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Surface Attraction

by Lita Solis-Cohen

"Paint-Decorated Furniture: Collectors and Dealers Talk It Over" was the second annual, soldout symposium at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City on Saturday, November 12, 2005.

The symposia are the brainchild of collector David Krashes, a mover and shaker in the American Folk Art Society. Krashes was involved in picking the speakers, providing the wine and cheese for a reception afterward, and getting the American Folk Art Society to help sponsor it. He has written for Folk Art magazine on New England paint-decorated chests made by Nehemiah Randall of Belcherstown, Massachusetts, a previously unknown talent of the early 19th century.

The dealers and collectors attending got a chance to look carefully at the current exhibition, Surface Attraction: Painted Furniture from the Collection of the American Folk Art Museum. Curator Stacy C. Hollander has hung the furniture on the wall at eye level like paintings so viewers will see the painted decoration as art. Don't miss it. The examples are varied and iconic, a good measure of excellence. It's the place to train your eye. The exhibition remains until March 26.

The symposium added to the aesthetic enjoyment because ornamental painter Rubens Teles demonstrated how he uses his hands, sponges, rags, bags, combs, and feathers to make the designs we recognize as fans, graining, marbling, and sponging. Using a mix of vinegar and latex paint and sometimes shoe polish, he mesmerized his audience. He showed how the vinegar glaze is a forgiving medium that can be wiped off until it is made permanent with a polyurethane glaze.

Teles went to work with Venetian red and burnt umber, combining it with honey, molasses, and Karo syrup. He mostly used the tools of a 19th-century decorator: combs of leather and bone, natural bristle brushes, feathers for marbleizing, and, taking the place of 19th-century oilcloth, plastic bags. He used putty and linseed oil to create a separation surface, and when he made a mistake, he just sprayed on vinegar to erase it. He used green and yellow ochre for a two-color pattern. (Many know Teles from his previous life as the director of Jay Johnson's gallery on Madison Avenue in New York City. Now he does faux painting with his partner Jim Adams.)

With the mystery of the art of faux painting exposed, collectors, dealers, and museum people settled down to more academic matters. They heard lectures and looked at an array of slides to remind them of the regional variations and various categories of painted furniture.

Dean Van Dusen, a collector from Maine, said he has been interested in antiques since he was 14 and babysat for a family with connections to the Fruitlands Museum in Massachusetts, founded by Clara Endicott Sears. Now he is hooked on Maine painted furniture. He discussed sophisticated urban forms from Portland, Maine, and simpler, plainer painted furniture from the central and west central Kennebec and Androscoggin River basins as well as more spontaneous, bold designs and smoke-grained furniture and distinctive grained furniture with green, red, and yellow striping made in South Paris, Maine. He identified some shops, talked about stenciled decoration, and made a good case for specializing in a regional style.

South Egremont, Massachusetts, dealer Elliott Snyder did not care where the furniture was made, or who made it; he found the art in painted furniture. With slides, he demonstrated how quality painting improves the form and makes it more unified and dynamic.

Stacy Hollander, senior curator at the American Folk Art Museum, spoke about the four collectors who built the museum's permanent collection of painted furniture: Jean and Howard Lipman, Cyril Nelson, Ralph Esmerian, and the Historical Society of Early American Decoration. Among her thought-provoking remarks she suggested that blue-green has darkened to black on some pieces and that on Mahantongo chests, Prussian blue with six generations of yellowed varnish has turned to green. She noted that Pennsylvania Germans commuting with produce to the port in Philadelphia brought back new materials, such as chrome yellow as soon as it was available in the 1830's, and decorators of chests and boxes bought it.

The remarks of the presenters did not fall on deaf ears. "It would take me a lifetime to learn what they told me this morning, and they told it with such passion. I could not learn this by reading," said Peter Kugit, a New Jersey collector, at the lunch break. He said he was a beginner. "I have been collecting for just ten years. I had to wait until the kids were grown."

After lunch, we took a look at Surface Attraction and the two other shows at the museum, Obsessive Drawing and the ongoing Folk Art Revealed that explores the depth and diversity of the museum's permanent collection. Then the symposium continued with dealer Sumpter Priddy III talking about painted furniture of the South, much of it plain, painted architectural work. He touched on the Baltimore fancy painters, the Findlay brothers, and on George Bridport, who worked in Richmond and elsewhere. He also talked about the painted furniture tradition in the Shenandoah Valley and the German tradition in Wythe County, Virginia, and in Tennessee.

Master painter Peter Deen of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who has probably cleaned and painted and repainted more chests, boxes, and Windsor chairs than any other modern craftsman, posed the question "to clean or not to clean?" He showed before-and-after slides. He admitted that cleaning is a big step because it does alter the surface and it is not reversible. He uses solvents to do it.

How much grease and dirt should be removed from painted furniture? "I would love to see it cleaned is said as often as I would hate to see it cleaned," Deen admitted. When he sat down, many muttered that it seems that the current crop of dealers who take their painted furniture to Peter Deen are doing to paint decoration what the dealers in the 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's did to formal furniture-making it look like it looked when it was new. It seemed apparent that the grunge school of painted furniture is not in fashion now.

(Perhaps the Winterthur Furniture Forum 2006, "What Is Original? Understanding Surfaces of American Furniture Then and Now," March 2 and 3, will clarify the questions to ask when treating furniture and make the point that each piece poses its own questions and demands its own answers. One day of this forum will be devoted to formal furniture and one day to the painted surface.)

Charles Hummel, curator emeritus and adjunct professor at Winterthur, spoke about Pennsylvania German painted furniture and shocked everyone when he announced the gift to Winterthur by Helaine and Burton Fendelman of the large, painted Kutztown, Pennsylvania, schrank, ex-Fred Wichmann collection, that did not sell at the Fendelmans' October 1993 sale at Sotheby's (M.A.D., December 1993, p. 13-A) because potential buyers did not like its surface—"a varnish that gave it a plastic look which when removed apparently improved it immensely."

Cynthia Schaffner clearly and thoroughly presented a scholarly talk on landscape chairs. She demonstrated that some first-rate landscape painters decorated the crest rails of fancy chairs: Francis Guy worked for John and Hugh Findlay in Baltimore in 1805; Thomas Hill worked for Heyward Brothers in Gardner, Massachusetts; Thomas Cole may have decorated a set for the Van Rensselaers. The Salem tastemakers, the Crowninshields, owned a set of landscape chairs. Books of topographical views served as sources for the decorators.

The panel discussion on "Building an American Collection" was led by California collector Jeffrey Pressman, president of the American Folk Art Society. Joan Johnson, collector, Samuel Herrup, dealer, and Ronald Bourgeault, auctioneer, participated. Joan Johnson said, "Read every book; go to every show; and touch and feel what you can. Instead of adding to your collection, trade up," she advised. She showed slides to demonstrate how she bought a chest at The American Antiques Show in January 2005 after collectors, to whom she had recommended it, turned it down. Then she sold one of her own chests she did not like as well. "Almost nothing in my house is the one I started with," she said.

Samuel Herrup said dealers are an unusual fraternity of compulsive buyers. "We love what we buy, so we tend to be collectors, and although we earn our living by selling, we do not buy only what we know we can sell. We make personal aesthetic decisions. Over time, we bond with collectors and can call them up and say, I have something I know you will like. It's a nice occupation!"

Ronald Bourgeault, known as the fastest gun in the business, sells 100 to 110 lots an hour at Northeast Auctions. He said he gives the advantage to those who make the effort to come to his sales over phone bidders and absent bidders. He is proud that he can sell a woven coverlet for $375 and a Bellamy eagle for $685,000 in the same sale.

On the anniversary of his 50th year in the business, Bourgeault insists passion is what it is all about. He noted that second-tier material is much less expensive now than it was 20 years ago. "I never knew a collector who collected for investment who made money," said Bourgeault. "Collect what you can afford-carefully," he advised. "Stay focused, let love be your guide, and do your homework. Know what the last one sold for and put a limit on what you will spend, but remember the pieces that sell for ridiculous prices are often the ones that are still the most valuable."