Winter in New York

sive, at £9,525, was a brownand-yellow slip puzzle tyg dated 1689 and with three knopped handles, one of which was a drinking straw to the bottom of the bowl. At £4,064, there was a dark-treacle-glazed double-loop two-handled tyg or posset pot dated 1676 and initialled by the potter John Ifield (Fig 1).

During the third quarter of the 17th century, there was a small industry in Jamaica producing tortoiseshellcased wig combs. The only known maker is Paul Bennett at Port Royal from 1655 and examples are dated between 1671 and 1692. The last one at auction, as far as I know, made £10,112 (COUNTRY LIFE, April 24, 2013). Here, there were two lots, a single comb in a silver-mounted case dated 1688 and with the Jamaican coat of arms and original motto, Indus uterque servietum, which sold for £10,160 (Fig 6), and two combs in a scratch-engraved case, which raised £7,620.

Another 17th-century curiosity, at £699, was a pair of green breeches measuring 12¼in from waist to hem, which supposedly belonged to Queen Henrietta Maria’s celebrated dwarf Sir Jeffrey Hudson (1619–about 1682) (Fig 7).

Watercolour studies of shells by François Jean-baptiste Ménard de la Groye (1775–1855), ‘the unsung hero of natural history’, did well, but were outshone here by three studies of a turtle, turtle shell and octopus by the Austrian Franz Anton von Schiedel (1731–1801) (Figs 2–4), which reached

£13,970. Two of London’s top furniture dealers will have exceptionally fine offerings for visitors to the New York Winter Antiques Show, which has its preview at the Park Avenue Armory on January 19 and runs to the 29th. Ronald Phillips will not only have a pair from the set of ‘Gainsborough’ armchairs made for Glemham Hall, Suffolk, in the 1750s, which are in the Chippendale manner and covered in the original needlework by Lady Barbara North (£1 million-plus), but a pair of demi-lune satinwood and purpleheart commodes (one of which below) probably by Chippendale (£500,000-plus). They last appeared in COUNTRY LIFE in an advertisement on August 7, 1975.

The best of the 19th century will be found with Blairman, where the stand will focus on ‘art furniture’ designed by Bruce Talbert (1838–81). Among the manufacturers who used him were Cox & Sons for furniture and metalwork and Gillow and Holland & Sons for furniture. Like Chippendale, Talbert spread his influence through publications and his furniture shown at World Fairs put his mark on the American ‘Modern Gothic’ taste.

Here, the display consists of a sideboard (above), clock case, secretairecabinet, six drawing-room and two folding chairs and a writing table.