By ERIC C. RODENBERG
Antique Week Associate Editor

CINCINNATI, Ohio — To say the Forsythe brothers – Frank and Dave – have a “good eye” for quality would be a vast understatement. This pair makes the American Pickers look like rank amateurs.

For example, from a mid-Ohio collector’s estate the pair hand-picked four items as candidates for the company’s upcoming, and much-anticipated, Arts & Crafts sale.

On May 28, one of those pieces held a huge surprise for the estate’s heirs (and the audience): a hammered copper fernery signed with the orb and cross mark of the Roycroft Institute sold for $92,000 (including a 15 percent buyer’s premium).

“The heirs had no idea of the value of that piece,” Dave Forsythe said. “I’m glad we were able to recognize it. We knew it was a good piece, but we never dreamed it would bring that much.”

Forsythe said he knows of only two other such pieces, which were designed by Roycroft luminaries Karl Kipp and Dard Hunter.

“One was sold in New York and there’s another in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art,” Forstythe said. “This was by far the best of the three. The others had been scoured. This one has its original patina. That’s why it made such an astronomical price … As far as I know that’s the most ever paid for such a piece; if it’s not the most paid, it’s right up there in the top two or three.”
A private collector bought the piece after a hard-fought tussle with another phone bidder. “There was a lot of interest right up to the $30,000 mark,” Forsythe said. “Then, as usual, it settled down to two bidders. It was exciting.”

We had a conservative estimate at $10,000 … the Arts & Crafts market, across the board; it’s just like everything else. The middle of the market is soft, but if you find something incredible it will set records.”

His auction company has been staging Arts & Crafts sales “every two or three years,” according to Forsythe, for nearly 20 years. “It’s something that most (Arts & Crafts) people know about, and they look forward to,” he said. “We get some accumulation from other sales – such as this past estate - and several consignments, and it’s usually a big event.”

None of the heirs could say where the $92,000 fernery was purchased, according to Forsythe.

“He (the estate owner) was a serious collector of all different kinds of things,” Forsythe said. “He bought at antique shops and went to several local auctions throughout the years.”

The piece is thought to have been created after 1908 when Karl Kipp joined the Roycroft Institute, becoming foreman of the newly developed metalwork shop. Designer Dard Hunter also joined Roycroft in the early 1900s.
The Roycroft Institute, founded in 1895, was to become one of the most successful American craft communities. Located in East Aurora, N.Y., Roycroft soon became a true artist community ultimately employing more than 400 workers.

However, it too became a victim of the Great Depression and was sold off at auction in 1938. Today, Roycroft metalwork is prized by Arts & Crafts collectors, particularly the company’s limited pieces which were created in the early 20th century.