Members of the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas are still doing the arithmetic, but one thing is clear after Sunday's fund-raising auction at the Old Stone Farmhouse.
Gov. Charles W. Turnbull is all set to furnish a drawing room in fine West Indian style.
Turnbull was among about 100 bidders at the auction which featured dozens of pieces of antique furniture, many of them pieces from a Guyanese estate. The governor made off with a mahogany hat rack, a splendid reproduction of a West Indian-style parlor table, a circa 1840 mahogany and caned chaise lounge from Barbados and a Louis XVI-style loveseat sofa. And he got a couple of them for a song, like many of the other pieces that were bid upon.
About 250 people joined the governor at the second annual auction, which raised money for the congregation to help maintain the St. Thomas Synagogue, designated earlier this year as a National Historic Landmark.
Some were surprised that artworks by local artists drew some of the highest bids of the day: paintings by Don Dahlke and Rae Kehoe each brought in $2,900, matched by the same amount for a 100-year-old mahogany and Spanish cedar wardrobe from Curacao.
But there were bargains galore: a fantastic Art Deco dressing table with three-part mirror from Barbados, about 70 years old, was notable among them with a winning bid of just $400.
A spokeswoman for the congregation said they hope to improve further on the auction next year by opening the main gate to the farm house (so attendees don't have to walk all the way around) and improving on parking, which spread far up and down Mahogany Run Road on Sunday.
