SLUG: NORTHEAST TO SELL CARTER’S GROVE CONTENTS W/(?)cuts

Must run 3-28

By Laura Beach

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Northeast Auctions is selling the contents of Carter’s Grove, the house museum recently deaccessioned by Colonial Williamsburg, on May 17 and 18 at the Frank Jones Center in Portsmouth. The 500-lot auction is expected to gross more than $500,000, said auctioneer Ron Bourgeault. Proceeds benefit Colonial Williamsburg’s acquisitions fund.

Ronald Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg’s chief curator and vice president for museums, described the assemblage as “17,500 square feet of 1930s decor, from antiques to reproductions. It ranges from Eighteenth Century linen presses to an American Empire sideboard of 1830, a Tiffany desk set, Rookwood pottery, and Georgian Revival furniture made between 1870 and 1920.”

A 1760s Philadelphia easy chair with original upholstery and a circa 1775 Virginia cellaret are among the few items that Colonial Williamsburg, whose collections emphasize American artifacts made prior to 1830, is keeping.

Virginia planter Robert “King” Carter purchased what would become Carter’s Grove in 1709. The mansion, begun in 1755 and substantially modified over time, was acquired in1928 by Archibald and Mollie McCrea of Lawrenceville, Va. The couple furnished the house in an early Twentieth Century aesthetic between 1930 and 1945.

The Sealantic Fund, a former Rockefeller philanthropy, conveyed Carter’s Grove to Colonial Williamsburg in 1969. Colonial Williamsburg made improvements, conducted extensive archeological investigations and constructed slave quarters, an archeological museum, a reception center and other support buildings on the property.

Halsey Minor, a Virginia native and founder of CNET, a web-based technology and consumer electronics company, recently bought the house, located on the James River eight miles from Colonial Williamsburg’s main campus, for $15.3 million. Minor — who is prevented by the terms of sale from developing the house, the landscape, or the archaeological sites — plans to use the 400-acre former plantation as a private residence and thoroughbred horse farm.

“Artifacts from the site continue to belong to Colonial Williamsburg and will be exhibited from time to time at the expanded DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum,” Hurst explained.

“I will be selling everything, right down to the linens,” said Bourgeault, who plans a commemorative catalog documenting the house and its contents. Sale highlights, said the auctioneer, include a pair of large Old Master paintings, a pair of Georgian-style slab tables, three magnificent Gothic bookcases and a Georgian-style canopy bed with beautiful carvings and lavish bed hangings.

Colonial Williamsburg has sold other objects through Northeast Auctions in recent years.

“We have been in the process of critically reviewing what has been in storage and have been sending a regular stream to Northeast, everything from very good stuff to modest prints and maps,” said Hurst.

For information, 603-433-8400, 603-498-0293 or www.northeastauctions.com.