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May 17, 2003 Auction Highlights More Spatterware from the Schaeffer Collection
Hartenstein was pointing to a New Jersey collector who spent more than $100,000 on ten pieces of spatterware. The men had competed for spatterware from the collection of the late Dr. Robert L. Schaeffer, consigned by Franklin & Marshall College to Downingtown, Pennsylvania, auctioneers Pook & Pook, Inc. Dr. Shaeffer apparently loved colorful spattered or stippled English chinaware. The spattering, sometimes in one color, sometimes in two or more colors as stripes or concentric bands, was often decorated with na<139>ve drawings of birds, flowers, and houses. Pieces with a rainbow of colors or with windmills, a fish, a cow, two men on a raft, a shed, or a town house are rare. Spatterware was sold in quantity to the Pennsylvania Germans and to people in the communities near eastern port cities from about 1820 to 1850, peaking in the 1830-40 decade. It became popular with Americana collectors in the 1920's when Henry F. du Pont and Henry Ford bought it from dealers and at Pennypacker's auctions in Reading, Pennsylvania. When the Winterthur Museum and Greenfield Village opened, other collectors wanted spatterware. The late Sam Laidaicker popularized it in the 1930's and '40's in his infrequently published magazine on Anglo-American china. Collectors Arlene and Paul H. Greaser published Homespun Ceramics: A Study of Spatterware in 1964, enlarging their first booklet for a second printing in 1965. Earl F. and Ada F. Robacker published Spatterware and Sponge: Hardy Perennials of Ceramics in 1978. Prices rose steadily. In 1980 Sotheby's sold spatterware from the Garbisch and Wetzel collections, creating more collectors. Wolf's in Cleveland, Ohio, auctioned spatterware from the Paul Brunner collection on November 17, 1990, and set a new record when five handleless red spatter cups and saucers decorated with fish sold as one lot for $39,600, five times the estimate. At Sotheby's Deyerle sale in May 1995, spatterware sold for five-figure sums; a rainbow bowl and pitcher set brought $11,500, and a rainbow teapot made $18,400. The market spiked in 2001 with the J. Harlan Miller sales at Conestoga Auction Company in Manheim, Pennsylvania, when just one of the red spatter fish cups and saucers fetched $27,500 in October. At that same Conestoga sale a yellow spatter tulip pattern coffeepot brought $18,700, topping the $17,050 price of a 13 1/2 inches yellow spatter thistle pattern platter that Miller sold at Conestoga in October 2000. In November 2001 Conestoga got $22,000 for a green and red spatter platter with a blue and red tulip, showing that the market continued to be strong. Spatterware prices remained on that high plateau in 2003 at Pook & Pook's February and April sales of the Schaeffer collection, and prices for some forms reached higher peaks. For example, five cups and saucers each brought more than $21,000. Spatterware is considered folk art, and it brings folk art prices. Pook & Pook sold the choice Schaeffer collection for the Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall College, raising more than a million dollars for the museum's endowment fund for the maintenance of the museum's permanent collection and for acquisitions and conservation. Moreover, the museum kept a representative assortment of spatterware and Pennsylvania German folk art, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, and works on paper largely acquired in Lancaster County by Dr. Schaeffer and given to the college in 1987. A resident of Allentown, where he was professor of botany at Muhlenberg College, Dr. Schaeffer wanted his collection to go to its area of origin. He would have been pleased that most of the buyers at the sales were Pennsylvanians. Pook & Pook offered the first portion of Dr. Schaeffer's spatterware (205 lots) in a general sale on February 22 (see M.A.D., May 2003, page 40-D), and then by request from collectors who didn't like waiting until the end of the sale to bid on spatterware, Ronald Pook offered the rest in a specialized sale, along with 27 lots of Gaudy Dutch ceramics, on Saturday, April 26. (Though some complained that it was too much spatterware at one time, the market seemed to absorb it, and there were few bargains.) "Do you want to take a lunch break after two hundred lots?" auctioneer Ron Pook asked the group of about 75 collectors before beginning the sale at 10 a.m. "Yes," they replied, but when the time came and Pook asked whether they were ready for a break, they said, "No, keep going." "We are too excited to break," said a blonde woman on the aisle. After a morning of selling, Pook got relief from his auxiliary auctioneer, Peter Barnet, who has an Australian accent and is from Tasmania, where they have probably never heard of spatterware. Ron Pook returned to the podium after an hour's rest, and the sale continued until after 3 p.m. To the very end, the salesroom was as quiet as a church. Everyone had their catalogs open and answered responsively to the auctioneer's pleadings. There was no milling around, no conversation, and no lunch. When the sale was over, the tally for 417 lots of chinaware came to $788,338 (including buyer's premium). Add to that the $439,300 from the sale of 206 spatterware lots on February 22, and the total for the Schaeffer collection ceramics came to $1,227,638. Thirteen lots in all brought five-figure prices: five in February, and eight in April. Estimates were ignored as passionate collectors fought for what they wanted. "Still no record to top mine," said spatterware collector J. Harlan Miller of Manheim, Pennsylvania, who has been selling his collection at Conestoga Auction Company over the years. "A couple of years ago my fish cup and saucer sold for twenty-five thousand dollars, that is twenty-seven thousand five hundred with the ten-percent buyer's premium, and nothing in this sale or the last one made more." No lot in the April sale topped the $25,875 paid in February for Dr. Schaeffer's five-color rainbow spatter washbowl and pitcher, bought on the phone by Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, dealer J.D. Querry for a client. No cup and saucer topped the $24,150 paid for the yellow, blue, red, and green rainbow swirl pattern cup and saucer that sold to the New Jersey collector in February. At the April sale a Pennsylvania collector paid nearly as much, $23,000, for a vibrant green and black rainbow spatter cup and saucer painted with a red thistle, and the New Jersey collector paid the same amount, $23,000, for a vibrant red, blue, and green rainbow plate with the green star pattern enclosing red half-moons, the design held in balance by a blue inner circle and a blue border. They were the auction's top lots. Three bidders competed for the red spatter cup and saucer decorated with two men on a raft, a very rare pattern, and the New Jersey collector got it at $21,850. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, dealer Eugene Charles paid the same price, $21,850, for an unusual 15 1/2 inches long red, green, and blue rainbow platter decorated in a random crisscross pattern. "I bought it for my brother-in-law," he said. "I warned him it would cost this much." A vibrant red, green, yellow, and blue rainbow drape cup and saucer brought $20,700 from the New Jersey collector, and a collector from Hanover, Pennsylvania, who was strong competition for pieces with striking designs, finally got a splendid four-color spatter plate with a red, yellow, green, and blue drape design for $17,250. A yellow and blue rainbow cup and saucer painted with a thistle drew much competition, and it went at $16,100 to the same Pennsylvania collector who bought the green and black cup and saucer decorated with a thistle; they make a nice pair. The New Jersey collector paid $12,650 for a large five-color rainbow spatter mug, and when he bought the 9 inches tall five-color rainbow spatter pitcher for $8050, it seemed like a bargain. Several crisper rainbow pitchers with neater rainbow stripes have been on the market for a lot more money. When lots of multiple saucers and plates crossed the block, the major competition was between two Pennsylvania dealers, Josh Reeder, bidding for Robesonia dealer Greg Kramer, and Lampeter dealer William Kurau. Kramer bought the lion's share, but Kurau got his share too. There were few bargains. One active phone bidder paid $6325 for a single saucer with a red and purple rainbow border, the center painted with a hipped roof town house. Some thought it was a record for a single spatter saucer. "It was not the rarest piece," said Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, dealer Bill Houckes. "The rarest piece was the green spatter cup with the cow painted on it." Even though the cow cup had a 2 inches triangular chunk out of it on one side and a long crack, it brought $3450. Every lot had a printed condition report, but that didn't seem to influence prices very much. For spatterware collectors, the vibrancy of color and the rarity of design is what counts. "There is so much stuff nobody has seen, that's why there is so much excitement," explained Easton, Pennsylvania, dealer Bea Cohen, a longtime dealer who introduced spatterware to a number of those bidding. "Some pieces may be unique." The collection was also well documented. Each piece had a paper label with the date of purchase, which ranged from the 1940's to the 1980's, and the name of the dealer from whom it was bought. (There were no fish cups and saucers in this sale because they had not come on the market until Wolf's Brenner sale in 1990, after Dr. Schaeffer had died.) Collectors will treasure the illustrated catalogs for the Schaeffer auctions as the record of a landmark event in the antiques marketplace. The April 26 spatterware catalog costs $25 postpaid. For more information, contact Pook & Pook at (610) 269-0695 or (610)
269-4040; Web site (www.pookandpook.com). © 2003 by Maine Antique Digest |
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