Family Treasures
Nearly half a century has passed since Clarence L. Prickett drove by a handsome 1800 stone farmhouse for sale in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and got out to take a look. A peek through the dining-room window revealed handsome beamed ceilings; then and there he realized it was the house for which he had been looking. In short order he moved his wife and three young children into the house of his dreams.
The large barn on the property provided ample space for his burgeoning antiques business. Soon he was spending time in New York at Christie's and Sotheby’s auction houses, often on the floor studying the furniture from the bottom up. He has fond memories of the heady sixties and seventies, buying and selling with Harold and Albert Sack, John Walton, and Bob Skinner, among other leading lights of the trade.
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In the course of building one of the foremost American antiques galleries, Prickett began assembling a family collection. At first, he filled his house with country bureaus, high chests, and other informal objects, then began to shift to more high style examples. Prickett says the collection was largely complete about fifteen years ago, due mainly to space constraints. “But,” he says with the smile of the inveterate collector, “you can always upgrade.” He adds, “Originality is paramount, as are form and craftsmanship."
Semi-retired for the past five years, Prickett is far from idle. When not at antiques shows or auction previews, he and his wife, Laura, remain active, playing tennis and traveling as their schedules permit. On a recent morning he had won three sets of tennis by 10:00 am.
Reducing his time in the antiques shop, Prickett now leaves the business side of things to his sons: Craig, who entered the business in 1970, and Todd, who joined in 1978. Their sister Sandra Lee runs a successful gift shop in a neighboring town.
Growing up, the three children lived with fine antiques. Neither brother feels they were coerced into the business. As Craig puts it, they each came to respect the aesthetic of antiques and a well-made object. Like their father, each has a well-defined natural aptitude for the business, though neither admits to a particular favorite with respect to form or furniture making center; their focus, instead, is on the sheer merit of a particular object.
Now that his sons are in charge, Prickett has taken up painting and has turned out some remarkable Pennsylvania landscapes. His eye for color is exceptional, although one particularly fine example is a grisaille moonlit snow scene. Careful color selections permeate the collection as well, with tones of ivory, blue, and red complementing the furniture and paintings and lending a feeling of serenity.
In the dining room, ten early sack-back Windsor chairs are spaced comfortably around a turned-leg tavern table or along the edges of the room. The collection includes nearly two dozen period Windsor chairs, which the family uses on a daily basis, like most everything else in the collection. Clarence’s favorite Windsor is illustrated in volume one of Charles Santore’s The Windsor Style in America (1981). The author describes the chair as part of a group that is “among the most graceful and successful of all Philadelphia comb-back Windsors.”
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The furniture in the collection is primarily from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but does include a number of important pieces from Massachusetts. These include an outstanding Queen Anne walnut Boston dressing table with compass star inlay, and a Boston Queen Anne side chair with a shell-carved crest flanked by flowers on a scrolling vine. The chair is one of four from a larger set; other examples are at Winterthur,
the Brooklyn Museum, and one is pictured in John T. Kirk’s American Furniture (1974). Three particularly fine Pennsylvania Chippendale side chairs feature a multitude of carved shells.
Included in the collection are some very special timepieces, among them an imposing Philadelphia Chippendale walnut tall clock on the stair landing that was made by John Wood Jr. (1736 –1793), circa 1775. The case is carved with three flame finials, rosettes, quarter columns, and a porringer style base. A New Jersey tall clock with face signed by Wood & Hudson of Mount Holly stands in the front hall. A third tall clock is a rare Philadelphia quarter-striker by Joseph Wills (1700 –1759), circa 1745.
Over the years the house and the barn have been restored and expanded, although the original structures are intact; photographs from the 1930s in an upper hallway attest to that. It wasn’t just the beams that attracted Prickett to the house; it was the careful detail throughout. For example, the main staircase is beautifully carved, with fanciful skirt boards and turned finials. Fireplaces were given fine mantels, while the thick walls of the house allow for deep windowsills and built-in storage. The stone floors of the kitchen integrate with the exterior stone facade and walkways, which lead to the elegantly designed gardens, the purview of Laura Prickett. Living in this remarkable house, the Pricketts view themselves as the conscientious stewards of the residence and collections within.
This article was originally published in the Spring 2009 issue of Antiques & Fine Art, a fully digitized version of which is available on afamag.com. AFA is affiliated with Incollect.com.