Auctions: Pieces from the Byrdcliffe colony

It may not be as familiar a name as Stickley or Roycroft, but the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony in Woodstock, N.Y., was the source of design pieces that still bring solid prices at auction. And, thanks to a local connection, two dozen pieces from Byrdcliffe will be a highlight of Briggs Auction's special antiques and decorative-arts sale next Friday in Garnet Valley.

Byrdcliffe was founded in 1903 by a wealthy Englishman, Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, and his Philadelphia-born wife, Jane Byrd McCall, whom he met while both were undergraduates at Oxford and students of the arts-and-crafts sage John Ruskin. The two married after Whitehead moved to the United States in 1892 and set about establishing a utopian colony, according to Whitehead biographies.

The couple had false starts in Italy, California and Oregon, but the colony at Woodstock prospered for a while. When the colony opened, it had a metalworking shop, a pottery, a woodworking shop, and a studio for art classes.

Byrdcliffe did not last long as an atelier, although it continues to this day as the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and furniture was made there only for a couple of years.

"They never made a whole lot," Briggs president John Turner said this week. But enough has survived in private collections to trickle into auction houses, often selling for five-figure prices.

The pieces to be sold next Friday were originally in the Whitehead home. They were consigned by the Willcox family of Rose Valley, who were related to the Whiteheads, according to Turner.

Among the pieces to be offered at the sale, which will begin at 5 p.m. at the gallery, 1347 Naamans Creek Rd. (Route 491), is an oak chiffonier with hand-painted landscape panels. Turner expects it to bring $15,000 to $20,000.

Other furnishings include a pair of Byrdcliffe trapezoid-form lamp stands, a flat-top writing desk, and a decorated blanket chest made by William Mercer, brother of Henry Chapman Mercer, another arts-and-crafts pioneer and also a cousin of Jane Whitehead's. It, too, is expected to sell for a five-figure price.

The 700-lot sale also features period furniture from two Bryn Mawr estates, including a Queen Anne highboy, a Queen Anne chest-on-frame, and a Philadelphia Chippendale walnut tea table. Turner expects the highboy to sell for $10,000, the chest-on-frame to bring $5,000 to $6,000, and the tea table, which has some restoration, to go for $10,000.

Other items of note include a quantity of silver including a Tiffany bowl, expected to bring $1,500 to $2,000, and a large oil-on-canvas of the sailing ship Charles A. Witler by Otto Muhlenfeld with a presale estimate of $15,000 to $20,000.

One of the auction's more affordable items is also perhaps its most unusual: a folk-art slingshot, its grip in the shape of a woman, that Turner said might sell for $400 to $600. It came from a Delaware collector of primitives, said Turner, who thinks it might be slave art.

Previews will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to sale time next Friday. For more information, call 610-566-3138 or go to

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Timepieces at Pook and Pook.

Clocks and watches will be offered by Pook and Pook Inc. at the first session of its two-day variety sale Thursday and next Friday. The 300 lots to be offered beginning at 5 p.m. include such names as Seth Thomas, Ansonia, Patek, Rolex and Elgin, with "values" (rather than the more formal "presale estimates") ranging from $25 to $50 for a Gilbert painted banjo clock to $12,000 to $18,000 for each of the session's two Tiffany tall case clocks.

Almost all the 1,000-plus lots to be offered in the second session, beginning at 9 a.m. next Friday, have "values" in the two- to three-figure range.

They include such diverse items as a pair of painted cast-iron Hessian soldier andirons ($50 to $100); a 12-piece assortment of yelloware, one of the many lots from the estate of Anne Brossman Sweigart of Ephrata ($100 to $200); a late-19th-century pieced quilt with baskets of flowers ($200 to $300); a Victorian mahogany bookcase ($300 to $400); an oil-on-canvas landscape by Victor Shearer ($100 to $200); a Peter Sculthorpe pencil-signed lithograph ($50 to $100); an Enterprise coffee-grinder lamp ($200 to $300); and a cherry cupboard top from the Sweigart estate ($50 to $100).

Previews are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to sale time next Friday at 463 E. Lancaster Ave. in Downingtown. Information: 610-269-4040 or

» READ MORE: www.pookandpook.com

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