Paint-Decorated Chest Brings $32,400

On March 20 Winter Associates in Plainville, Connecticut, held a 345-lot sale beginning at 5:30 p.m. The top lot was a paint decorated one-drawer blanket chest, estimated at $1000/2000, that sold for $32,400 (includes buyer’s premium) to Woodbury, Connecticut, dealer David Schorsch of David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles American Antiques. The underbidder was on the phone. Meredith Adams of Winter Associates said there were six phone bidders on the chest and a lot of private interest. The chest had come from a southeastern Connecticut estate. Schorsch said the chest is New England, possibly Maine, and that he bought it for stock. He said it’s by the same maker/artist as a chest that sold at the sale of Chris Huntington’s collection June 20, 1974, in Mount Vernon, Maine, for $2800. (That same chest sold again at Skinner October 27, 2013, for $42,000.) Another chest by the same hand sold at Sotheby’s January 20, 2019, for $50,000 to David Wheatcroft for a client; it had Marguerite Riordan provenance, and it was from the collection of Adelaide de Menil and Edmund Carpenter.