Meet the Experts: Cara Elmslie, Director of Discovery Auctions

Mixing Casual Country with More Formal Styles to Create Your Own Aesthetic

Cara Elmslie, Director of Discovery Auctions

Experts work behind the scenes every day at Skinner to put together auctions full of unique, important, and beautiful fine art and antiques. Cara Elmslie joined Skinner in 2011 as head of the Discovery department, where she handles over a thousand lots of material every single month. This week the Discovery auction is featuring Country Americana and Jewelry, two of our most popular offerings.

What excites you most about the March Discovery Auction?

What I really love about this sale is the huge variety of beautiful things: from the painted pine furniture to the more formal Chippendale and Queen Anne-style pieces.

In setting up the preview, I had a good time selecting objects and arranging them in a way that really shows you don’t need to have just one single style in your home. You can choose your favorite pieces and mix them up to create your own aesthetic. Country and formal styles can and do go together.

What attracts people to Discovery auctions?

People love a treasure hunt, and that’s what you get when you come to a Skinner Discovery auction. Country Americana is highlighted in our monthly Discovery auction three times each year, and we had such a variety of great inventory waiting for this sale. Both Country Americana and Jewelry are very popular collecting areas in New England, and it’s exciting to have them both featured in a Discovery sale in the same month.

We have over 1,600 lots in this week’s sale. With such a huge stock of art and antiques to browse through, there’s definitely going to be something for everyone. I overheard one woman who was browsing the preview say, “Oh look—these are the dishes we grew up with!”

Discovery Auction | Estate of Susan Parrish | Federal Pine Dressing Table

Decorated Federal Pine Dressing Table from the Estate of Susan Parrish

Tell us a little more about the Country Americana offered in Discovery auctions.

The Country Americana style is very much a part of New England culture. This month, we’re offering more than 100 lots from the estate of Susan Parrish, a very well-respected collector and dealer in American antique furniture and textiles.

People travel here from all over the country to find good values. Obviously the New England style is more prevalent here but it is still popular elsewhere. One dealer we spoke with recently moved from Arizona, where he said the painted furniture, the “shabby-chic” look, is popular with the younger generation eager to reduce their carbon footprint by buying recycled furniture.

However, in the midwest and southwest, Country Americana is harder to come by. At Skinner, we find authentic, local antiques made in New Hampshire, Massachusetts or other parts of New England every day. If it isn’t a period piece, it’s a well-crafted, handmade reproduction in a similar style.

Discovery auction | Wool Indian Trade Blankets

Wool Indian trade blankets from the Estate of Susan Parrish

What are your favorite lots in the auction?

I have many! To start, I love the textiles from the Susan Parrish Estate, especially the wool Indian trade blankets, and the hand-stitched quilts amaze me. A beautiful example is lot 1208, an Amish piece with a subtle, hand-stitched motif. The elaborate stitching combined with simple fabric piecing and subdued color choices really epitomizes the aesthetic of the sale.

White-painted Glazed Iron Rolling Greenhouse

Several pieces of furniture demonstrate this aesthetic quite beautifully. Lot 1113, a Federal pine dressing table also from the Parrish Estate, is a feminine vanity that mixes a painted country style with graceful details. I love the simple, elegant style of Lot 1072, a pine tavern table. The table is almost modern in the way the legs taper, yet the piece clearly has age and history. On the more formal side, lot 522 is a Queen Anne cherry drop-leaf table, and I love the subtlety of the pad feet.

Then there are the unusual, wonderful things you’d have trouble finding again, like lot 886, a small rolling terrarium. You could park it in your yard or on your patio, and I’m sure it would function just like a larger greenhouse. I would love to own it.

If you can’t make it out to Marlborough, Massachusetts for the auction, you can browse the preview from home on our Facebook page, or visit the online auction catalogue to preview and bid.

A Week in the Life of an Antiques Appraiser: My Top 5 Finds

K'ang-hsi Period Cloisonne Bottle-Form Vase, China, 1662-1722, Estimate $10,000-15,000

Have you ever watched Antiques Roadshow on PBS? As a senior art and antiques appraiser at Skinner, many of my days are a lot like the reality TV show.

I spend considerable time meeting with prospective consignors at our Marlborough and Boston auction galleries and viewing the antiques, collectibles & fine art brought in for an auction evaluation.

I’m always surprised by what I see. Items run the gamut, spanning centuries, continents and values. The stories behind these antiques are often fascinating.

Over the past few weeks, many interesting items have come through our doors. Here are five of my favorites that I’ve taken in on consignment.

Keep an eye out for these antiques in future Skinner auctions:

1. K’ang-hsi Period Cloisonné Bottle-Form Vase, China, 1662-1722

The fluidity of the floral pattern and elegant form made this piece stand out from the Bohemian glass, Limoges china and other items on the viewing table. Purchased at auction in New York in 1911, this vase will be featured in our April Asian Works of Art auction after 100 years off the market. Auction estimate: $10,000-15,000.

2. Norse-revival Silver Covered Presentation Cup & Cover, by the Norwegian silversmith Henrik Moller

Combining the Arts & Crafts styling of the period with scenes from the Viking Sagas, mythical beasts and dense interlaced stylized foliage, this cup has a fantastical look that would fit any décor from Arts & Crafts to Goth. Auction estimate: $4,000-6,000.

3. Miniature Portrait on Ivory of a Gentleman

The profile is dashing in a Darcy-like way, and a curious note accompanying the piece mentions a Margaret Churchill, duchess of Marlborough, and H. Francis Blagge whose initials are engraved on the reverse of the token. Auction estimate: $400-600.

4. Pair of Minton Pate-sur-Pate and parcel-gilt decorated cabinet plates

Signed by the artist Albion Birks, and painted in the slip technique imported from France in the late 19^th century, the plates are elegant with scenes of Cupid and gilded foliage. Minton saw great success with this line of wares at the turn of the 20^th century. Auction estimate: $1,000-1,500.

5. Art Deco Fada Radio

From the model line L-56 first introduced in 1939 and made of Catalin, a brand-name resin similar to, but not identical to Bakelite, the radio’s yellow color isn’t as rare as those incorporating multi-color combinations but it should appeal to both art deco collectors and radio enthusiasts alike. Auction estimate: $300-500.

Discovery Auctions in Massachusetts: Infographics, Word Clouds, and Maps

What does a Skinner Discovery Auction look like?

If you told me to visualize a Skinner Discovery auction, I’d think about our preview room full of antique furniture, ceramics, paintings, rugs, collectibles, and more. Then I’d see myself up at the podium at the monthly antiques auction, selling this variety of objects to bidders in the room, on the phone, and online. I definitely wouldn’t usually think of words, or maps, as a way to visualize the antiques auction process.

However, it takes a lot more than a room full of interesting antique finds to make an auction. Lots of work goes into each sale, and each auction generates a great deal of data, including the consignor and bidder information, auction estimates, prices realized, keywords, tags, and other metadata used to create our virtual thumbprint on the web, as well as advertisements and press releases. It’s a lot of information and a lot of work to make sense out of it.

Art & Infographics

One way of understanding data is through visual representations of information, or infographics. While the concept of rendering information in graphical form is as old as cave paintings, the development of science and statistics hastened the development of this means of communication. In the 19^th century, Minard created his now famous graphic depicting Napolean’s disastrous march on Moscow. It was quite a breakthrough in its time.

For a more modern infographic relating to the art world, see this striking representation from 2010 of the 10 most expensive pieces of art ever sold, scaled by the physical size of each piece of art. Alberto Giacometti’s six foot tall sculpture Walking Man I comes in at #1 with a price of $104.3 million.

Infographics can make a pile of raw data easier to understand. Edward Tufte’s modern classic The Visual Display of Quantitative Information provides an outstanding treatment of the topic.

A World of Data

These days, there are many Web based tools to facilitate graphical data analysis. Here at Skinner, I’m particularly struck by this map view of the June 2011 Discovery auction showing the distribution of a portion of online bidders globally:

The ease and accessibility of of internet bidding has made it possible for auctions in Massachusetts to draw bidders worldwide (even in Moscow!). This view of just some of our participants shows how globalized the antiques auction world has become.

Find out more about online bidding with SkinnerLive!

The Market for Victoriana: A Variety of Affordable Antiques

Discovery auctions at Skinner are eclectic. Among the antique furniture, estate jewelry, silver, and collectibles, you’ll always find a wide a variety of Victoriana: materials produced during the Victorian period (1837-1901) that reflect the design ethos of the time.

Aesthetic Movement Cherry Étagère, attributed to Merklen Bros., auctioned for $1,103

This time period in America was one of great technological advancement and social change. The economy shifted away from land ownership and farms toward trade and manufacturing. Workers flocked to cities, where factories utilized techniques such as steam bending, lathe-turning, electroplating, and band sawing to churn out a seemingly endless variety of goods. Molded chair frames, barley-twist spindles, elaborate silver plated wares and intricate fret-carved woodwork all became available to the rising middle class at an affordable cost.

One of the styles of Victoriana that I enjoy the most is the Aesthetic movement, which began in the late 1860s as an intellectual rally against the industrial revolution. Designers looked to exotic and historical sources for inspiration, and Japanese art especially had a strong influence. The movement gained popularity at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, which displayed art objects from a variety of countries and periods.

By the 1880s in America, the Aesthetic movement had become an opportunity for manufacturers to employ naturalistic and often Japanese-inspired motifs economically through manufacturing techniques. Designs were stylized, cast, molded or often chip-carved, providing lots of detail to admire without much labor cost. The result was a variety of items, from étagères to pickle casters.

These examples of Victoriana were popular in the September 2011 Discovery auction in Massachusetts.

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Category Archives: Discovery