MADE IN U.S.A. may not have the cachet it once had, but in the realm of antiques, the phrase is coming to mean extraordinary value for well-fixed investors. When two tiny, exquisite 18th century Philadelphia tables were auctioned at Christie's in Manhattan last Saturday, the prices they fetched were breathtaking. The first item, a dainty piecrust tea table, sold for $1.2 million; the second, a rectangular pier table less than 3 ft. high, was whisked from the block for $4.6 million.
Outrageous? No, right in line with last June's auction of the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold: a $12.1 million desk. The mahogany masterpiece was no curlicued Versailles settee or crested English bureau. It was a stately secretary of distinctly American block-and-shell design, crafted in 1760 by the Goddard-Townsend cabinetmakers of Newport, R.I. "For years, Europeans have given us an inferiority complex," says furniture dealer Harold Sack, 78, who bought the desk for an anonymous client, believed to be Texas billionaire Robert Bass. "To finally see American furniture taken as an important art form is enormously gratifying."
During the past decade, American furniture has caught up fast with its Old World counterparts. Just four years ago, the first Philadelphia piecrust tea table broke the $1 million mark. A year later, a paw-foot Philadelphia chair sold for more than $2.7 million. "American furniture is going straight up," says Dean Failey, senior vice president of Christie's. "The rise is correlated with the art market. When collectors pay $30 million to $40 million for a painting, a domino effect touches everything else."
The giddy escalation in prices is due in part to scarcity, since pre- Revolutionary furniture is as sparse as its spare Yankee lines. The rarest pieces were handcrafted in the port cities of Philadelphia, Newport, Boston, Salem, Mass., and Portsmouth, Va., where rich patrons financed local artisans. These wealthy merchants, hoping to create heirlooms for their families, combed the Caribbean for the finest, oldest mahogany trees. The wood they found was dense and close-grained, unlike the spongy grain of the younger, forced-growth trees that are planted today. "All the great wood was used up in the 18th century," maintains Matthew Weigman of Sotheby's. The furniture crafted from the grand mahoganies is said to glow and "smile" at the beholder. "Viewing the desk is a religious experience," says Sack. "The grain ignites; there's inner fire in the wood."
Israel Sack, father of three sons in the business today, started his dealership in 1905. He found authentic pieces for the Fords and Du Ponts, who became major collectors in the 1920s. In time, their priceless collections were turned over to museums, where exquisite examples of Early American | furniture -- including the nine other Goddard-Townsend desks known to be in existence -- now reside.