In 1970, an author purchased furniture that was once owned by co-founder Clifford Roberts.
John Garrity
Excerpted from “Archives: Original” was published in April 2015.
First of all, my antique table is not for sale. Secondly, this is not a table. This is a three-piece mahogany empire sideboard that once belonged to Clifford Roberts, co-founder of Augusta National Golf Club. Visitors of my Kansas City home, who encounter a sideboard on their way to the library’s cigars and cognacs, always stop to read the museum-style logo displayed on the center drawer:
Of course, this logo is wrong because it is a table, but that’s the purpose of the work I bought in New York City 45 years ago. I sit on a straight bar stool, I’m for sports and Rolling stones Alfred Hitchcock’s pseudonym novel Mysterious magazinestand out on an ancient royal portable. On the lid stationery box on two cabinet posts, each fragile onion and 20 pounds of typewriter paper remained spinning. The center drawer is the other central component of Manhattan’s literary life, circa 1970: carbon paper, a bottle of Wite-Out correction fluid, pencils, Bic Ballpoints, Staples, Scissors, Scostors, Scotch tape, metal ruler and obligatory dagger-style letter opener.
How Roberts Hire My Sideboard – Again no For Sale – is a question of conjecture. The signal indicates that our 34th President used it to post his signature in a contract, letter, or – given his preference for ancient games, his signature. Augusta National co-founder Robert Tyre (Bobby) Jones may have the same purpose when visiting Roberts’ Park Avenue apartment. Again, Roberts’ three marriages may have put one in his dining room, the dictionary of honoring the sideboard defined as “a piece of flat furniture with a cupboard and drawer storing utensils, glasses and table linens”, in which case, fingerprint paint used to flour would only confirm the role of the servants’ wealth in the Middle Ages.
You will find that Roberts is not just a “U.S. investment dealer and golf administrator” (the restore description of Wikipedia), but he has more friends than Eisenhower. He is one of Ike’s closest campaign advisers, his investment manager, and his occasional Kangaroos, according to the oral history of two men. If I table On sale, I would change the logo: “As you can imagine, Roberts has a huge pile of untraceable cash on this particular desk.”
How many you might ask, isn’t this historically worth it? What is its assessed value?
Before I answer, let’s consider where the sideboard comes from. If you are new to antiques, the source is a record of ownership of a piece of furniture or art that is used to authenticate and judge its quality. In this case, the origin of the object is vague, because I don’t know who made the sideboard. I don’t know where or when to build it. The identity of the original buyer; there are several deep reasons in the cabinet, but it is by no means infringement. Or how and when to become Clifford Roberts’ property, despite sufficient means, he was called the frugal man. The sign, quoted previously, places the date of manufacturing between 1875 and 1885, but my experts place their bets closer to 1820, the year that Charles Ferdinand D’Artois—Duc du Berry and nephew of Louis XVI—was assassinated by a Bonapartist saddlemaker outside the Paris Opera House, hastening the downfall of the Bourbon dynasty.
But there is no mystery about my treatment of the sideboard and its treatment for the past half century. Our road intersected in 1970 in the dirty west side neighborhood, known as Hell’s Kitchen. I am 23 years old in the Midwest, starting from Stanford University, and blending on the third floor of 424 West 46th Street. After just nine months as a resident scholar at the YMCA on 23rd Street (YMCA), I did not provide furniture for my studio apartment. My most urgent need besides the bed is a table. “Press your head out of the window and look left,” said a helpful neighbor. “Two blocks.”
That’s what I introduced the Behemoth Savior Army Thrift Store at 536 West 46th Street. The third floor of the Redbrick building houses special treasures from the Army – quality furniture, carpets, Chinese, paintings, sculptures and collections left over from real estate sales, or donated by leaving the snowbird. Within two minutes, I purchased a slightly worn cow cloth club chair from Harvard Club in New York ($25). Within five minutes, I bought a brass bookkeeper’s lamp ($10). Ten minutes, stopping in front of an elegant dining table-side set, I saw the hand-painted logo: “French Empire Table [my emphasis] & sideboard…from Clifford Roberts’ estate…. “I may not have known the table from the sideboard, but I’m sure when Heck knew who Clifford Roberts was.
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I negotiated with the curator on the third floor, a kind old man, a major at the Redemption level. The Major didn’t mind breaking up, but he would definitely tell me morally that Eisenhower didn’t necessarily stick to the sideboard. “We know the president ate the table at the table, but guessed he used it,” he said. “I was impressed by the honesty, and I told him that Roberts was alive and kicked in Georgia, contrary to his understanding. “I’m so happy to hear this,” he said.
The $150 sideboard made me back my salary for more than a week. (It was a small fortune, but I just got a $300 settlement from Shamrock Insurance Co. as I was in a passenger position in a non-construction taxi accident.) I saved on delivery by borrowing professional furniture and rolling my new precious property onto my apartment. Curbs are hard to negotiate, so I went out like a clothing area worker, going in and out of traffic, whipping and shouting insults at angry yells and yelling insults. The last 50 yards were the hardest as I had to walk through a bunch of hot dog carts with their blue and yellow umbrellas outside the west side warehouse of Sabrett.
The sideboard is actually three pieces (and therefore three pieces of travel) and the central drawer is supported by tracks and pins, so I was able to wrestle the cabinet helplessly. Reassembling the device was even more challenging, but I designed a small foot to finish. I didn’t breathe enough, so I planted the typewriter on the table and rolled it into paper with paper and carbon Monastery Road On stereo – Must go to work.
Twenty years later, I covered my first master.
I’ve never met Roberts. In 1977, he committed suicide at 83 years old, more than a decade before I first set foot on Augusta’s National Reason. If we meet and recognize his place in the political history of America and in golf history – I will definitely ask him a question that has bothered me for years: Do you think this is a sideboard…or a table?
Today, neither of these. The sideboards on the cliff are largely decorative, occupying the living room walls and supporting family photos. My choir director’s wife stores music in her drawer and waits for that day Antique road show Back to Kansas City, our boat comes in. (Just kidding. The table is no sell. )
Pure out of curiosity, I recently evaluated the article and of course, where it comes from. My expert is a 33-year veteran of Heirloom Métier, trying to lower my expectations. “All furniture is worth less,” Ramon L. Wright said as he stared at my iPhone photos. “Baby boomers are shrinking or entering retirement homes. Young people buy in IKEA and pottery barns. There’s so much furniture that floods the market.”
I admit, “The pencil case is a bit of a beating.” He recognizes the combined effects of bourbon and drives down the stairs to my Hell’s Kitchen Apartment.
Wright gave me a look. “Those are tool boxes,” he said. “That’s where they put the cutlery.” He pointed out that he pointed to another feature that had long troubled me – the nest of wooden partitions in the upper right drawer. “That’s where they keep their wine.” du.
And desktop computers, my portable typewriter has been working for many years?
“Not a tabletop. Most importantly, they might have a silver tray with candy.”
I patted my forehead. As you can imagine, Ike pulled out the horse crayon from that particular tray!
Wright took a deep breath and gave me a frown brow treatment before making the verdict. “Ten years ago, I repriced your sideboard to $35 to $4,000. But now, with the market so frustrated, I would say…two to two hundred thousand.”
Not bad, considering that I got it in a yard of one and a half for the Salvation Army. And if my antique table (Cliffe’s table) one day would attract the eyes of one of the billionaire golf collectors who paid a thousand dollars for Francis Ouimet’s cutlery, or a million dollars for the shed of the starter of the old course.
