Both Sotheby's and Christie's have quality Rhode Island furniture in the upcoming Americana sales. Scroll back over the past week or two of AW Blog posts as I have posted on both of the main auction houses sales. Other auction houses, galleries and fairs will also be offered throughout Americana Week in New York.
Click HERE to visit the Rhode Island Furniture Archive
The NY Times reports on the Rhode Island Furniture Archive
Source: NY TimesFurniture made in Rhode Island before 1800 would sound like a manageable topic for a thorough Web site. After all, “Rhode Island is not that big a state,” said Patricia E. Kane, lead curator of American decorative arts at the Yale University Art Gallery.
A decade ago she started collecting data for Yale’s online Rhode Island Furniture Archive, intending to cover all the state’s cabinetmakers and their surviving products in private and museum collections. But the site, rifa.art.yale.edu, soon ballooned past her expectations.
Scheduled for completion in a few years, the site already lists 1,800 artisans and 2,000 objects, searchable by the names of workshops, hometowns and owners, among other terms. Making the unfinished site accessible now can draw out more information and insights from other scholars.
If Yale relied only on its own digging, Ms. Kane said, “I could be 110 before the thing was perfect.” Americana sales in New York on Jan. 20 and 21 are bringing out yet more Rhode Island material for Yale to track. (And on Jan. 15 and 16, Christie’s is devoting a symposium to the topic.) Sotheby’s is offering new discoveries: a mahogany dresser and highboy by the Newport woodworker John Townsend (each with seven-figure estimates). The top lots at Christie’s include Townsend armchairs (each with $120,000 high estimates) and a marble-topped table with an original bill of sale from his furniture-maker cousin, John Goddard (up to $3 million).
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