Furniture

Looking to furnish a residence? The next few days will offer furniture and household goods that are primarily of interest because of affordability. Next Saturday at a sale beginning at 9 a.m. at the Warwick Township fire company on Route 263 in the Bucks County community of Jamison, the Clinton Gallery Auction will offer a collection of furniture including a Cushman dining room set. Characterized by straight lines of near Arts and Crafts proportions and wood of a a reddish color, Cushman was popular in the 1940s and '50s and is easily recognizable.

Furnishing a house? Getting ready for the fall hunting season? Got a bare spot on your wall to fill? A variety of sales over the next few days will solve all these problems and many others. If you're furnishing a house, you can get new furniture from an unusual source beginning at 11 a.m. today in Burlington County: the display contents of a model house at Calton Homes, Church Road in Marlton. Among the items that Alfred Finocchiario will offer from the house, which has been sold, are a couple of bedroom suites, a living room suite with glass coffee table, a glass-top kitchen table and four chairs, a baby grand piano and many small items.

Daniel Silvert, a renowned furniture refinisher and a fierce but gentlemanly supporter of the Free Library, died Thursday. He was 83 and lived in Northeast Philadelphia. Silvert was president of the Friends of the Northeast Regional Library for 13 years, and although he was described as a gentle man, he was known to vigorously battle for city financial support of the libraries. "He used to get to know City Council people behind the scenes and plead for them to help the libraries' budget," said Carol Ward, librarian at the Haverford Avenue Branch.

Barry S. Slosberg's two-day Summer Quality Auction next week will feature artwork and furniture from the collection of Samuel L. Evans, one of Philadelphia's most prominent African Americans and one of its longest-lived. Evans, now more than 100 years old, is best known as the founder in 1968 of the American Foundation of Negro Affairs and as a political activist in efforts including the "Buy Where You Work" picketing campaign against Columbia Avenue businesses in North Philadelphia that did not hire African Americans.

Thanks to a Main Line consignor who is remodeling, Barry Slosberg's two-day "quality" auction today and tomorrow has some better-than-average European furniture. The top piece of furniture, however, is American, a large corner closet that came from the house of the 18th-century printer Christopher Sauer. "It oozes age," Slosberg said this week at his gallery in Port Richmond as he went over some of the details of its workmanship, including its double arch, 16-glass-paned doors.

Perhaps it is the red, green and aquamarine colors of the porcelain table settings, the wall of portraits or the ample collection of period furniture, but the exhibition for the final gallery sale of the season at Samuel T. Freeman & Co. has a certain harmony to it. The furnishings, glassware, paintings, Russian silver and bronzes come from a wide variety of consigners. But during a visit to the gallery yesterday, it looked as if all the items to be sold at 1 p.m. from June 15 to 17 came from a single household, perhaps the country estate of an old Philadelphia family whose history could be read in its acquisitions.

The million-dollar prices recently paid for Philadelphia furniture at New York auctions have brought more objects made by colonial Philadelphia craftsmen to market. A unique high chest with a triangular pediment, its matching dressing table and two matching chairs will go under the hammer at Christie's May 28. The four pieces, which passed through seven generations of the Harrison-Edwards- Collins-Worrall family, will be offered as one lot and are expected to bring between $2 million and $3 million.

The bucolic village of Chester Springs is the setting of the 12th annual Yellow Springs Antiques Show this weekend. Nearly 50 dealers will spread their wares among four 18th- and 19th-century buildings in the Historic Yellow Springs complex in the Chester County village. Period and country furniture and furnishings will be spotlighted, but there'll be plenty of other objects and periods represented at the annual fund-raising event. A preview reception will take place tonight from 7 to 10, at a cost of $35. Reservations are requested.

If you're in the market for second-hand furniture, now is the time to hit the auction houses that specialize in it. Prices are way down. "See that dining room suite?" Barry Slosberg said yesterday, pointing to a dining room table with four chairs and a matching sideboard that will be sold tomorrow at his gallery at 232 N. Second St. "That's Baker, and it's all cherry. New, it would cost $1,500 to $2,000; I'll be lucky to get a couple of hundred dollars for it. " Granted, list prices for furniture are seldom what stores actually charge, but the bargains are still there, Slosberg said.

Mayor Street said yesterday that chief of staff Stephanie Franklin-Suber could have spent less than the $59,000 she has spent on furniture for her new office and that "on the face of it, it looks inappropriate. " But Street said he was undecided whether to accept her offer to reimburse the city $10,000 for part of the roughly $30,000 cost of the solid-cherry furniture she's having made for her office and an adjoining newly constructed conference room. The remaining $19,000 in furniture is standard office furniture for the staff in her office.