Hello, this is Martin Willershire, host and the last time I did a monologue basically, I really did get quite a bit of email about it. And by the way, if you'd like to email me, the easiest email to use is Auction Podcast at me dot com dot com. So welcome to the show. I'm going to be doing a few of these. I do believe these are just you know, experiences I've had in the auction and the antique business, which I'm still very active in as an appraiser.
But this is going back to the late nineteen eighties. So I grew up just side Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which is a wonderful harbor town, historic town. The routes go all the way back to sixteen thirty and it's full of really beautiful architecture. The downtown area is mostly brick buildings. I actually had an art gallery for a while. Right around eighteen twelve or eleven, I do believe there was a massive fire in the town of Portsmouth and I
was actually in a wooden building. I had an art gallery in my auction office on State Street in Portsmouth, and it was the only wooden building down there. And what happened was the brick ordinance was to be set at a certain time. It was voted on and agreed upon that no building could be done without it being brick instead of a wooden structure. So the particular building I was in was popped up immediately in wood before
the brick ordnance went in, So I enjoyed it. I was right down by the right by the river on State Street in Portsmouth, and well, it's a real treasure trove regionally for antiques and especially from the colonial and federal era. And my dad bought a wonderful historical home that was built in sixteen seventy two. I think it was called the Hoyit House. When he bought it was in the nineteen seventies, and the house was loaded full of antiques, and at the time it was a major,
major auction. I can't remember exactly when in the nineteen seventies that he bought it, but at that time he sold all the items out of this particular house for wopping forty thousand dollars. At the same time he decided to purchase the home from the family. And this was
a waterfront home. It was in a little mill pond, but there is access to the river and then to the ocean from it, and it was such a beautiful as it considered a mansion when it was built, and it was built onto it was very I thought the place was haunted, to be honest with you. But anyway, he bought it for a whopping thirty thousand dollars. I think it was nineteen seventy three or four, something like that. Well, Portsmouth has this fascinating charm. These homes have stayed in
the families for several generations. There's lots of antiques tucked away in attics and barnes, and for an auctioneer like myself, when I was called to clear out one of these places, it was like a treasure hunt of dusty, dirty and thrilling. And in the late nineteen eighties I got a call from the Masonic Lodge of Portsmouth. They reached out to me and said that they inherited, or were betweathed, just a few items from a prominent local historical family and
that was a member of the Masonic Lodge. Bequeathed them to the Masonic Lodge to raise funds and say they said, don't get your hopes up. It was just a couple of pieces. I went to the Masonic Lodge. I was interested to see what they were given. But when I walked in, I saw there were just three portraits. They actually looked really interesting to me, but you know, early and just very well done, sort of a folk art vibe.
But there was a couple in a single portrait of a female, a woman and with a bonnet, and I believe she had a book in her hand. It's now at the Portsmouth Historical Society. It's in they're upstairs in their building. Oddly enough, I looked at these paintings in the canvases had a red tint a paint on the back of the canvas, which I had never seen before.
It's usually just a you know, a dark oxidized canvas in whatever condition it is, if it's original, But these had red paint on them, so at the time I didn't really think much about it. And then they pulled out of this room a pair of fire buckets, and these were fire buckets were the fire brigades where they used to in the cities. They used to get a brigade of people, a line of people to the water source and they'd pass back and forth these buckets of water and try to put out fires. So there's a
lot of interesting things. I'll just touch on a little bit of that later. But anyway, these had dramatic eagles on them. If you look at in the show notes or whatever, I will have a picture of the actual fire buckets that I'm talking about. These were called the Mechanics Fire Society. Let me tell you a little bit more about fire buckets. They were made of thick leather, painted and often stenciled with the family name. That's just so they could be you know, after the fire itself,
they could get back to the families. They were basically, as I said, human chains, passing the buckets of water hand to hand to fight fires. Inside of the fire fire buckets you'll typically find a bed wrench and a valuables bag. The beds at that time and the colonial time were very highly valued, so the wrenches were made for dismantling them so you could take them out and
save them from the fire. And cities like Portsmouth, a small city, most of the furniture had what's called fire brands, and that was a brand of the family's names that was burned on the underside of a chair or underside of the bedrail or something like that, or even inside
of a tall clock to identify the family. Because what people would do a city or town is they would just grab all their valuable items that they could safely and put them out in the middle of the street, and while they were fighting the fires over the place burned down one or the other. Anyway, back to the consignment, I had to figure out the story behind these pieces, and that's when I called my friend Joe Copley. Joe was a guy when it came to Portsmouth history. He
had a massive amount of knowledge. He never charged for any of his research. He just loved, you know, seeing Portsmouth items and pieces of history here. He was just
an amazing guy. When I showed him the portraits and the fire buckets, he kept looking at them and examining them, and he had kind of a poker face and he was muttering, yeah, and after a little bit said, I do believe that these fire buckets and the artists of the three paintings here were all painted by the same hand, the same artist, And he says, and I do believe that artist is John S Blunt b l U n T. He suggested that I dig into the archives at the
Portsmouth Atheneum Library. And this atheneum is a beautiful early building in downtown Portsmouth. The architecture was just unbelievable. So I went in there and to do the research. And I didn't even know this, but I walked right by a beautiful landscape by John Blunt himself. He had a
very short life. But anyway, I went in there and I poured over the records and I finally found I think I mentioned this before, but on the front of the fire buckets was the family's name, and also been on the shield of these particular fire buckets is the trade that the merchant or the person was in. And this particular one had a pair of scissors and I think one side had a thread or something like that. And so these people were in the textile business of
some type. And by the way, while i'm there, back in these times, ulsterers were held of high esteem. They were also bed makers and the bed. Like I mentioned before, the bed was very important to have a comfortable bed. And if you look at colonial beds, you'll kind of the mattresses themselves. You know, they're supported by a rope that goes back and forth to support whatever it's on. Top.
But some of these mattresses were full of I've seen these before, corn cobs, straw, all different types of things, seaweed in this area, I've seen a lot of seaweed, horse hair and all kinds of things. But it was really really difficult to get a very comfortable bed. Getting back to the library, I started looking through the Mechanics Fire Society all their minutes, and these in the back
of these buckets said eighteen eleven. So I went in through that and lo and behold, I found the induction of the family, the person that the firebugs belonged to, and also a notation about John Blunt. So I realized that these really did have a tie to the well known artist John Blunt, who was very much in high demand. So I was told to buy Joe to send away for a book, and there was no Internet at that time. Back in I think this was I believe this was
late nineteen eighty eight. I sent away for a book that was written by a gentleman named Bishop. He wrote a book and at the time had done a lot of research on what he called the borden Limnar. And the reason he was called the borden Liminar is because he was known for the Borden family portraits anyway, that
was John S. Blunt. The consigners of the Masons told me that they had already been offered five thousand dollars for the lot of three portraits and for the two fire buckets together, and I said that they should not accept it, and that I just had a gut feeling and I kind of took a big chance at the time, and I said, well, I'll guarantee you fifteen thousand dollars that these all these items will bring or more, but
I'll guarantee that. And I just wanted to make sure that I did get them for the auction and upcoming auction. And so they agreed, and they also you know, signed the contract and said there you go, and good luck and all that. So the auction day came, and the
fire buckets were definitely the stars of the show. A person who actually became a good friend of mine came in that day looking at, you know, the paintings, but mostly the fire buckets, and he had a very nice dressed gentleman with him, and I heard him, you know, I was over by the fire buckets. They were in a glass case. I basically took them out of the case and was handing them to people that wanted to inspect them closely, and I heard him, you know, walk
over a few steps to this gentleman. He says, you have to own these, you have to get these. And so at that time, I do believe a pair of fire buckets. The world record in New England mostly that's where they're known for American firebuckets was somewhere around ten thousand dollars at that time, and so I was pretty excited. I thought they would bring you know, at least at least that or more. Fast forward. During the auction, the fire buckets go up, there's people. I think I had
one or two phone bids. Now back in that day in nineteen eighty nine, there wasn't a lot of phone bidding most of the time people and there's definitely no online anything. So there was a big crowd at this
particul K auction. It was held over in Elliot, Maine, where I grew up, in an auction gallery that I had, and the bidding started out at five thousand dollars and I was pretty excited about that, and then it quickly climbed to twenty thousand and just when I thought it was over and I was all ready to say sold, the well dressed gentleman that I had seen at the preview I mentioned before put his hand up and he never put his hand down, back and forth bidding, and
it was a fight for it. Actually hammered down at thirty two thousand, five hundred, and that was definitely a record at the time. So the portraits did very well. Also sold for around twelve to fifteen thousand dollars each, and these were all what you consider attributed to the Bordenlimitar John Blunt. The consigners were in the audience and they I was watching them occasionally I look over at them and they were like they were over the moon.
They were pretty pretty excited about what these things were selling for. And they thanked me and thanked me. They were so excited. After the auction, they they wanted to make sure that they thanked me that night. So that was a really good story for them that you know. Years later, as things go, the same gentlemen decided to liquidate his collection and that pair of fire buckets, and I want to say sometime in the two thousands, before
two thousand and eight. I'm not sure exactly what year it was, but I think it was maybe two thousand and four or five something like that. The firebucks resold at an auction for eighty eight thousand dollars. It really proves the point that if you're going to buy something, you want to buy something that's really, really good quality and rare if you can. Again, there's no guarantees what
something's going to do. As a matter of fact, if you put those same fire buckets, and again, if you look at this show, if you follow back to the website, you will see a picture of them and it's I don't know if they bring higher price in eighty eight thousand dollars today, it's very possible because you know, like I say, they're very good and rare pieces generally hold pretty well. Again, no guarantees. Things change all the time, and you know, there's hopefully a new generation of people
that will appreciate this coming up in the future. A lot, as I mentioned, a lot of things have changed since that time. My friend Joe Copley passed away in nineteen ninety just a year after that, and you know, as I mentioned, auction prices skyrocketed for a while actually until the peak of two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, after you know, we had a bit of a dip in the recession. Things have never really come back, or
a lot of things have never really come back. I had fun, really, I used to love doing the research and unraveling the story of John S. Blunt is something I'll never forget. A little PostScript here. The Atheneum Library was named or renamed for a while after Joseph P. Copley, so that Joseph PA. Copley Research Library in honor of Joe. It was since renamed by because of another donor. But Joe did give so much to preserve Portsmouth history. He
left his whole research library itself to the Atheneum. And so this podcast is to my old friend Joe, real gem of Portsmouth, and to the joy of uncovering history. Thank you,