February 8, 2006

Chevy Chase MD – Sloans & Kenyon Auctioneers and Appraisers sold an historic American Chippendale carved mahogany side chair for $51,920 on February 5, 2006.

Nine telephone bidders competed against floor bidders for the chair on Superbowl Sunday; bidding opened at $12,000 and increased in thousand dollar increments until auctioneer Steve Little’s gavel fell at $44,000.

The fine chair was purportedly one from an original set of six loaned by William Greenleaf, High Sheriff of Suffolk County MA, to General George Washington's Revolutionary War Headquarters, occupying the building now known as the Longfellow House in Cambridge MA, from July 1775 until March 1776. General Washington planned the Siege of Boston while headquartered at Longfellow House.

The historic chair’s sale proved that “The ubiquitous claim that ‘George Washington sat here’ was, in this case, a truth rather than a fantasy,” said Sloans & Kenyon President Stephanie A. Kenyon ASA.

Sloans & Kenyon Auctioneers and Appraisers is Metropolitan Washington DC's premier auction house and was established in 2003; estate catalogue auctions of fine art and antiques are held approximately six times each year. The company is the successor firm to Washington's C.G. Sloan & Co. which was established in 1853. Sloans & Kenyon has recently sold property at auction from the Phillips Collection, Blair House Restoration Fund, Victorian Society in America, Tudor Place, Universalist National Memorial Church, and Georgetown Presbyterian Church, (all Washington DC); Capricorn Galleries; the collections of actress Jane Withers, former American Ambassador to Thailand William Itoh, Senator Edward William Brooke (R- Massachusetts); and the estates of Baroness Garnet Von Stackelberg, Countess Adelaide D'Eudeville, and painter Pierce Rice (all Washington DC), Samuel M. Hyatt, London, Berlin, and Washington DC; Sophia and Leonidas Arvanitidis, Monaco; and Kenkichi Yokohama, Buenos Aries, Argentina (Final price of $51,920 includes 18% buyer’s premium)