The Chipstone Foundation, a collection in Milwaukee that has been a powerful buyer of American furniture in recent years, is now a seller, too.
Three of Chipstone's 18th-century Philadelphia Chippendale pieces - a rococo high chest with matching dressing table and chair, all exuberantly carved - are being auctioned at Christie's in New York. The price expected for the set is $1.5 million to $2.5 million.The Chipstone Foundation was started in 1966 by Stanley Stone, who had collected furniture with his wife, Polly, since the mid-1940s. While it is still largely unknown to the public, the foundation is admired by professionals in the field of Americana for the scholarly publications it has produced since 1993 and for its activities with museums: it helps finance shows and catalogues and lends pieces.
Next year, for example, Chipstone will send 40 important objects to Colonial Williamsburg on extended loan. Graham Hood, the director emeritus of Colonial Williamsburg, describes the Chipstone collection as "the most focused collection of Americana in the Midwest."
Chipstone's decision to sell pieces surprised professionals last month when the auction was announced. The collection is housed in Fox Point, Wis., a Milwaukee suburb, in a red-brick mansion that looks like a miniature version of the Governor's Palace at Williamsburg. When the foundation was envisioned, the goal was for it to become a museum, but that plan had to be shelved in 1988: zoning ordinances limited access to only 30 people a day, twice a week.
Once its purpose was better defined, Chipstone began to stress greater diversity in its purchases. This is one reason the foundation decided to sell three of its finest pieces of furniture, out of the 300 in its collection, which is valued at $35 million.
The proceeds from the auction will be used for acquisitions. "Sets of furniture do not accomplish our mission as well as individual objects do," said Luke Beckerdite, the executive director.
The Chipstone pieces at Christie's have impeccable pedigrees. They were made just before the Revolutionary War for Levi Hollingsworth, a Philadelphia merchant, and they match others from the Hollingsworth family at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The three pieces remained in different branches of the family until the 1980s, when they were auctioned in New York. Chipstone bought the chest in 1985 at Christie's for $363,000; in 1987, at Sotheby's, it bought the table for $165,000 and the chair for $148,500.
Handsome though the furniture is, these pieces are not perfect: the brasses, or hardware, on the dressing table are period replacements, and those on the high chest are modern reproductions. The dressing table was lightly cleaned, so the finish is not original.
The Chipstone story began in January 1946 when Stone, a Milwaukee retailer, traveled to New York with his wife to shop for a flat-topped 18th-century American desk, which he wanted for his 50th birthday. That trip changed their lives.
At the gallery of Israel Sack, Stone asked to see a flat-topped desk and was told by Sack that such desks were rare in colonial America. One of the few to survive, Sack said, was the George Washington desk at the Museum of the City of New York. Stone and his wife caught a taxi to the museum, took a look, then returned and ordered a reproduction from Sack.
Before the Stones left the gallery that day, Sack showed them a Salem secretary-bookcase with a gilded eagle on top, from about 1800. But that desk was not for sale, they were told; a client had reserved it.
"That was all right with me because I knew nothing about antiques and cared less," Stanely Stone recalled decades later.
He changed his mind, however, when the dealer called him to say that the Salem secretary had become available.
The Salem secretary was the first antique acquired by the Stones. They soon were visible at the Americana fairs, auctions and shops. And they frequented the symposiums and exhibitions, socializing with curators and other collectors.
After Stone died in 1987 at the age of 91, Polly Stone donated their collection to the Chipstone Foundation and created an endowment that has grown to $60 million. The foundation's name, the same as that of their 1950 house, is derived from their pet terms for each other: she called him Stone; he called her Chipmunk.