The Patient Collector - The Magazine Antiques

With modest means and fifty-five years of persistence, a Maine state employee built a remarkable collection—and a legacy— one or two objects at a time.

This detail shows the fine freehand-painted decoration on a two-piece Sheraton dressing table from the Portsmouth, New Hampshire area, c. 1840. On it are several late nineteenth-century make-do pin cushions, while above, the Massachusetts portraits by William W. Kennedy (1818–c. 1870), c. 1845, in a paint-decorated frame, were once in the collection of early folk-art collector and dealer Mary Allis (1899-1987).

Nestled within a historic village in Midcoast Maine stands a small eighteenth-century subsistence farmhouse containing a collection that is as remarkable and historically poignant as the house itself: a stunning assemblage of pre-industrial New England folk art. The collection, carefully and lovingly assembled during a fifty-five-year period by a state employee, contains a wide range of artwork, furniture, and objects of daily life, the vast majority having a \ Maine provenance. The quintessential two-story New England clapboard house was built in 1783 by William Tarr II, whose father had moved to Maine from Rockport, Massachusetts, in search of more land and opportunity. The home, along with the connected Greek revival style carriage house and side porch, is a rare pristine example of this house form. Collecting was in the blood of the home’s owner from an early age. Reptiles and amphibians, seashells and stamps dominated his interests until middle school when he was awakened to antiques. In 1971 a family living in a Georgian colonial home down the road was looking for someone to look after their children.

Hired to babysit, he vividly remembers stepping into the house and being transported to a different time and place where a rural, pre-industrial, subsistence life dominated. The rooms were beautifully arranged with eighteenth-century country arts that included all categories of New England material culture. Elegant, handwoven Turkey red carpets supported patinated furniture dressed with period accessories. All this was foregrounded by colorful portraits and family records.

He was captivated.

When the owners returned home on that first night, he talked with them at length about the decor. In the coming weeks and months, he became close with the mother, who took him under her wing, ushering him to his first auction preview. Here, his fascination with Maine folk art only grew, as he fell under the spell of the energy in the auction house. The place was crowded, and people were furiously examining the items. Case pieces were laid on the floor with drawers removed. Patrons with flashlights inspected every square inch of them. Paintings were aglow with black lights, being taken off the walls and their versos inspected. The whole scene was a bit chaotic, but he didn’t mind because he realized—these were his people.

The thirty-drawer, two-piece apothecary cupboard of c. 1800 is from either Maine or New Hampshire. It boasts a collection of British mocha ware, reflecting, in part, that many mocha shards were found during the collector’s restoration of the house. Next to the cupboard is a stack of paint-decorated Penobscot Nation baskets made between 1840 and 1860.

Centered between the windows in the east bedroom is a paint-decorated dressing table, c. 1845, signed by John Williams (1801– 1888) of Mount Vernon, Maine, with threaded Sandwich Glass pulls. Beneath is a freehand- decorated dome-top box from Worcester County, Mas- sachusetts, c. 1840, and above hangs a c. 1845 watercolor memorial. Flank- ing the dressing table are arrow-back Windsor chairs, c. 1830, bearing a label reading “A. G. Wright, New Haven Junct. Vt.” The paint-decorated and stenciled window valances, c. 1850, were made at the Hitchcock Chair Factory in Riverton, Connecticut.

He mowed lawns, and designed and planted gardens, to make some extra cash, and with his savings he began his own collection, purchasing objects that spoke to him, regardless of quality. And he stayed engaged with the auction scene, learning from dealers who, despite his young age, encouraged his interest and taught him what they knew. He was introduced to former Winterthur Museum director Charles Montgomery’s “fourteen points of connoisseurship,” a step-by-step process for educating the eye, appraising quality, and authenticating a piece. Armed with this knowhow, his collection grew. He bought and sold antiques for a short period, then went on to college and earned a full-time job as a landscape architect with the state.

The house features a large open hearth that contains period ironware and cooking utensils. An eighteenth-century blanket crane used for drying laundry and providing draft protection while bathing hangs above from mortised wooden brackets. Period homespuns hang on shoe-footed racks below the Heart and Hand Artist family record serendipitously acquired by the collector.

He accumulated objects piecemeal, but scrupulously, throughout his career, exploring all the pre-industrial periods and finding himself drawn to material made during the first half of the nineteenth century. Objects from that period were widely available, even unaltered examples with original, vibrant grain-painted surfaces that were affordable. As a Maine native with a deep affection for the state, he decided to dedicate his collecting primarily to Maine-made objects. He saved and studied many issues of The Magazine ANTIQUES, bookmarking “Living with
Antiques” articles on the folk art collections of Edna Greenwood, Henry Davis Sleeper, Mary Allis, Stewart Gregory, Hilary Underwood, Jean and Howard Lipman, and Nina and Bertram Little, who to this day continue to serve as his muses.

The portrait of a young woman from York County, Maine, wearing a fashionable white crepe toque, in a corner of the kitchen was painted by John Brewster Jr. (1766–1854), who inscribed on the stretcher “John Brewster, Jr. pinxt May 20, 1814, Age 32.” On the open shelving at the right is a collection of eighteenth and early nineteenth-century woodenware inspired by a photograph in Russell Hawes Kettell’s The Pine Furniture of Early New England (1929), showing the keeping room in a seventeenth-century West Gloucester, Massachusetts, house then owned by sculptor Albert Atkins (1880–1951).

Building the collection was slow given financial limitations, but he was committed to purchasing two exceptional pieces a year. His strategic planning for what to collect was built around scaled floor plans he had drawn up for his dream house—a late eighteenth-century center-chimney Cape somewhere in Maine. Surface, condition, and originality were paramount. Finishes had to be strong and vibrant, ideally with outstanding and unusual early-to-mid-nineteenth-century painted decoration.

Form, he quickly learned, characterized a decorative object more than any other attribute, and he always gravitated to one-of-a-kind quirkiness. Scale was also critical as the piece had to fit his floor plan, where proportion ruled within small rooms. Provenance was always of interest, but he considered it supporting rather than primary data for evaluation. Any new addition to the collection had to fill a void. At the beginning of his quest for fresh, good material, he spent countless hours at small, local auctions in search of “sleepers.” Sometimes this paid off, especially early on, but in time the trade and other collectors joined his bandwagon, and competition became tough.

As the treasure hunt grew more competitive, each acquisition grew in personal significance. One prize came to him at a Thursday night auction in central Maine. It was a typical general merchandise sale with housewares, some Victorian furniture, and lots of bric-a-brac. During the preview, he noticed some shorebird decoys among the heaps. Most were crudely made and not of interest, but two caught his eye—a feeding yellowlegs and a golden plover. Both were in remarkable original condition and probably made by the famed Lothrop Holmes (1821–1899) of Kingston, Massachusetts. The collector patiently waited a few hours until the decoys came up. While other decoys in the sale brought between $50 and $100 a piece, he handed over $700 for the feeding yellowlegs and $500 for the golden plover.

Above the parlor fireplace hangs a marine portrait inscribed “The Laura Ann of Boston,” the name of a 375-ton ship built in Pembroke, Massachusetts, in 1815 by Caleb Turner (b. 1746). She was pirated off Havana, Cuba, in 1824, then burned, and the entire crew murdered save one. Found near Boston, the work was probably painted soon after the ship was launched. Flanking the mantel are a c. 1820 easy chair from Salem, Massachusetts, and a c. 1840 decorated rocker from Paris Hill, Maine. The floor covering is a New England cotton rag rug, c. 1860.

While waiting to pay his hefty bill, an attendee approached him and said, “boy, you really had to pay for those birds, I hope you can make some money on them!” Little did the attendee know that similar birds by the same maker were selling elsewhere in the mid-five figures. Other pieces came in roundabout ways, as if through fate. He had long admired the work of Samuel Lawhead, also known as the Heart and Hand artist, of note among collectors of illustrated manuscripts. He had seen one of Lawhead’s works from Carthage, Maine, at a group shop in Massachusetts earlier in his collecting career but couldn’t afford to purchase it.

The Tarr-Eaton House in Midcoast Maine was built c. 1783 and expanded with the addition of a Greek revival carriage house of c. 1845 and side porch. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Eighteen years later, it came up at auction, and he was ready to acquire it, no matter the price. He scheduled a phone bid and successfully purchased the lot. But when he went to pick it up, the auction house staff presented him with a painted dressing table. The manager had mistakenly had him bid on the wrong lot. The collector was devastated. But this would not be the end of his quest to acquire the piece. By surprise, during an economic downturn, the same manuscript reappeared at auction, and he was able to purchase it at a fraction of the cost it had sold for previously. Lesson learned: “good things come to those who wait.”

The two-drawer blanket chest, c. 1845, with over-paint in ivory with black daubing, was found in Skowhegan, Maine; other examples from this area have similar decoration. Above hangs a watercolor theorem on velvet by Hannah Day (1812–1896) of Springfield, Massachusetts, c. 1828, flanked by miniature watercolor portraits of Lucy and Oliver Hazard Perry attributed to Daniel Evans of the Hallowell- Augusta, Maine, area, c. 1825.

Over the years, the collector has gone through many phases. Furniture dominated for about a decade. This
was followed by textiles, specifically colorful hooked and sewn rugs, American-made Venetian stripe car-
pets, and rag rugs. There was a period of collecting treenware, which are small, functional wooden ob-
jects. He dabbled in New England redware and British mocha ware; then decorated boxes in a wide variety
of painting styles; folk carvings including decoys, maritime subjects, and trade figures; Maine and New England folk portraits and landscapes, needlework, and family records.

Finally, in 1999, after restoring a couple of lesser period structures, he purchased his dream house—a 1783 Cape-style farmhouse that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Thanks to his earlier floor plans everything fits perfectly.

One corner of an upstairs bedroom has a carved wooden village made in 1880 in Erzgebirge, Germany. The buildings are labeled with German text identifying stores and trades commonly found in a small com- munity. The village is set on an Empire period, faux marble–painted shelf from New England. The painted low-post bed is from Maine.

Now retired, and after more than fifty-five years of collecting, his focus has turned to education and outreach, generously sharing his knowledge and experience. He leads house tours with groups like the American Folk Art Society, Decorative Arts Trust, and many historical societies; has fostered relationships with local colleges; opened the house to students; and lent many pieces from the collection to museum exhibitions. He is a member of the American Folk Art Society, which has provided him with lasting friendships with fellow collectors and exposed him to wonderful private collections and museum archives.

In the parlor hang the wedding portraits of Lucinda (b. 1812) and William Cook (b. 1809), who mar- ried in 1830. They are are both extensively inscribed on the back identifying the sitter, the date 1832, and the artist, Joel Parks (1810–1891), who worked in the Mohawk River Valley of New York. The c. 1850 couch is from New England and hosts stump-work pillows from the same region. In the foreground stands a 1790 New Hampshire tea table that supports an 1840 game board from Solon, Maine.

Upstairs in the child’s room hangs an 1850 portrait thought to represent a James Moulton, painted by Charles Treadwell (1827– 1890) of Buxton, Maine. The child-size furniture includes a c. 1800 low-post bed from Deerfield, Massachusetts, and a New England paint- decorated stool and desk of c. 1840, supporting a calligraphy lesson book and other period writing amenities.

Maine State Historian Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. has acknowledged the importance of the house and the value of the collector’s outreach, writing: “This remarkable story of a dedicated Maine antiquarian and his lifelong quest for pre-industrial objects from northern New England serves as an inspiration to aspiring collectors. With modest means, he has assembled a significant collection through his knowledge, enthusiasm, and perseverance. Moreover, his historic house provides him with the perfect setting for living with his antiques.”

Now, the collector is working with Historic New England, the oldest and largest regional heritage organization in the country, to secure the future of the house, its historic landscape, and the extraordinary assemblage of documented furnishings that tell the story of rural Maine life and celebrate pre-industrial artisans for their innate skills, inventive artistry, and craftsmanship.