Grand View Auction has several fine Victorian antiques in today’s sale including this George Henkels desk, once exhibited in the High Museum.  It is reminiscent of the desk and furniture in the Asa Packer Mansion.  Other notable items include an Allen & Brother Cabinet and J & JW Meeks Parlor Set.  I’ll need a little more substantiation, however, to agree with them that the inlaid center table is by Herter Brothers.

UPDATE: The desk above went for $8,500 plus buyer’s premium.

This desk is being attributed to the shop of Allen and Brother of Philadelphia and being dated to around 1875.  I happen to have seen this desk in person - it sat in Adamstown, PA for a number of months and I drooled over the carved griffins on the base, but I couldn’t part with the cash that was being asked for it.

I’m not completely sold on this being by Allen and Brother as it doesn’t fully resemble items that I’ve seen by them before and I think the style of the carved griffins is the reason why it was attributed to them.  The pulls especially don’t say Allen to me but they could have been replaced and I am no expert who knows their full repertoire, anyway.

We’ve seen so many lion-headed griffins from Horner, Mitchell, and Karpen, etc., that we don’t recognize a true griffin when we see one, as is present on this desk.  As a result, the seller identified these figures as sphinxes, which usually have the head of a human, which these do not.  Griffins, going back to antiquity, have the head of a bird; most often an Eagle.

Bidding on the desk will start at $2,000 and the expected range will be $4,000 to $6,000.  More images at the listing.

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This Egyptian Revival parlor table constructed by Allen and Brother is an impressive one.  A table like this is shown in the May 1996 issue of Magazine Antiques and I wouldn’t be surprised to know that the table’s owner at the time, Judith Hollander, had subsequently donated it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art where I photographed this.  I don’t know for sure.

Made of Walnut, burl Circassian walnut, ebonzing, gilt incising, and marble, it is a large table - 30 7/8 x 30 3/4 x 59 inches. The marble top on this table is breathtaking and I would have liked to step up on a ladder to photograph it but they don’t exactly have those standing by for museum goers to use.

I still lust over some of the Allen and Brother items we’ve seen come up for sale over the past year.

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