FRAMINGHAM, MA – Decades before Martha Stewart, Wallace Nutting, whose home and office were in Framingham, held sway over popular home furnishings and taste. Nutting’s Old America Company was located on Park St., in Downtown Framingham and produced prints, picture frames and reprodution furniture in the 1920’s-30’s.
A leader of the Colonial Revival movement, he helped Americans rediscover and appreciate their local and historic treasures through his nostalgic photographs, travel books like “Massachusetts Beautiful” and quality reproduction colonial furniture.
Today his works are sought after. There is a collectors society and an auctioneer, Michael Ivankovich, of Doylestown, PA, specializes in selling Nutting items.
Ivankovich recently sold a Nutting mahogany Goddard block front chest at auction for $ 18,700. It was the third highest price ever paid for a piece of Nutting furniture. The others were a highboy for $33,000 and a Goddard desk secretary for $ 36,750.
(For more information about Nutting, see our Wallace Nutting historic profile page).