What Is Americana?

BY LITA SOLIS-COHEN

As Americana Week in New York approaches, one might wonder what exactly is Americana. While the question may appear simple, the answer is not. Even the experts don’t agree.

"Traditional Americana collectors don’t go beyond the mid-nineteenth century," says Bill Stahl who headed Americana at Sotheby’s for 30 years. "Others contend if it was made in America it is Americana."

Collectors in the first half of the twentieth century bought Pilgrim century chests and cupboards, medieval-looking great chairs and the furnishings of the founding fathers; nothing later than Regency designs by Duncan Phyfe. These first American antiques were advertised on the pages of The Magazine Antiques, founded in 1922.

Massachusetts block front chest of drawers sold at Northeast Auctions in January 1999 for $96,000 and sold at Northeast Auctions August 2011 for $45,000. Courtesy Northeast Auction.

In 1924 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened the American Wing, with period rooms furnished with what were called historical relics at the 1876 Centennial Exposition; soon, collecting early Americana was fashionable. By 1976, Americana was seen as art by some sophisticated collectors who put it on pedestals and hung it on white walls. Others continued to restore old houses and furnished them authentically. For some, the time-frame for Americana extended into the twentieth century.

A group of seven late nineteenth-century nesting swing-handled Nantucket lightship baskets with the maker’s label inscribed Made by Davis Hall, Nantucket Mass. Estimated to sell for $20,000 to $40,000, they sold at Sotheby’s in October 1995 for $8,050. Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd.

The traditional dateline for Americana is generally accepted as from the time of the Pilgrims to 1900 but it is not firm. Bellamy eagles were carved after 1900, Navajo blankets were woven in the 1920s and Amish quilts stitched on sewing machines in the 1930s. Auction houses sell American furniture and decorations from the seventeenth though the nineteenth centuries in Americana sales that occasionally include Rococo Revival, Modern Gothic, Renaissance Revival and Aesthetic Movement. (The word Victorian has been banned. It does not sell!) At the new wing of Art of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Americana begins with the first furniture, silver and needlework made in New England in the seventeenth century and goes right up to American furniture, pottery, glass and even modernist jewelry of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Audubon’s Common Mouse from John J. Audubon’s Quadrupeds, printed in Philadelphia 1845 to 1848 by J.T. Bowen, is $35,000 from Arader Galleries, showing at the New York Winter Antiques Show. The Mouse is the most expensive—other animals from this Imperial size folio sell for much less. Courtesy Arader Galleries.

Most Americana is handmade but weathervanes, some decoys and late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century furniture and decorations were made by machines in factories. Not all eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americana was made in America: Audubon’s bird prints were engraved in London; China trade porcelain and paintings came from China.

Ron Bourgeault, who has been selling American antiques since 1962 and now owns Northeast Auctions in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, offers a practical explanation of Americana: "It’s a marketing term that came into the lexicon in the 1970s as the bicentennial was approaching and people were feeling patriotic."

Lita Solis-Cohen is senior editor of Maine Antique Digest. She has been an antiques writer for 40 years and is author of Maine Antique Digest: The Americana Chronicles, 30 Years of Stories, Sales Personalities and Scandals, which chronicles the bull market in Americana from 1973 to 2003.

An elm burl effigy bowl used at feasts dates to eighteenth century or earlier, 14 inches long 11 5/8 wide and 5 1/8 high. The large scalloped triangular form at one edge might represent the torso of a spirit or the backside of an underwater panther, and functioned as a handle. Estimated to sell for $40,000 to $80,000. Courtesy Keno Auctions.

This shell-carved and figured mahogany chest of drawers by renowned cabinetmaker John Townsend is a new discovery. Signed and dated in 1756 when Townsend was 23 years old, it was made for Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Arnold on the occasion of his marriage to Mary Oliver and descended through six generations of the female line for 225 years. Estimated to bring $2 million to $3 million. Courtesy Sotheby’s New York.

In the 1970s, Sotheby’s scheduled their "Important Americana" sales to coincide with the New York Winter Antiques Show in order to capture the retail trade. Christie’s joined the fray when it came to America in 1977. More auctions and more shows followed and Americana Week (which is really a fortnight, this year January 15-29) is now an annual conclave when people from all over the country come to New York to shop and sell at six shows and multiple auctions, attend lectures, visit museums and talk about Americana.

This pair of silver standing cups from the First Parrish Church of Dorchester. Massachusetts were made in 1701 by Jeremiah Dummer, the first native-born American silversmith, and paid for by a bequest from Governor William Stoughton, who presided over the Salem Witch trials. They are expected to sell for $500,000. Courtesy Sotheby’s New York.

Americana Week is the bellwether for the season: What sells, who buys and for how much sets the market’s trends. In recent years, with each peak prices at the very top have gone higher, and with each plunge the rest of the market sank lower. For example, a group of late nineteenth-century Nantucket lightship baskets that sold in 1995 for just over $8,000 will be auctioned this year by Sotheby’s with an estimate of three to five times that figure. On the other hand, a Bellamy eagle was sold by Northeast Auction in 2005 for $177,000; recently a similar piece sold for $15,000.

"In October 2008 the music stopped,"says Ron Bourgeault. "We have been trying to get in step ever since. It is a great time to buy." Will the music restart with the appearance on the market of a host of stellar objects at the January auctions and shows and the opening on January 16th of the completed American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Stay tuned!

Most of the premier dealers in Americana exhibit at the New York Winter Antiques Show (this year on January 20 to 29. The show has been a benefit for Eastside House Settlement for the last 58 years.) The dealers offer the best furniture, folk art, silver, paintings, prints, maps, books and autographs they can muster.
Irene Stella has been offering Americana at shows for the last 40 years. At Antiques at the Armory, at the 69th Regiment Armory, 100 dealers offer mostly Americana, including country furniture and folk art and English pottery, porcelain and metalwork, January 20 to 22.
At Stella Show Management’s Americana and Antiques at the Pier, January 21 and 22, 200 dealers offer an even broader range, of American and European antiques, twentieth century design, folk art, fine art, Outsider Art and collectible books.
Along with a focus on American folk art, the new Metro Show NYC, January 19 to 22 will have more twentieth century art and

design and more dealers in tribal art, Native American, Oceanic, pre-Columbian, as well as Asian and ancient art than the other shows.
New York Ceramics Fair, January 17 to 21, presents a group of some 30 international dealers in pottery, porcelain and glass. The Outsider Art Fair, January 26 to 29 winds up the fortnight of Americana shows and sales. Show manager Sanford Smith has gathered more than 40 dealers in art by self-taught, intuitive and visionary artists active from the middle of the twentieth century to today.
Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Bonhams, Keno and Copley all hold Americana sales in January in New York.
Check Maine Antiques Digest’s website for the dates, times and venues of all events.