No one at Rago’s had ever seen anything like it before. An Arts & Crafts style table lamp, but only sort of – heavy and tall, with a finial of a jumping horse, medallions with the initials NHS suspended around the circumference of the bronze shade and a copper band mounted to the base bearing yet other initials in script – AGV. When Tom Martin, the specialist-in-charge of Rago’s Estates department, turned the lamp over to examine the base, he found a plaque reading: “We extend sincere, warm appreciation for the consultation and design effort contributed to this lamp by E.G. Hubbard. NHS. 1914.” The lamp will be a part of our December Great Estates sale held on December 6th.
“I didn’t know exactly what we had,” says Martin. “But I knew it was extraordinary. All the consignor could tell us about its origins was that he received it in 2006 from an elderly woman who was discarding unwanted furniture. She told him that this lamp had been her father’s for as long as she could remember.”
What Rago’s had looks to be a lamp commissioned of Elbert Hubbard by the National Horse Show and presented to Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt when he retired as NHS president in 1914. It will be among a stellar collection of estate property selling in Rago’s Great Estates sale on December 6, 2009. Martin has given it a pre-sale estimate of $10,000-15,000.
According to its official website, The National Horse Show, founded in 1883 at the original Madison Square Garden, is America’s oldest indoor horse show. Its founders were a group of affluent sportsmen and, by 1887, the National Horse Show Directory’s directors and 920 members formed the basis for Louis Keller’s first New York Social Register. Alfred G. Vanderbilt was a Director of the NHS from 1903-1914, Honorary Vice President from 1903-1908 and President from 1909-1914, the date inscribed on the lamp.
According to an article in a 1939 issue of The New Yorker: “It was the custom of the late Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt to conduct the National Horse Show in the old Garden down on Madison Square as though it were a private party for his friends. When a Vanderbilt horse won an event, champagne was served in the boxes, but the spectators in the galleries were lucky if they were able to find out so much as who the contestants were; it was the public-bedamned spirit all over again.”
Elbert Green Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher. He founded Roycroft, a utopian crafts colony of the Arts and Crafts movement in East Aurora, NY. His writings, self-published through his Roycroft Press, brought him fame and fortune. So numerous were his followers that he had to build a hotel, The Roycroft Inn, to accommodate their pilgrimages. He hired local craftsmen to make simple, straight-lined Arts and Crafts-style furniture to his design for the Inn. The furniture became so popular that a manufacturing business was born, employing skilled woodworkers, metalsmiths and leathersmiths. Rago’s presumes that among these were the makers of the National Horse Show lamp.
Hubbard and Vanderbilt both died in 1915 when the boat on which they were traveling, the RMS Lusitania, was torpedoed by a German submarine.
Auction Contact Information
Rago’s is located at 333 North Main Street, Lambertville NJ. For more information phone 609-397-9374 or visit www.ragoarts.com.
Exhibition Preview
Saturday, November 29 – Friday, December 5, 2008 from 11- 6 pm and by appointment. Doors open at 9 a.m. on December 6, the morning of the sale. (Note: Exhibition held in conjunction with exhibition for Jewelry and Silver Auction on December 7th, 2008.)
Catalogues
Printed catalogues are $20 and can be purchased online or by calling (609) 397.9374. You can also e-mail a request to [email protected] or view the complete catalogue online at www.sollorago.com.
Notes for the Editor High-resolution images available. More information online at ragoarts.com.
About Rago Arts and Auction Center
The Rago Arts and Auction Center was established in 1995 by David Rago, a leading expert and dealer in American art pottery who entered the business of auctions in 1984. The Auction Center, located midway between Philadelphia and New York, holds multi-million dollar sales of 20th century decorative arts and furnishings, fine art, jewelry, tribal and estate property. Rago’s achieved sales of over $30 million in the 2007-2008 season. It holds an average of twelve sales each year.