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| Passion Investments: Collectibles |
American Minimalism
Debra Ryono
12/01/2007
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Occasionally, an item from the Blacker House appears at auction
and commands record-setting prices. When an armchair from the home was auctioned
at Sotheby’s last June, collector Bruce Barnes paid $913,000 for it, and
considered it a very good buy. A bedroom chair from the estate sold for $396,000
at the same auction.
Heart’s Desire
Lytwyn and Carbo, enthralled by the lines of Arts and Crafts,
began a collection that has evolved over the years as they sold some pieces to
acquire better ones. They bought their Short Hills, N.J., home in part because
it had walls large enough to display the items they have obtained during the
past three decades.
 | A FREDERICK Rhead vase garnered $516,000 last March. (Photograph by Rago Arts.) |
Lytwyn’s favorite item is a two-piece Stickley sideboard made
in 1901—the only one known to exist. The top and bottom of the sideboard had
been separated at some point, and Lytwyn and Corbo bought the top half. "We knew
it was one-half of a piece of furniture, but bought it anyway. People were
teasing us," Lytwyn says. "We put it on the floor and displayed pottery on it
for years." When a dealer came across the bottom of the sideboard, he tried to
buy the top from the couple. They refused to sell their section, and after
haggling back and forth, Lytwyn and Corbo ended up purchasing the bottom piece.
The couple has since lent the sideboard to Craftsman Farms, Stickley’s home and
museum in Parsippany-Troy Hills Township, N.J.
The rarity of these specially designed items elevates prices.
"There are some seminal commissions," says Jeni Sandberg of Christie’s
20th-century decorative arts department. "Chairs from the Blacker House were a
big Greene and Greene commission. Some names are golden, and if you can collect
them, you get golden money for them." On the other hand, she points out,
average furniture, even from a well-known artisan such as Stickley, can be hard
to move, especially if it has been refinished. "Condition is key with Arts and
Crafts," she says. "It’s very much akin to early American furniture. Original
finish is mandatory."
In fact, many pieces from the movement sell for unimpressive
figures. A child’s dresser by Stickley sold for only $2,400 at a Bonhams &
Butterfields auction in late September.
Randell Makinson, the curator of the Gamble House for 26 years
before his retirement, says part of the lack of interest lies in the name of the
style. "You have to define Arts and Crafts," he explains. "To many, it sounds
like a hobby shop—basket-weaving and that type of thing." He notes another
problem: As the style became popular, the market was flooded with shoddy
imitations, and those still appear today. "Sometimes people began to bastardize
the Arts and Crafts movement by thinking they could outdo someone like Louis
Tiffany or the Tiffany lamp," he says.
However, important pieces do appreciate. A chair by Charles
Rohlfs, another luminary of the movement, went for $96,000 at Sotheby’s in
November 2006, more than triple the low estimate of $30,000. In a sale last June
at Bonhams & Butterfields, a Rohlfs fall-front desk went for $96,000; the
high estimate was $70,000.
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