All during his drive to the C.D. Peacock jewelry store in Oak Brook, several scripts played through John Greven`s mind. What if the drab little painting that his grandmother had bequeathed him three decades earlier were an original by the celebrated 17th Century Dutch artist Adriaen van de Velde?
What if it were a Rembrandt?
Such are the dreams that propelled Greven and an estimated 2,000 others to two C.D. Peacock stores last week, beckoned by newspaper ads seeking original old oil paintings, jewelry, men`s watches and other objects of art.
The ”sales event,” which ended last weekend, was an offer to buy auntie`s jewelry, grandma`s silverware and other potentially collectible items gathering dust in the attic or growing mildew in the crawl space.
Charterhouse & Co., the Grosse Pointe, Mich. company that conducted the indelicately named ”trunk sales,” in Oak Brook and Northbrook, came away with at least a few intriguing items in the estimated 650 lots purchased.
Company president W. Michael Williams snared for his personal collection a silver-plated globe inkwell that once belonged to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the 19th Century Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet.
The company also bought an aviation document signed by Orville Wright and autographed vintage photographs of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Jackie Cooper and Jean Harlow.
This sale was the 203rd for Charterhouse, which has been conducting these events since 1985, Williams said. The company in turn sells the items to museum gift shops, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Monticello and Mt. Vernon; department stores; and a few jewelry stores, Williams said. The company also sells to dealers in the U.S and abroad.
Such sales have become a burgeoning business fueled in part by the recession that has squeezed many American families. In this case, part of the proceeds would go to the bankrupt Peacock Co., which is facing liquidation.
The jewelry end of the business alone amounts to nearly a billion-dollar- a-year industry in the United States, and those involved predict sales will grow by 23 percent through 1994.
Greven`s dreams, like many, died fast. He was offered $150 for his painting. He refused, but he discovered something else.
”The sentimental side of it has connected me with it,” Greven said, fumbling with his painting and pieces of its fractured frame. ”Maybe it`s just my age. This is a connection with my family in Germany that I`m definitely going to keep.”
A student at University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana when his grandmother died in 1961, Greven received a box postmarked from her hometown of Cologne, Germany. Inside was the painting, depicting three peasants at a festival. A brass tab was engraved with the name ”Adriaen van de Velde.”
Greven put it on his bookshelf. He covered it with a plastic bag. He forgot about it, except when he moved and would have to pack it.
Greven is 53 years old now, working as a social worker in the Chicago Public Schools. He brought his grandmother`s painting to the trunk show but couldn`t bring himself to sell it.
”What value is there on my heritage and my German ancestors?” he asked himself later outside the store, after declining the offer. ”Maybe there`s a limit to it. If they were to say $5 million or $10 million, who knows?”
Instead, he settled for a history lesson about the copy from the painting expert at Peacock. Greven relished the knowledge, saying perhaps it revealed a status-conscious and not altogether forthright side to his grandparents, or better yet, maybe someone in his family was an accomplished copier.
”Gee, now I realize this painting has a great deal of value to me in a curious sort of way,” Greven said. ”I`m going to go out and have it repaired and framed.”
Greven`s experience is a common one, Williams said. About one-third of the people bring in items without any intention of selling, rather they want to learn more about the items` history and worth, Williams said. Another third find their sentimental connections are too strong to relinquish the item for the offer made, and Charterhouse typically buys about one-third, Williams said.
Last week`s show was similar to others coordinated by Charterhouse, considered a heavyweight in the trunk show business. Peacock places the ads and turns over space in the store to Charterhouse, which brings in gemologists and experts in documents, watches, silver, painting and related disciplines.
People come with their ancestors` silverware, jewelry, paintings, even documents, photographs and porcelain, and an expert scrutinizes and discusses the items, offering bids on those items deemed collectible and marketable. Soft-spoken, civilized negotiation ensues.
Charterhouse typically buys items for half the amount of their future retail price, Williams said. He added that the company scheduled the show to avoid conflicts with the Christmas shopping season and an anticipated going-out-of-business sale at Peacock.
”This is an opportunity for people who have patronized Peacock`s for a number of years to come to a store they have trusted for so long in order to sell items,” said Robert Sager, president of Gordon Brothers, a Boston liquidation specialist that bought Peacock`s inventory assets earlier this month.
One woman brought a canvas bag nearly filled with heavy, tarnished silverware, bangles, hat pins, a diamond brooch, rings, and a brass pin, among other items. Her mother had passed them to her and she kept them in a bushel basket under the stairs of her Glen Ellyn home or in her jewelry box.
”I didn`t tell anybody in my family I was coming here,” she said, declining to offer her name. She said she still hasn`t told one sister about selling Mom`s diamond earrings and necklace at an estate sale in 1985. ”She`d kill me,” the woman said.
”I`ve hauled this around for years, since I`ve been married, and I guess you just get tired of hauling it around,” she said. She sold some of it for $250 but kept most of it, saying she couldn`t stomach the thought that Charterhouse would sell the less-valuable items to a smelter.
And, she doesn`t feel guilty, but she still won`t give her name.
”I`m not using it,” she said of the items she sold. ”My daughter is in my jewelry box all the time so if anything was of any value to her, she would have taken it. The things that I really, really enjoy, I have displayed at home.”
Larry and Vivian Rudy, of Des Plaines, contributed to the collection. They brought rings, a lady`s pocket watch and garnet bracelets, among other items, from Vivian`s mother and aunt. They sold some of it and kept some.
”You keep a few pieces for sentimental reasons,” Vivian said, ”and you have to keep the others only as memories. We still have the memories.”
But what about passing those memories, in the form of old, if inexpensive jewelry, to her children?
”You can give it to the kids, but with kids, you never know what they`re going to do with it.”
Indeed. Just ask Vivian`s mom.
