Boston needlework: Bonhams first New York auction of American furniture and decorative arts yielded a rare eighteenth-century American canvas-work picture at a great price.(END notes)

We were prepared to pay considerably more, so were happily surprised, " says American needlework dealer Carol Huber about her successful bid on this charming Boston canvas-work picture, offered at the first auction of American furniture and decorative arts held by Bonhams in New York in mid-January. When she saw it in the catalogue, she thought the presale estimate of $6,000 to $8,000 was "very low," and, indeed, others must have thought so too, for the bidding was active, with several people in the room and on the phone taking part; the hammer ultimately fell at $27,450. Similar pieces sold in the last decade have gone for much more--including a pair Huber and her husband, Stephen, bought in 2001 for more than $100,000. She tucked the needlework into her tote bag and took it straight up to their booth at the Winter Antiques Show, where a thrilled collector snapped it up "at a modest profit." Before the new owner takes possession, the Hubers will oversee conservation of both the needlework and the ebonized frame, which is thought to be original.

The picture is one of a small group of canvas-work scenes believed to have originated in Boston in the mid-eighteenth century--wrought by girls who either lived in the city or went to boarding school there. The tireless needle work scholar Betty Ring wrote in her seminal Girlhood Embroidery of 1993 "Bucolic scenes in canvas work became fashionable in England during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. ... [Examples] appeared in Boston by the early 1730s." A few such pictures are large so-called chimney pieces, like the one by Mary Pickering of ...