Irrational Exuberance or Turning Point in the Business? The Cave Sale Skyrockets

by David Hewett

Once Friday, August 4 rolled around, it didn't take a genius to predict that the Northeast Auctions sale of the Americana and folk art collection of Virginia Ramsey-Pope Cave was going to be a smashing success. The Northeast crew had barely finished mounting the collection within the brick walls of the armory at the Center of New Hampshire Holiday Inn in Manchester when the early previewers descended on the place.

It was a phenomenal turnout. "We sometimes only get fifty or fewer people who come on Friday," Northeast veteran Bob Croall said. "The regular preview is on Saturday, and that's when the crowds show up, but this is just plain amazing. Everybody wants a seat; we're going to be overwhelmed."

He was right. When the actual sale began at 3 p.m. on August 5, there were over 500 people in the armory. Extra seats had to be fitted into narrowed aisles, and it still wasn't enough. The standees filled the sides and lined the back walls.

What was the appeal of the Virginia Ramsey-Pope Cave collection? Was it the quality of the collection, the coincidence of demand and supply, the timing, the connection with the Museum of American Folk Art in New York, or something else? The answer is that it was all of the above.

Virginia Ramsey-Pope Cave amassed a fantastic collection of folk art and Americana. She collects with passion, she has a great eye for color and form, and she could afford to indulge her passion, although she professes otherwise.

"The thing about folk art for me is its great emotional appeal," Cave said before the sale. "I never could afford to collect the great folk art paintings, the Ammi Phillipses and John Brewsters, but I could afford the greatest rugs and boards, and that's what I bought.

"I live in New York City now, and I walk past the galleries where great pieces of modern art hang, Jackson Pollock and others, but none of it sings to me. The pieces I collected sang to me."

Cave pursued her chosen objects with determination. Another passionate collector/dealer, Milly McGehee, spoke about one piece that Cave successfully wooed away from her. "I spotted a great early sewn rug at the Philadelphia show that Don Walters had brought," McGehee said. "He'd got it at the New Hampshire dealers show and had put it away for Philadelphia. It was just great, and I knew I had to have it from the first second I saw it. I was going down the aisle with it when Virginia ran after me. She asked if it was for sale, and I told her I'd have to think about it. She then asked for right of first refusal."

Virginia Cave remembered the incident well. "Oh God, yes," she said. "I sweated bullets for the next forty-five minutes until Milly decided to sell it to me."

Virginia Cave dealt from her home in Vermont for many years, beginning in the early 1970's, and she collected during all of her dealing years. She has been an active participant in the folk art scene almost up to the present. So why sell now?

"I've sold the Vermont house. My children are too young to inherit [the collection], I didn't want to put it into storage, and I don't want to give it away. When Ron saw it, he said, `I want it all for a one-owner sale,' and I agreed.

"Ron Bourgeault said he wanted it all, and he wasn't kidding. He said, `No skimming, it all has to go,' and we ended up agreeing that I could keep four pieces, pieces with personal attachments, that was all. As far as my children went, Ron said they each could bid on one piece, but one piece only."

Selling the collection would also help one of Cave's favorite projects, the new library at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City. Virginia Cave pledged 10of the proceeds of the sale to that institution. (Ron Bourgeault also generously supported the museum. Two days after the sale he announced he'd donated $30,000 from the sale of catalogs to the library fund.)

One consideration mentioned in the days before the sale was that of freshness to the market. Could the auction of a collection assembled by someone who not only was still living (it's an auction axiom that only the collections of deceased collectors do well) but who had bought some of the pieces in the collection as late as only two years ago be successful?

The answer was proven by the $2.45 million gross, a figure raised by purchases made from a wide spectrum of collectors and dealers. Many of the trustees of the Museum of American Folk Art were present, as were collectors from across America.

The veteran dealers present were amazed at the strength of the sale. "I think this is a turning point in the business," Barbara Pollack said. "When folk art can bring this kind of money in New England, it proves you don't have to be dead, and you don't have to sell it in New York to have a successful sale."

Dealers bought heavily here, but in many cases their purchases were for client collectors. Auctioneer Willis Henry, with a cell phone clamped to one ear, was a force during the early part of the sale. Henry took several game boards, including the first lot offered, a painted Parcheesi board with drawer, for $36,800 (includes buyer's premium).

Milly McGehee took several lots for clients, including another of the better Parcheesi boards for $20,700. Barbara Pollack bought a superb shirred chenille rug with a basket of flowers at the center of concentric circles for $25,300. "I've always loved that rug," Pollack said. "To me, it's a painting."

The big-bucks lots were led by a Pennsylvania fireboard painting on three panels that featured a house and landscape with trees. Pennsylvania overmantels and fireboards are rare. (Although Northeast cataloged the piece as an overmantel, dealer David Schorsch, who had owned it previously, said it was definitely a fireboard.) Only three are known. This example, which carried a $40,000/60,000 estimate, sold to a phone bidder for $255,500.

A great green-painted Windsor side chair from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which had brought $32,200 at the Christie's sale of the Scott collection in 1994, went to a telephone bidder here at $96,000. A rare pair of miniature painted whirligigs, featuring male and female figures, ex-Ben Mildwoff and Barry Cohen collections, sold to David Schorsch, bidding by phone, for $90,500.

Some had predicted failure for lot 157, a rare 17 inches high J.W. Fiske copper weathervane of the Goddess of Liberty, for which the rumor mill said Cave had paid between $100,000 and $125,000. The naysayers said she'd be lucky to get half her investment back. They were dead wrong; it sold to a left bid of $145,500. And, to make up for the short profit spread on the weathervane, the very next lot, a Boston Federal giltwood mirror that also featured Lady Liberty, this time on an églomisé panel, soared to $33,350. Virginia Cave paid $4125 for it at a Northeast Auctions sale in August 1992.

Some thought that 47 game boards and an equal number of hooked rugs might be a tad too many for one auction to swallow. They were wrong too.

There is one point about the Cave sale worth considering. Its greatest appeal may have come from the fact that it was a collection. It was shown at preview displayed as a collection, with stuffed animals stacked on cabinet shelves, rabbit motif rugs mounted on panels that held five to eight other rabbit rugs, a Parcheesi game board hanging with four other Parcheesi game boards. The pieces sold individually, for the most part.

The value of a collection sometimes lies in its integration, the whole assemblage gains a personality and becomes a valued work of art in its own right. That's what Virginia Ramsey-Pope Cave created in Dorset, Vermont; that's what Ron Bourgeault re-created in the catalog and at Manchester, New Hampshire.

The Cave collection sale gave new collectors an opportunity to pick from the top in the search for material for their collections. It'll take time and huge amounts of money to equal the Cave collection, but it can be done.

For more information, contact Northeast Auctions at (603) 433-8400.