Auctions: Toys, decorative arts, furniture up for bids

Two area auction houses that regularly offer appraisals on Antiques Roadshow - Noel Barrett, known for toys, and Freeman's, known for fine furniture and decorative arts - will have major sales in the next few days.

Barrett's sale, "Something for Everyone," beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Eagle Fire Hall in New Hope, will offer more than 700 lots of holiday items, antique games, clockwork toys, and salesmen's samples. The sale is also being carried online at www.liveauctioneers.com.

One of the earliest lots - and a top piece in the auction - is an early-20th-century clockwork Halloween Vegetable Man improbably made of papier-mache. (Clockwork figures are generally made of sturdier material.) The 16-inch-high figure is only the second such Vegetable Man to have surfaced in recent memory, according to Barrett, who says the earlier one had significant repairs. This one is expected to sell for $10,000 to $15,000.

Also expected to bring five-figure prices are a 23-inch-long clockwork 4-4-0 Carette 1-Gauge steam locomotive and tender ($12,000 to $15,000) and a Marklin train station ($10,000 to $15,000).

French, American items. Two bisque-headed dolls of French origin are expected to sell for $4,000 to $6,000 each: a horsewoman driving a pull-toy team of horses and a 19th-century Lambert Bal Masque automaton dancer atop a music box who kicks her leg, lifts a black mask with one hand, and shakes a tambourine with the other.

The sale also features the last of the toys from the collection of famed Disney cartoonist Ward Kimball, including two clockwork locomotives, antique valentines, a folk-art collection of figural smoking stands in such shapes as butlers, maids, and bellhops, and a collection of Brownie toys, elfin-like creatures made of lithographed paper on wood.

Previews are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. to sale time Saturday at the fire house at the intersection of Route 202 and Sugan Road. Information: 215-297-5109.

Furniture, art, and rugs at Freeman's. The Freeman's sale is a three-day event, beginning at 10 a.m. Wednesday with English furniture, silver, and decorative arts; continuing at 10 a.m. Thursday with continental furniture and decorative arts; and concluding at 11 a.m. next Friday.

  Among the 500 lots in Wednesday's session are George III furniture, notably a mahogany secretary bookcase ($6,000 to $8,000); a pair of Chinese Canton enamel, amber, and mineral tree models on wood stands ($30,000 to $40,000); and 21 pieces of stoneware from the Dorothy and F. Otto Haas Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In Thursday's continental session, there are a pair of late 19th-century Italian "Grand Tour" marble busts of Roman senators ($10,000 to $15,000 for the pair). They were so-called because they were sought after by wealthy Englishmen polishing their educations by making the "grand tour" of the continent, usually ending in Rome.

Previews are from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday at the gallery at 1808 Chestnut St. For more information, call 215-563-9275 or go to www.freemansauction.com.

Antiques and art at Stephenson's. Beginning at 2 p.m. Friday in Southampton, Stephenson's Auction will offer more than 470 lots of antiques and fine art at the gallery at 1005 Industrial Blvd. Among them are groupings of local painters, notably landscapes by the Philadelphia artist Edith Longstreth Wood that were consigned by a thrift shop to which they had been donated.

There also are works by Bucks County painter David Hahn and by Charles Frist, also a locally listed artist, as well as a portrait by James Cadenhead of the British World War II hero Bernard Montgomery, done during World War I. It has a presale estimate of $500 to $1,000, according to the www.LiveAuctioneers.com online auction catalog accessible through www.stephensonsauction.com.

Preview is from noon to 2 p.m. Friday at the sale site. For further information, call 215-322-6182.