Estate auctions · Winter Park, Florida
A Tiffany town, and it shows in the estates
Leaded glass, American art pottery and decorative arts surface in Winter Park houses at a rate nowhere else in Florida matches. There is a reason for that, and it is four blocks from Park Avenue.
We are a Palm Beach County house, not an Orlando one. Central Florida is served by scheduled collection trips, and we will give you a real date when you call rather than imply we are around the corner.
Also covering
Maitland · Baldwin Park · College Park · Windermere · Longwood · Altamonte Springs
What comes out of Winter Park houses
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum on Park Avenue holds the most comprehensive collection of Tiffany glass anywhere, assembled from the Laurelton Hall salvage. Three generations of Winter Park collectors formed their taste in that building, and the result is a town whose estates contain leaded glass, lamps, pottery and American decorative arts far out of proportion to its size.
Rollins College and the Park Avenue galleries reinforced it. What comes out of houses in the Vias, Interlachen and the Isle of Sicily is not generic Florida estate contents — it is American art pottery, studio metalwork, period silver and pictures bought with an eye.
Neighbourhoods we work in
- Park Avenue
- The Vias
- Isle of Sicily
- Interlachen
- Windsong
- Lake Osceola
- Winter Park Chain of Lakes
What we look for here
- Leaded glass and lighting
- Tiffany Studios, Handel, Duffner & Kimberly and the better unsigned leaded shades. Signature, patination and the shade-to-base pairing are what separate four figures from six.
- American art pottery
- Rookwood, Newcomb College, Van Briggle, Weller and Roseville — marked, dated and attributed to the decorator where the cipher allows it.
- American decorative arts and silver
- Arts and Crafts metalwork, period furniture, and American silver from the houses around the Chain of Lakes.
- Fine art and works on paper
- The paintings, prints and drawings bought through the Park Avenue galleries and out of Rollins connections over the last sixty years.
Tell us what you have
Photographs and a sentence about the situation are enough to start. We will tell you what is worth selling at auction, what is not, and what it is likely to bring — before anyone commits to anything.
If there is a deadline — a closing, a clearance, a probate date — say so in the form and we will work to it.
(561) 220-4622Questions we get
- Are you actually located in Winter Park?
- No. Mayells is based in Palm Beach County and serves Central Florida through scheduled collection trips. We would rather say that plainly than list an address we do not keep staff at.
- How do I know whether a lamp is really Tiffany?
- Signature is the start and not the end — bases and shades were separated and recombined for a century, and there are good period contemporaries worth real money in their own right. Photographs of the shade, the base, and any stamps will usually let us tell you before anyone travels.
- Is it worth shipping a consignment to a Palm Beach auction?
- For art pottery, glass and jewelry, almost always — they travel well and the buyer pool is national regardless of where the sale is held. For a house full of large furniture the arithmetic is different, and we will say so.