Israel Sack
Sack in 1953
Born(1883-09-15)September 15, 1883
Kaunas, Lithuania, Russian Empire
DiedMay 4, 1959(1959-05-04) (aged 75)
Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.
CitizenshipAmerican
OccupationAntiques dealer
Known forSupplying antique furniture to America's major private and museum collections
Children3, including Albert

Israel Sack (September 15, 1883 – May 4, 1959) was a Lithuanian American antiques dealer specializing in early American furniture.[1] Sack was instrumental in developing the private collections of Henry Ford, Henry Francis du Pont, Ima Hogg, and other leading collectors and supplying the Americana collections of "virtually every major museum in the country" per The New York Times.[2] According to The Washington Post, Sack's firm was "reputed to have invented the American antique market."[3]

Life and career

Born into a Lithuanian Jewish merchant family in Kaunas, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, Sack left school at age fourteen to become a cabinetmaker. Evading Russian army conscription, he emigrated to London and then to Boston, arriving in the United States in 1903. He spent two years working for a Boston cabinetmaker who routinely counterfeited antiques. Sack soon established his own cabinetmaking business on Charles Street in Boston and quickly earned a nationwide reputation for locating, restoring, and delivering top-quality antiques to private collectors and museums. In 1910, he married Ann Goodman, a Jewish Bostonian who had immigrated to the United States from Russia as a child. In 1924, Sack purchased the King Hooper House in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and turned the 18th-century mansion into a showroom for his antiques. Sack relocated his struggling firm to Manhattan in 1934 during the Great Depression. The antiques market recovered after World War II.[1][4]

In addition to his private clientele, Sack sourced furniture and decorative arts for museums and future museum collections at Winterthur Museum, The Henry Ford, Bayou Bend, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the "Israel Sack Galleries"[5][6] American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Hood Museum of Art, Colonial Williamsburg, Wayside Inn, New-York Historical Society, and the White House.[2][3]

His aesthetic approach to American furniture, which prized line, form, and proportion over the more ornate decoration favored by European furniture-makers, shaped America's antiques market. Albert Sack codified his father's approach in Fine Points of Furniture: Early American, published in 1950 and reissued in 1993 as the "first practical guide to connoisseurship in the field."[1]

Israel Sack and his son, Albert Sack, were influenial in steering their clients to gift important American pieces of furniture to American Museums. This cast an indelible mark of "masterpieces of our heritage" in the public mind. Further, Albert donated a vast collection of photographs and related ephemera of antique furniture to the Yale University Art Gallery. which had a palpable effect on research and scholarship in the field.[7]

Death and legacy

On May 4, 1959, Sack died at Brooks Memorial Hospital in Brookline, Massachusetts. He had retired two years earlier and maintained a home in Brookline.[8] He was survived by his wife of 49 years.[1] His sons, Harold, Albert, and Robert Sack, carried on the family business after their father's death. Harold memorialized his father in the book American Treasure Hunt: The Legacy of Israel Sack (Little, Brown and Co., 1987).[2] Harold also served as an advisor to Henry Francis du Pont, chair of the committee that presided over the redecoration of the White House under the direction of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.[3] Israel Sack, Inc., went out of business in 2002, still "regarded as the preeminent specialist in antique American furniture and a model of ethical and aesthetic standards."[9] Israel Sack's last surviving son, Albert, died in 2011 at age 96.[10]

In 1996, the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library awarded the Henry Francis du Pont Award posthumously to Sack and his three sons for having “dedicated themselves to the connoisseurship, preservation, and collecting of American furniture.”[9] Israel Sack, Inc., had sold more than 2,600 objects during its century-long existence.[11]

Sack was one of many early 20th-century New England- and New York-based antiques dealers who were Jewish immigrants from Eastern and Central Europe.[4]

Donated by the family in 2011, the Sack Family Archive and the Israel Sack, Inc., Archive are held by Yale University Library and the Yale Art Gallery.[11][12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Stillinger, Elizabeth (February 2000). "Sack, Israel (1883-1959), antiques dealer". American National Biography Online. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1701547. ISBN 978-0-19-860669-7.
  2. ^ a b c Reif, Rita (1983-10-27). "Israel Sack's Heirs Share His Genius for Fine Antiques". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-09-16.
  3. ^ a b c Conroy, Sarah Booth (1987-11-15). "The American Antiques Angler". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-09-16.
  4. ^ a b Greenfield, Briann G. (2009). Out of the Attic: Inventing Antiques in Twentieth Century New England. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 57–89. ISBN 978-1-55849-710-8. JSTOR j.ctt5vk0v7 – via JSTOR.
  5. ^ "The Fine Points Of Albert M Sack 1915-2011". Antiques and the Arts Weekly. June 7, 2011.
  6. ^ "Fortunate Son: Reading the memoirs of Albert Sack". Antiques. July 21, 2011. Retrieved October 11, 2022.
  7. ^ Hoosierwoodcraft (July 21, 2018). "Israel and Albert Sack, Godfathers of Antique American Furniture" (Video) – via YouTube. Both of these antique dealers raised American antique furniture on a pedestal as "Objects of Desire" and later convinced their clients to donate their collection to American museums. So now, all citizens will equate 18th American furniture as some of the masterpieces of our heritage. Albert Sack should also be remembered for his donation of 7,000 black and white photographs of all antique furniture bought and sold by Israel Sack Inc. in its 100-year history, and the notes and research used in publication of books and articles published by the company. That donation to the Yale University Art Gallery (i.e. Rhode Island Furniture) has vastly increased the resources available to a new generation of collectors, dealers, and scholars and encouraged a new level of scholarship and research on American furniture.
  8. ^ "Israel Sack (obituary)". The Morning News. Wilmington, Delaware. 1959-05-06. p. 29. Archived from the original on 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-09-19.
  9. ^ a b "Robert M Sack, 79, Perpetuated Israel Sack Legacy". Antiques and the Arts Weekly. 2006-10-10. Archived from the original on 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-09-16.
  10. ^ Vitello, Paul (2011-06-01). "Albert M. Sack, Antiques Dealer and Author, Dies at 96". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-09-19.
  11. ^ a b "Israel Sack, Inc., Archive". Yale University Library. Archived from the original on 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-09-16.
  12. ^ "Sack Family Archive". Yale University Art Gallery. Archived from the original on 2022-09-22. Retrieved 2022-09-16.

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