by Leigh Keno
Richard's collecting taste runs from seventeenth-century to late-eighteenth-century furniture and related objects, but he definitely has a soft spot for Philadelphia pieces, because that is his hometown (he is very active with the Philadelphia Museum of Art). Richard actually owns one of the Cadwalader commode card tables on loan at the Philadelphia Museum (which I had examined at his behest only a few weeks previously), so I knew he would be ecstatic about the discovery of the matching easy chair. And I was not mistaken. As soon as he received the pictures, we immediately began discussing bidding strategies for the piece. Leslie had put a presale estimate of $700,000 to $900,000 on the chair (at the time, the highest printed presale estimate ever placed on a piece of American furniture), but there was no doubt in my mind that it would sell for much more—a point that I immediately stressed to Richard. I often advise clients not to bid above a certain price level on an object, because a similar one is sure to surface in the market, but I knew that the Cadwalader easy chair was a one-of-a-kind gem—and Richard knew it, too.
The morning of my phone conversation with Richard, I had gone to see the chair in John Marion's office. I already had great confidence in the piece because I implicitly trusted Leslie's instincts, but obviously, as a private dealer working for a client, I needed to render my own judgment. As soon as I began to go over the chair, however, I grew equally convinced of its authenticity. In terms of the four factors that we often use in the business to evaluate furniture—quality, rarity, condition, and provenance—this piece was a grand slam. Its quality was strikingly evident in its substantial proportions and elegant design, and there was a wonderful sense of balance among the various parts. In the front, the legs were bold and sinewy and well suited the generous massing of the framework above. The craftsman's handling of the rear legs, which raked back at an exaggerated cant and ended in swelled pad feet, particularly impressed me. Most easy chairs of this period were finished in the back with mildly backswept stump legs, simply angled toward the floor and uncarved at the feet. The design of the Cadwalader rear legs (closely based upon high-style London prototypes) added to the drama of the chair's profile by anchoring the form and emphasizing its animal-like energy.
The club-shaped ends of the raked back rear legs are rarely seen on Colonial American charirs
Clearly, this object was not meant to be tucked in a corner, but viewed all around, a fact made clear by the eloquent treatment of the chair's carved detail, which was fluidly integrated into the overall form. The leaves spread in an organic way across the rails and around the sides and flowed into the S-shaped, or cabriole, legs, seamlessly uniting the elements. When I faced the chair head-on, I took careful note of the leg carving, which featured a large bellflower at the center of each knee, with a series of petals extending from its lower tip. Surrounding this elegant motif was a framework consisting of a pair of arching C-shaped scrolls flanked by additional leaf carving. Because a raking light can often bring out inconsistencies or patches in an older surface, I took a strong flashlight out of my bag and angled its beam across the knees. I was pleased to see that everything looked as it should—even under that harsh, unforgiving light—and the contrast between the raised areas and the smooth surrounds was dramatic.
The distinctive pattern of the carving was pivotal in establishing a relationship between the chair and the other objects in the Cadwalader suite. Indeed, I had just seen an identical design on Richard's Cadwalader card table at the Philadelphia Museum, adapted to the more attenuated proportions of the table form. The same held true for the powerful design of the hairy-paw feet, which were clearly brethren to the card table's feet. Sometime during the weeks that followed, I had a conversation about this work with Alan Miller, the man who conserved the Newport side chairs found in the chicken coop and who, because of his formidable skill as a craftsman, is an expert on the carving techniques of many eighteenth-century Philadelphia craftsmen. Alan thought that the long chiseled lines and strokes used throughout the design indicated that the carving had been done expertly but in haste—completely logical, given the scope of the Cadwalders' renovations and their eagerness to move into a newly appointed home. Soon after hearing Alan's observations, I ran into Luke Beckerdite, whose expertise had been instrumental in attributing the carving of Eddy Nicholson's $1 million piecrust tea table to Hercules Courtenay. Luke felt with growing certainty that the carving on the easy chair was by the firm of Bernard and Jugiez, one of the two firms listed on Thomas Affleck's original bill of sale, and he based his conclusion on other known examples of their work, including their architectural carving in the sumptuous Philadelphia home of Samuel Powel.
Rarity was also clearly working in this piece's favor: Only three other eighteenth-century American hairy-paw wing chairs have ever been found, and I could think of just one other example that even came close in its aggressive fulfillment of the gorgeous rococo aesthetic. That chair, now part of the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum, has long been attributed to the Philadelphia craftsman Benjamin Randolph because it has a solid history of descent in the family of his second wife. Randolph often worked in partnership with the carver Hercules Courtenay (to whom the carving on the Randolph chair is attributed), and both men were among the many leading Philadelphia artisans who contributed to the remodeling and refurbishing of the Cadwalader home. The Randolph chair was also the only other example I could recall that had similar back-raking legs and shaped feet.
Finally, in terms of condition, I had found no replaced parts on the Cadwalader chair, and only a handful of missing passages where the chair had suffered a bump or two. That, coupled with the chair's wonderful grungy original finish, meant that the piece was a winner. That left only the chair's provenance to factor into my overall analysis, and that was, of course, unbelievably satisfying in every way. When I spoke to Richard Dietrich later in the day, I was able to give him a rundown on the piece, including the name of the man who commissioned it (John Cadwalader), the chair-maker who created it (Thomas Affleck), the carvers who decorated it (the team of Bernard and Jugiez), the upholsterer who stuffed it (Plunkett Fleeson), and the room for which it was originally made (the front parlor). We even knew the color of the original upholstery (a blue damask), based upon the Cadwalader receipts. It all added up to a keenly personalized history of the object.
As the January sale date loomed closer, Richard and I continued to discuss the level of commitment it would take to win the chair, given the rising market for Americana and the buying capacity of such collectors as Eddy Nicholson, Richard and Gloria Manney of New York, or the Kaufmans, who, like Richard, already owned some Cadwalader furnishings. We considered auction prices both past and present for similar forms, including the only easy chair that came close to the design of the Cadwalader chair—the Randolph example at the Philadelphia Museum. That chair had sold back in 1929 at the famous sale of the Howard Reifsnyder Collection at New York's American Art Association for $33,000—a world record at the time. There was also the current world record for the form to think about, which had been set just a few months previously, in October 1986, when Eddy Nicholson purchased a Philadelphia easy chair with claw-and-ball feet at Sotheby's for $1.1 million.
I found that last statistic so important that I wrote in my diary not long before the sale:
The fact that Eddy Nicholson is in the action to such a major degree—buying whatever he wants—certainly affects this market in a major way. Eddy knows about the hairy-paw chair—and will definitely want it—probably at any cost. At this point, I feel that Richard could go up to $1.4 to $1.6 million—quite a jump on the recently set record (Nicholson of $1.1 on the…related chair). We'll see.
Well, on the morning of the sale, I did indeed have a bid in my pocket from Richard for $1.5 million, $400,000 more than the previous record for any piece of American furniture. That year, the January sale was a three-day event. The Cadwalader easy chair was scheduled for the afternoon session of the last day. Since I had no bids to place in
the morning session (which was dominated by smaller decorative items and folk art), I had stayed at home on East Seventy-fifth Street, planning to arrive at Sotheby's just after lunch. However, my parents, who were in town, had attended the morning session (they always like to watch Leslie and me in action and hoped to bid on a few lots for themselves). During the lunch break, like many of the regulars in the crowd, they had gone to a pizza place on York Avenue, just two blocks from Sotheby's. I certainly hadn't given much thought to their lunch plans, so I was quite surprised when the phone rang as I was nearly out the door (the sale was scheduled to resume in less than an hour). It was Mom, calling from the pizza parlor.
“Hello, honey,” she said in her warmhearted way.
“Yes, Mom?” I said, probably a bit tersely, since I was in a rush.
“Oh, I hate to bother you, dear, but I thought you might want to know that Dad and I are at the pizza parlor….”
“Yes?”
“Well, I just heard a man telling some people seated near us that he was going to spend two and a half million dollars on that chair.”
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “Mom, well, who was it? Do you know who was talking?”
“No. Wait Let me give you your father.”
Mom passed the phone to Dad, who began a detailed physical description of the man whom they had overheard. “I'm sure he's a dealer, Leigh,” he said in a low, conspiratorial tone (Dad always likes a bit of intrigue). “He said his clients were willing to go up to two and a half million.” Based on Dad's account, I guessed that the speaker was Ron DeSilva. Ron is a good-hearted fellow, with an uninhibited enthusiasm for objects (he is also the only person to have ever headed the American furniture departments at both Sotheby's and Christie's, although obviously on separate occasions). At this point in his career, however, Ron was a private dealer, and I knew he often advised Richard and Gloria Manney, the pair of top collectors, who I had already suspected to be real contenders for the Cadwalader chair.
I glanced across the room at my desk clock—it was now half an hour before the afternoon session was set to begin. Hastily, I hung up with Dad and called Richard Dietrich, who was actually in London at the time. As quickly as I could, I outlined the chain of events for him. When I was through, I said, “Richard, you won't have a second opportunity to bid on this object. Ever. If you want that chair, you are going to have to stretch your limit—in a big way.”
There was long silence on Richard's end. These were ridiculously high-pressured circumstances and I had just implied that he should increase his bid by over $1 million, and that was before the auction house's 10 percent buyer's premium. As I waited for his response, I knew that if this deal was going to work, I needed to make a gesture of self-sacrifice, as well. I had to show Richard that I was willing to go the extra distance to get the object into the proper hands—his. So, for the first (and hopefully last) time in my career, I decided to ask for a commission of only 1 percent of whatever the chair brought.
For exhibition purposes, Sotheby's commissioned a blue damask slipcover that was based upon a description in the Cadwalader papers.
“You would do that?” asked Richard somewhat incredulously.
“Yes, I would,” I said steadily.
“Well then, you have a bid of two and a half million. Try to land on that amount.”
I was exhilarated, but I also took his cautionary follow-up quite seriously. Richard wanted me to land on the figure $2.5 million, which meant I had to calculate at what point during the auction process I would jump in, so that I would end precisely on that number. Since I knew the competition had the same cap of $2.5 million, it would in essence be a duel for that single spot.
Now, I had never-bid on an object over $1 million before, so during the taxi ride over to Sotheby's, I scrawled the figures of the rising bids in increments of $25,000 down the back of the sales catalog. Next to those numbers, I wrote a set of bidding cues for myself—“Him, me, him, me”—all the way down the length of the page, right up to $2.5 million.
But I never had a chance to look down at that page once the bidding for the chair actually started (and advanced in much larger increments than I had counted on). I had positioned myself as covertly as possible, next to a cement pole at the rear right of the auction room. John Marion was the auctioneer that day, with Leslie standing a few yards to his right, farther down on the stage.
As the bidding launched at $500,000, I glanced toward my brother, then quickly narrowed my focus to John Marion's commanding figure behind the podium. The bids rose in $50,000 increments and I put my green paddle, number 659, up at around $600,000, but when the numbers hit $1.1 million, I dropped back to assess the room. There seemed to be only one other person bidding from the rear center—Alexander Acevedo, the owner of Alexander Galleries and a sometime adviser to billionaire collector Richard Manoogian. Where was Ron DeSilva?
Leslie anxiously watches the bidding.
“$1.1 million,” said John in his cool, clear voice. I kept the paddle braced low against my arm—I wanted Alex to feel as if he was going to get the chair at that price, the standing world record.
“$1.1…$1.1…$l.1…” The figure hung out there for what seemed like an eternity.
I flashed my paddle again to John.
“$1.2…$1.3 now…$1.4 million…” Now the bidding was jumping at a $100,000 clip. Standing directly next to me was a well-dressed, genteel woman, and I remember sensing the tension in her frame. I think she was afraid to move a centimeter, lest any gesture be misconstrued as a bid against me.
As we neared the $2 million mark, John paused for a moment to quip to the audience, “Don't walk out now.” Some nervous titters rippled across the standing-room-only crowd, but it quickly died out as the auctioneer urged the sale along.
“$2.1 million…” I nodded my head.
“$2.2 now…” Alex met the bid.
“$2.3…” I nodded firmly again.
“$2.4 now…” Alex affirmed again.
“$2.5…” John seemed to stretch the number out across the crowd. This was it—I nodded one last time. The silence was deafening. “$2.5 million,” John announced, followed by a fair warning. My single rival, Alex Acevedo, turned around and walked out of the room, signaling he was through.
Smack. John Marion brought his wooden auctioneer's gavel down on the podium. The room burst into thunderous applause. I had bought the Cadwalader easy chair for $2.5 million! With the auction house's 10 percent buyer's premium, that brought the total for the chair to $2.75 million. It was not just a record for American furniture but a record for any piece of furniture sold in the world.
I breathed a sigh of relief and looked toward my brother, who was smiling at me from across the room. The sale was a triumph for us both. Quickly, though, the crowd surged around me. Members of the press wanted quotes. Sotheby's wanted a picture. Other folks just wanted to offer their congratulations. I threw out a few words about what I thought of this incredible object and then beat a hasty retreat. I needed to protect the anonymity of my client and didn't want to be asked any leading questions. Furthermore, I needed to let him know that we had won the chair—this was, after all, the age before cell phones.
As I cut through the crowd, I wondered to myself, What ever happened to Ron DeSilva? I later learned that he had, in fact, been advising the Manneys, and that they, along with Richard Manoogian and his adviser, Alex Acevedo, had formed a consortium to buy the chair together as an investment. Alex was the chosen front man for the trio. I also found out that the comedian and Americana collector Bill Cosby, who had been in a private viewing room overlooking the sales floor, had thrown in a few bids, as well. He later joked to Robert H. Boyle, a reporter for Barron's, the business weekly, “The biggest disappointment was being an underbidder on that chair. I hope it's a fake.”
Sotheby's chairman John Marion congratulates Leigh after the sale of the Cadwalader chair. In recognition of the event, paddle 659 was permanently retired by the aucti
on house.
6
Open Talons in the Hamptons
I ALWAYS MAKE IT MY BUSINESS to check out the lower-end sales at Christie's East, as well as at Sotheby's equivalent Arcade division (both devoted to items that are generally valued at less than twenty thousand dollars), because to this day, I am still on the lookout for sleepers. Even at the top auction houses, it is not unheard of for an exceptional object to occasionally slip through the cracks and land in a less important sale (just as Leslie's discovery of those mislabeled reproduction chairs on the Sotheby's loading dock proved the reverse). I've discovered sleepers several times at auction, including a Newport slipper-foot tea table and a fluidly carved child's armchair from Boston that dated to the second half of the eighteenth century. Both had been cataloged as reproductions, when they were clearly anything but. However, I still think there is nothing like those more elusive sleepers—the kind found in private homes, garages, or attics—that are uncovered only by a mere twist of fate.
One day in the spring of 1989, nearly two years after my purchase of the Cadwalader easy chair, I found myself at an Americana preview at Christie's East, where I ran into Morgan MacWhinnie, a Southampton dealer whom I had known for quite some time. Morgan had very good taste in Americana, but he tended to steer clear of high-style objects, gravitating instead toward things with a more “country” bent. Then in his mid-fifties, Morgan was a tall, handsome guy with a friendly face and a thick head of dark hair. He was born on Long Island and spent thirty years working for the phone company as a cable repairman before he turned to dealing in antiques full-time. He and his wife live in a historic house in Southampton that is packed with American furniture and decorative arts, and their adjacent barn holds a lot of the spillover. Morgan has a sizable collection of American pottery; old lighting devices, such as tin sconces; and quite a few furniture miniatures. In fact, some years back, he bought—actually, “stole”—a miniature blanket chest from my parents' booth at Brimfield (he paid $650, although it was probably worth closer to $2,500), which proves that Morgan has an eye for sleepers, too.
