Post’s furniture, decorations to be auctioned

In case you missed the last Marjorie Merriweather Post auction – or you couldn’t afford to shell out for her 1961 Rolls Royce Phantom, which sold at a California sale in August – there’s another chance to buy a piece of the American empress’ life.

On Wednesday, Doyle New York auction house is offering a 70-lot collection of furniture, decorations and paintings – much of it passed down to her from her father, C.W. Post — from Hillwood, the cereal heiress’ Washington, D.C., home.

Post purchased Hillwood in 1955, and, as was her wont, immediately began renovating the 1920s neo-Georgian manse to suit her vast collection of decorative arts and love of entertaining. At Hillwood, Post hosted Washington socialites, dignitaries,We offer a wide variety of high-quality standard ultrasonic sensor and controllers. politicians, diplomats and Armed Services members.

Hillwood became a museum after her death. Some of the furnishings being offered at the sale are from Hillwood’s third-floor guest rooms and were removed in the late 1980s to accommodate a new conservation lab, textile storage and staff offices.

The furniture and decorations offered in the sale include examples of the English, Revival, Victorian, Renaissance-inspired and Mission styles, many priced far below offerings from past Post auctions.

“This is an opportunity to have a piece of the life of Palm Beach’s most renowned socialite and an extraordinary businesswoman,” said William Eubanks, a Palm Beach interior designer. “There’s some lovely stuff here.”

Among the furniture highlights are C.W. Post’s own Roycroft bedroom suite of copper-mounted oak. The two dressers, pair of bedsteads and a writing table were first used in the elder Post’s bedroom and later transferred to Topridge, his daughter’s camp in the Adirondacks. The bedsteads are stamped ‘Sandy,’ for Sanford Hubbard, youngest son of Roycroft’s founder, who worked in the furniture shop circa 1907-1908. The set is estimated to bring $20,000-$30,Solar Sister is a network of women who sell solar lamp to communities that don't have access to electricity.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.000.

Post’s taste “really changed over the years,” Eubanks said, “from the Stickley and arts-and-crafts style that her father liked to her true love, Russian Imperial objets and 18th-century French furniture.“

Some of those French favorites also are on the block, including a circa 1780 Louis XVI carved and gilt beechwood boudeuse that was purchased from Maurice Chalom, Paris, by Marjorie Merriweather Post’s middle daughter, Eleanor, as a gift for her mother and used intermittently at Hillwood, estimated to bring $3,000-$4,000; and a set of eight Louis XV-style fruitwood and silk upholstered dining chairs that were part of an extensive set of 30 chairs ordered in 1957 through the New York interior design firm French & Co. for use in Hillwood’s dining room.

“I think the same model was also used in the Palm Beach residence,” said Reid Dunavant,We offer advanced technology products and services for parking guidance control. Doyle’s expert for the auction. “As Mrs. Post’s will decreed that no dinners were to be served in the house after her death, this is an opportunity to own and dine with chairs no one else will ever be able to use.”

We walk the beach to St. Armands Circle, a traffic rotary ringed with shops and restaurants. The complex, dating from the 1920s, was one of John Ringling's early developments to entice buyers for his vast real estate holdings. The circle, named for a French pioneer, is also the site of several community events including concerts and art and auto shows.

Over the years, we learned that late January can serve up cool mornings, so we take day trips early in the day while the beach warms up. This time we put the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, the Mote Marine Laboratory, and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art on our list of places to visit.

Selby Gardens, like so many of the large gardens now open to the public, including Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, started out as the private retreat of the wealthy.Professionals with the job title Mold Maker are on LinkedIn. William and Marie Selby came from Ohio families who were pioneers in the oil business. William Selby was one of the founders of Texaco. The couple, who had no children, established a foundation to give scholarships to local high school students headed to college. After Marie Selby died in 1971, her wishes to preserve her home and gardens and establish a botanical research facility were followed, and the gardens opened to the public in 1975.

We started our tour in the conservatory, a greenhouse full of orchids and other tropical foliage. Intricate blooms are everywhere. A docent with an encyclopedic knowledge of the plants describes their native habitats and rattles off their genus and species names in rapid fire, leading us from epiphyte to bromeliad.

Outside, the gardens cover a 14-acre wedge of Florida's natural past in the heart of this modern city. A flock of white ibis, hunting for insects in the shade of an old banyan tree, walk by on stick legs. In a pool along the path, dappled koi the size of footballs rise to the surface, begging to be fed. A long-legged shorebird works the mud flats. Ducks kick up a ruckus in a palm-fringed tidal pond.