Henry Francis DuPont and George Ives Estate Auction of Antiques

We have always enjoyed going to historic houses and also viewing the gardens, and this year we managed to go down to Delaware in July and toured Longwood Gardens, the Hagley Museum and Winterthur.  DuPont country.  Longwood gardens is so amazing and inspirational and we want to go back at Christmas, and we also heard that Winterthur really dolls it up too.  Last weekend, labor day, we went back and saw the house and gardens at Nemours and then did the two hour tour at Winterthur. Nemours was a big letdown, over the top glitz and pompous in design.  The two hour tour at Winterthur (which has 175 rooms) was one of the happiest tours of our life.  In contrast to Nemours your could see and feel the love.  Henry Francis DuPont who was already a great gardener, fell in love with American Decorative Arts and Architecture, but he also had a unique vision as a collector.  Rather than mixed together different styles and periods in a room, he decorated his rooms within style, so William and Mary with William and Mary, Windsor chairs all together, Chippendale with Chippendale.  And he arranged his cut flowers without mixing as well, roses, just roses. So here we remembered that the research we started when we got the house put on the Connecticut Registered of Historic Houses, there was a few references to Henry Francis DuPont attending and buying antiques from the Ives collection.  At the 1924 estate auction he called himself Mr. Francis.  Because Ives was such a well known collector of dealer of American antiques it attracted a wide audience form all parts of the country.

Now Dean and I are going to try to put together a list of what objects went where!!