The Story of Ida’s Auction

I used to have a fantasy of lilting along a country lane and happen upon an old farmhouse complete with front porch rockers.  This house would be abandoned but, somehow, as dreams go, it would become mine, with it cache of fully crammed chimney cupboards, creaking attics, and dirt-floored basement.  This was an antique-lover’s (read auctioneer’s daughter’s) dream – a house full of undiscovered “riches.”

I don’t have that dream any more, simply because I lived the reality …. almost.  I didn’t “find” an abandoned house, nor did all the riches become mine, but, when Ida Wilbur Smith passed away in 1985 at the age of 92, I was entrusted with the responsibility of sorting through an entire four-story Victorian home that had been inhabited by the same family for over 100 years!  Every cupboard. Drawer, box, bureau, and trunk help the remnants of everyday living – remnants that were south-after collectibles in the 1980’s!  At first, I was like a child in a candy store, running from pantry to bureau to attic to closet – never completing anything – just excited to be “on the hunt.”

Eventually I realized I must discipline myself if this project was to be completed in the allotted time. It took weeks to match the innumerable China tea sets, chocolate pots, berry dishes, and more.  Pieces of these ensembles were stashed from kitchen pantry to the dining room closet, in the sideboard, in the second-floor bedrooms, and even under the third-floor eaves.

This house, built ca. 1862, had been divided into two apartments to accommodate several members of the same family, and therefore there was a small kitchen on the second floor.  This kitchen had been used for nothing but storage for many years.  I waded through old Christmas decorations, bits and pieces of unfinished craft projects, leftover props from long-ago civic and religious theatrical productions, old picture frames, what seemed like a ton of florist vases commemorative of innumerable family celebrations, old sewing machines, cameras, and so on. But, under the kitchen counters I found the dreams of a little girl’s childhood.  As I removed a dainty China tea set lovingly replaced in its own cardboard box, school reports, drawings, a chalkboard, crayons worn down to tiny pieces, poems, books, wooden alphabet blocks in a slide-top wooden box, another set of picture blocks in a handsome pasteboard box, a frozen Charlette put to bed many years before in a cigar box, hand-knitted black lisle stockings, tiny doll sweaters, and a small wooden cradle complete with a crudely patched quilt, my mind raced back to the turn of the century (Ida Wilbur was born in 1893), and the little girl with drop-waist middy dress and wide brimmed straw hat sitting on the front porch in the summer heat, having a tea party under the shade of the canvas hammock swinging there.

Stored in leather trunks were antique baby clothes, a tiny pair of leather baby shoes, and more than a dozen baby quilts, along with partially completed patchwork long since forgotten.  A Victorian doll carriage complete with fringe was stored in a closet nearby, along with a child’s rocker, cast iron banks, an old croquet set, ivory dominoes, and an early baby bottle.

The second kitchen was complete with pantry, which housed the glassware and other items used only on special occasions.  Here I found cut glass pickle dishes, an entire Limoges service for 12 with every accompanying service you could imagine, cranberry glass vases, carnival glass, milk glass, brass, pewter and silver candlesticks, crumbers, crystal compotes, etched cake plates, Steuben, Heisey, flow blue platters, Staffordshire, blue willow, 85 pieces of Fiesta ware, 73 pieces of ruby glass, 43 pieces of cobalt, ironstone, phoenix, majolica, Nippon, Noritake, rose medallion, and an Austrian chocolate set, satin glass, and so much more!  Memories of Sunday dinners, Thanksgivings, Christmases, birthdays, weddings and baptisms seemed to be residing in that pantry also.

In the old sideboard I found a rare pewter porringer, two very-old pewter plates, and a pewter basin with a Newport touchmark. On the mantle in the dining room were a perfectly matched pair of whale oil lamps.

The working pantry in the downstairs kitchen was a potpourri of wonderful delights -tin lard pails, pudding molds, ironstone tureens, pastry boards, wooden bowls, several moustache cups, bone dishes, tin cookie cutters, yellow ware, firkins, Bennington pottery, pink Depression glass, kerosene lamps, and graniteware.  A deed box inlaid with ivory held several pocket watches, a gold locket, a cameo, and dozens of daguerreotypes of non-smiling ancestors in their Sunday best.

In the upstairs bedrooms, fur muffs and top hats resided on closet shelves, along with crocheted spreads, a paisley piano shawl, carriage robes and a foot warmer. Hanging below was a raccoon coat from the Roaring 20’s, mink jackets and stoles, and other furs of unknown origin, some complete with the head and appendages of the donor.  Closet floors were covered with luggage plastered with destination tags from long-ago vacations.

Sewing baskets overflowing with supplies filled dry sinks and covered bureaus of every ilk, from Chippendale to federal, along with looking glasses, a shaving mirror, perfume sets, and an incised powder horn.  One sewing basket held a treasured patchwork pocket.

Mantels held steeple and banjo clocks, framed oil paintings, and a parianware cow and lamb.

Pitchers and bowls complete with matching pieces were plentiful, as were the washstands to hold them.  Linens spilled out of bureau drawers and blanket chests.  Trunks held hooked, braided, and rag rugs as well as feather beds.

The attics held nursing rockers, ladder back and Hitchcock chairs, an old sea chest with original red milk paint, a fainting couch, canes and buggy whips, and a rocking mammy’s bench.

As I catalogued these treasures, I purposely left one closet for last, as it held clothing that had to be disposed of, and there were too many other treasures to unearth.  As I finished up, I was very disappointed that I had not found any full-sized quilts.  It seems strange that a house of this vintage did not have quilts, but other than the baby quilts in the second kitchen, I came up empty handed. Finally, I tackled that last closet, and as I was bagging up the last of the clothing, I noticed the back of the closet was curtained.  As I pulled the curtain aside, my dream was complete – there, neatly folded and piled floor to ceiling, were my treasured quilts!