Hidden Treasures

by Leigh Keno

  I repositioned a spotlight so that its beam hit one of the table's upended cabriole legs just where the knee began to swell outward from the top. The white rays bounced off the wood's velvety finish, highlighting a neat arrangement of stylized intaglio leaf carving that symmetrically covered the two outer sides of the squared leg. The pattern was similar to the one I had seen on the legs of the Tillinghast high chest (which had, in turn, reminded me of the carving on Jabez Bowen's tea table at Winterthur). Here, however, the carver had widened the spacing among the three leaves, a detail that enhanced the design's inherent sense of weightlessness. Their fluid shapes appeared to cascade freely downward, in perfect harmony with the leg itself.

  A detail of the table's underside shows replaced glue blocks. Note the finished backsides of the two knee brackets (top), typical of Goddard's work.

  I walked around the table and examined the carving on each leg. On one of the knee brackets, which both decoratively and structurally bound the uppermost part of the leg to the skirt rail, I detected a slight irregularity in the carving, as if the carver's tool had momentarily strayed from its path. I could imagine his exasperation when, having already glued the bracket in place and shaped the volute (or scroll-like formation that curved along its inner edge), his chisel slipped ever so slightly. Since the decorative leaf pattern bridged the seam where the bracket met the leg stock, it would have been agonizingly difficult for him to replace the bracket to correct this small imperfection. Instead, he probably heaved a sigh, shook his head, and continued on with his painstaking work.

  Still, to reassure myself that the bracket was original to the piece and not a later replacement part, I peered into the dark pocket that formed on the inside of each leg where the skirt's side rails converged. The wood tone and oxidation looked consistent among the parts. Furthermore, the tool markings on the back of the bracket were identical to those seen on the table's other brackets. Although hidden from view and never meant to be seen, all were sanded smooth. It was the sort of fastidious attention to detail that is typical of the best Newport work and is rarely seen on furniture from other cities.

  Now that I had positively reviewed the outer show surface and the carving, I was finally ready to assess the smoking gun, so to speak—the faint reddish stain that covered the underside of the top and had triggered concern from the staff at Yale. To begin with, the light-handed application of the wash was far different in nature from the well-saturated red stain that had forever masked the original surface of the refurbished Lannuier side tables sold by Leslie a few years back. Instead, it appeared to be the sort of wash—called pinking—that eighteenth-century cabinetmakers sometimes used in an effort to “sanitize” the wood to protect it from insects—much like the thin layer of wax that had been applied to the interior surfaces of the églomisé secretary found in Argentina. The color had been applied in a flagrant, slapdash manner, atypical of a faker's work, and several large patches of the mahogany underside had been missed. As expected, the wood in those areas left exposed to the air had oxidized to a dark chestnut brown tone. Nonetheless, staining and overpainting are the classic tools of a forger because they can help mask or disguise added sections of wood.

  It was clear from the concerned looks of the two curators standing next to me that there had been some lively debates as to the nature of that stain. If the top was not original, then the $250,000 value that had been assigned to it a few years previously was probably right on target, but if the top was original and true, then that figure could be off by millions. I think it is critical for great pieces of American furniture to remain accessible to the public in museum collections, where they can be admired and studied. That said, I nevertheless strongly suspected that if I could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the table before me was completely authentic, then the fair-market value, even with a significant gift component, would take it way out of the range of Yale's acquisition budget. If that were to happen, it would be a great loss for the museum, which I knew did not own an example of comparable design.

  A bird's-eye view of the table's top shows the shaped edge carved from a solid plank.

  The table's underside prior to removing the top.

  The oblong, light-colored witness marks from the now-lost original glue blocks are revealed when the top is removed.

  So it was with considerable gravity that I moved in closer to examine the treatment of the underside more carefully. I noticed that the wash had been applied when the table still carried its now-missing original glue blocks (the small rectacular-shaped pieces of wood used to secure the juncture where the table's top meets the sides). A few of those blocks had been replaced with obvious machine-cut twentieth-century versions. This didn't concern me, because changing the glue blocks on a table is rather likechanging the tires on a vintage auto—it doesn't detract from the overall importance or value of piece.

  witness marks from glue blocks past and present match between the top and inner skirt.

  What did interest me, however, was that the rectangular patches of exposed wood left by the missing glue blocks on the underside of the top and the marks along the upper inside of the skirt exactly corresponded in their placement. All the markings were significantly lighter in color than the wood around them because, having been protected from the air for so long, they had oxidized at a slower rate. Like the shadows left behind when the original brass mounts were removed from the Gibbs bureau (or the ormolu mounts were examined on the Lannuier pier tables in Milan), these witness marks, as they are called, helped me place the stain in the time line of the piece. Their appearance made it clear that the wash had been applied very early in the life span of the table, when the first set of glue blocks was still new and in place.

  It was then that I noticed beneath the wash, a chalk inscription O on the inner side of the skirt rail on one end of the table and a corresponding O drawn by the same hand on the underside of the top, just near the juncture of that rail. There was no doubt in my mind that these were the original markings used by the cabinetmaker to align the top with the bottom when he assembled the table in his shop. Whenever I uncover original layout marks such as these, I am thrilled, because, like the irregularity in the leg bracket I had spotted earlier, they furnish the form with a history of its creation. I turned toward Peter, who had been quietly observing me as I bent over the piece, and asked if the table bore any significant history in his family. Peter's face brightened noticeably at the query and he began to tell me all that he knew. Given the details he provided, it was instantly clear that he and his siblings all took a lively interest in their family's history.

  Sometime before 1959, Peter said, his mother bought the piece for somewhere in the range of five hundred to five thousand dollars (neither he nor his siblings could remember the exact amount) from her brother, who had inherited the table from their father a few years earlier. The family could trace their roots back to a New Haven sea captain named Buckminster Brintnall (c. 1731–1789), who was traditionally thought to be the table's first owner. Peter and his siblings had spent time researching the estate inventories of his ancestors in the Connecticut State Archives, among other places, and had found a number of references (such as an 1850 inventory that listed “(1) mahog. Table. Old—$5.00” and another one dating to 1928 that named “the mahogany table with claw feet”), all of which he believed referred to the object before us that day.

  Peter said that he and his siblings long remembered Captain Brintnall's table standing in the living room of their childhood home. Then, sometime in the 1970s, a young neighbor, who happened to be studying American decorative arts at Winterthur, stopped in for a visit. When she spotted the table (as Peter recalled, it sat next to his mother's couch perhaps a little too close to the fireplace), she excitedly told the family that it was a rare Newport piece. She said that the Delaware-based museum owned a nearly identical example (the Jabez Bowen table), which was a star of the museum's collection.

  In time, Peter's parents made a pilgr
image to Winterthur to see Jabez Bowen's former tea table and returned to Connecticut satisfied, in his words, “that their piece was even more beautiful and alive than the Winterthur example.” Thereafter, whenever parties were thrown, the table was moved to an upstairs room for safekeeping. When Peter and his siblings learned that their mother had left them equal partnership in the table—obviously a difficult thing to share—they decided to place it on loan at Yale.

  I was enthralled by Peter's story and thought the extended family provenance added yet another layer of history to what I already viewed as a historic piece. I gave the table a last hard look and turned to leave. Once outside the museum, Peter and I spoke briefly and I promised to get back to him with a written assessment of the piece within a week or so. “It's an important table,” I reassured him as we parted, although I did not elaborate any further.

  Days later, I was putting the finishing touches on that report, which took up an astonishing nine pages. I could not stop writing about the piece, wanting to cover everything from the singular eloquence of the table's design to a detailed comparison of the object with the five other known tables by Goddard (inclusive of the tool work, wood quality, and oxidation evidence). All that remained was the value of the table—an issue that I had turned over in my head again and again, ever since I left it behind in New Haven. What dollar amount could I assign to this object, which I viewed as an unquestionable masterpiece?

  The last Goddard tea table to enter the market was the Tillinghast one, which I had sold, but that had been nearly a decade earlier, and to compare that table to this one was like measuring apples against oranges (so dramatically different were the two in overall appearance). Furthermore, the market in general had surged significantly since that time. To my knowledge, the only other Goddard tea table of similar design to come to auction in the past century was the Jabez Bowen table at Winterthur. When Henry du Pont bought that table for $29,000 in 1930, it was the third-most-expensive piece of American furniture ever sold. (To help put that figure in perspective, realize that in 1930, the average annual per capita income in the United States was approximately $750 and that a Duesenberg SJ, by far the grandest car of the era, was priced in the neighborhood of $25,000.) Other than that, the tea table form had come up privately only once, in 1984, when George and Linda Kaufman bought the John Townsend example from the Sacks for $675,000. My determinations also led me to think of the Nicholas Brown secretary that Israel Sack, Inc., had bought for $12.1 million in 1989, and even of the Philadelphia tea table that I had purchased at the Eddy Nicholson sale for just under $2.5 million in 1995. In truth, there was scant material for me to draw upon, which is why, more than anything, I had to go with my gut instincts about the value of this unique object before settling on a final number.

  Once I calculated that figure, I thought it would be wise to prepare the owners for my conclusions, rather than send them the report without preface, so I gave Peter a call. When I reached him, I briefly explained that I had completed my evaluation and that I thought he would enjoy reading it. I told him that regardless of the table's earlier analysis, I would stake my reputation on what I thought the table's true value should be. My heart began to race as I led up to the climax of my call. I felt as if I were about to tell Peter that he and his siblings had won the lottery. All that was missing was the drumroll. “Are you sitting down?” I asked.

  “Yes. Why?” Peter asked cautiously.

  I took a deep breath and continued. “Given the exquisite level of craftsmanship and absolute rarity of the table, not to mention its wonderful provenance, I feel comfortable valuing your table at three and a half million dollars.”

  My excited announcement was greeted with complete silence.

  “Hello?” I said nervously.

  “I'm still here, Leigh,” Peter said softly before pausing to clear his throat. “Well, you've certainly gotten my attention.”

  To lessen the obvious shock of the moment and to allow my client to collect himself, I began speaking about the piece in the broadest, most conversational of tones. It was clear, though, that he needed to confer with his sister, who lived in London, and his brother in Massachusetts right away, so within a few minutes, we hung up.

  I leaned back in my chair and gazed out my shop window in a moment of reverie. Just outside the plate-glass pane, there was a large American flag hanging from a brass pole that projected from the building's facade. As I watched that flag flapping about in the cold autumn wind, I remembered a day back in 1994, when I first moved to my current gallery space. Dad had stopped by to see the new shop and had commented on the close proximity of the flag. He liked the idea that I had staked a spot on the site of the old Parke Bernet building—a place that had symbolized so much to Leslie and mewhen we were young—with that patriotic banner flying so close by. At the time, busy with the work at hand, I had brushed away Dad's comment with a nod, but now, for some reason, I was touched by the memory. I thought about the table I had just appraised and of how that single object, made as our nation stood on the brink of independence, was about to affect the lives of its current owners, all descendants of a Colonial sea captain. I probably shook my head to break away from those cornball thoughts, but for days to come, I continued to wonder what action the table's three owners would ultimately take.

  Nearly two weeks later, Peter called to say that he and his siblings were still wrestling with the future of the piece. “At the previous appraisal of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, we felt comfortable donating the table to the museum, which we consider a worthy cause,” he explained. “But at this new level, I think we have to look at other possibilities.” Clearly, my speculation at Yale as to the table's future had not been unfounded.

  Then Peter asked, “Would you be interested in finding a good home for it, Leigh, should we choose to take that course?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied. “I could find it a very good home.”

  “And can you really find a buyer at the price you've named?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” I firmly repeated as I began to scroll through a mental checklist of possible clients.

  Peter took that promise back to his family. When he called back, he reminded me that I had mentioned an upcoming trip to London. “Would you be able to stop in and see my sister while you are there?” he asked.

  Understandably, his sister, who had been living in London since the 1950s, was feeling too far removed from the process to make a final decision about this family heirloom. So on a mid-November afternoon, less than a week after that call, I found myself climbing the steps to the elegant Chelsea town house that she shared with her husband, a British writer.

  My hostess, an animated, chicly dressed woman, whose well-drawn features closely resembled those of her brother, greeted me at the door. We were still in the process of exchanging our introductions when I noticed, not ten feet away, a small, cherry-wood dressing table with a scallop top (the front and side edges were cut in a series of repetitive cyma, or wave-shaped curves) and cabriole legs that was clearly a Colonial American work. Immediately, I recognized the table as a Connecticut River Valley piece, probably made in or near the town of Wethersfield during the mid- to late-eighteenth century and probably worth upward of $200,000. Not wanting to seem like an overbearing New York dealer, I remarked upon its beauty, suggested its potential value, and then followed her into her warm, pleasant living room. There we were joined by her husband and spent a few good hours discussing her family's history and the Newport table.

  At week's end, I was back in my New York office, awaiting the arrival of the table from Yale. I had passed the sister's inspection and the Brintnall tea table was mine to sell on consignment. I was ecstatic and had already decided I would take it to the Winter Antiques Show at the Armory. Over and over in my mind's eye, I pictured the table front and center in my booth. For a short while, I even toyed with the idea of making the table the only thing in my booth. That's how magnificent it was.

  When
the table arrived near day's end, I immediately secreted it under a blanket in my interior office so that it would remain shielded from the buying public until the show. It was virtually impossible for me to do any work, however, knowing that this animal of a piece was sitting beside me. All I wanted to do was stare at it, so as soon as my assistants had left for the night and the shop had grown soothingly quiet, I cleared the blanket off the table and began to go over it again.

  As I moved deeper into my reexamination of the piece, I found myself becoming transfixed again by the consistency and quality of that red stain. Now that I was in the quiet confines of my shop, I decided that it might be wise to remove the top to find out if the stain continued on to the side rails. If the color also appeared on the rails, then it would further support the notion that the wash was old and honestly applied; after all, the authenticity of the skirt had never been questioned. As cochairman of the vetting committees for the show that year, I knew the type of scrutiny the table was sure to undergo (of course I would excuse myself from evaluating any of the pieces in my booth), and I wanted to be able to address any questions that were raised.