Overbeck Pottery Collection, ca. 1935
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GUEST:
I had an aunt that collected the Overbeck, and then she decided that she wanted to commission the center guy there. So she had it made up. And that's how I got it.
APPRAISER:
We've got a newspaper article here that talks a little bit about Mr. Curry. This was a piece that your aunt had the Overbeck sisters do specifically for her.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Who is Mr. Curry?
GUEST:
Well, he's a runaway slave. Everybody knew Wade Curry. As I understand it, he was the first slave to be buried from a white church. It was a Quaker community, and, of course, the Quakers helped the Underground Railroad.
APPRAISER:
Right.
GUEST:
So...
APPRAISER:
And Mr. Curry was one of the messengers with the Underground Railroad.
GUEST:
And he was a messenger, and everybody just loved him. And so she decided that everybody needed to remember him.
APPRAISER:
Just a little history about the Overbecks. They lived in Cambridge City, Indiana, and there were six sisters. There are a couple of interesting styles. Some of the sisters were very well trained, and pieces like this small vase with the houses were done by Elizabeth and Mary Francis. Some of the other sisters did the little grotesque pieces, like Mr. Curry. And they're called grotesque characters because generally, they're out of proportion, and sometimes the more grotesque they are, the more valuable they are. We've got a praying mantis, we have a Southern belle, a colonial gentleman, and then we have this very interesting bowl with a flower frog that goes inside the bowl that sort of fall into the grotesque category. And then we go back to the vase with the houses on it, which is a little bit finer, and probably a little bit earlier. The praying mantis is really rather unusual. I think he probably, even though he's very small, might be $400 to $500. The Southern belle and the Southern gentleman, he has a little damage, but they're maybe in the $300 to $400 range each. The bowl with the flower frog, which is quite unusual, I'd say combined value of those two pieces-- they do go together-- is probably $1,000 to $1,500. Mr. Curry, who is one of the more unusual pieces because he is a commissioned piece, done from a living person-- I've only seen a couple like that ever-- I suspect he's worth close to $1,000 himself, maybe more in a good market.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
So that gets us down to the little guy with the houses. This piece is probably worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000 to $4,000, maybe a bit more on a good day.
GUEST:
Goodness.
APPRAISER:
If all these were sold at auction, they would bring roughly somewhere between $6,000 and $7,500.
GUEST:
That's a lot of money.
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