass pulls.
Following are additional highlights from the auction. All prices quoted include an 18 percent buyer’s premium.
Keeping with American antiques, a Federal cherry tall case clock with painted porcelain dial marked Benjamin Hanks (Litchfield, Conn.), with moon phases, calendar and brass works, 90 inches tall, chimed on time for $10,350; and an 18th century poplar and oak primitive blanket chest with original paint decoration, marked Lisabeth Rit Tern (1786), topped out at $10,030.
A maple chest on frame (probably New Hampshire, circa 1750-1760), with a cornice molded top and original Chippendale brasses, made $9,200; a Serapi Oriental carpet measuring 10 feet 2 inches by 12 feet 5 inches, rose to $5,175; and a large brass yacht binnacle (a stand for housing a compass), marked “Ritchie Boston” and patented Aug. 17, 1875, commanded $4,888.
From the fine art category, an oil on canvas by Nelson Augustus Moore (1824-1902), titled Snowscape With
