St. Mary’s Convent hosting 4-day estate sale featuring 19th century items
Items dating back to the 1800s will be for sale starting Nov. 6 in Wichita.
The Sisters of Saint Joseph-Mount St. Mary’s Convent is hosting a four-day estate sale starting Nov. 6 and running through Nov. 9 at 3700 E. Lincoln.
The sisters are downsizing, event coordinator Margaret Nugent said. Some of the buildings on the convent’s campus have been leased to other charities, leaving behind a lot of items that have been donated over the years that they no longer need.
“We had Catholic Charities move into the other house,” Nugent said. “Now we have St. Francis Community, and we moved all the glassware. We really didn’t have room for it. We had it in the villa. It was just extra between furniture and the glassware that we were not using.”
She said the items for sale will include religious icons, glassware, antique mission furniture, Asian antiques, pottery and jewelry. Some of the items come with handwritten notes detailing their history. Nugent said she especially likes the paintings for sale.
“Different people are going to like different things,” Nugent said. “We have some really nice glassware — some German and Irish pieces. We’re just finding so many, and we don’t need them.”
St. Mary’s Convent in Wichita is made up of a mother house, a villa with 32 apartments and Joseph Hall skill care center, which has 20 apartments.
Stubbs Estates — the same company that helped Mark Arts prepare for its move to a new building — has been entrusted with the estate sale.
“Since they are downsizing from their campus, they have decided to let go of a lot of things,” said Tammey Stubbs, who owns the business. “They are not materialistic, but people have been quite generous, so the collection is vast and wonderful and interesting and old.”
Some of the items have been at the convent for more than 100 years.
The thousands of items spread over a 7,000-square-foot area include sterling silver, plated silver, peach luster depression glass, a hand-carved chair featuring a monk, a 19th century doll buggy, a Mission oak buffet dating from the 1920s, a Mission grandfather clock, a china cabinet with a curved glass front, several antique chests and desks, a Tiffany-inspired chandelier that was in the entrance to the chapel and a collection of Hummel figurines based on the drawings of Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel in the 1930s.
“They have quite a lot of them. They are very quaint,” Stubbs said, “but yes, they were nun designed.”
There’s even a Hummel of Sister Hummel.
There’s also a rising bell — a hand bell that was used daily to wake the sisters, except during Holy Week when a handmade wooden clapper was sounded.
Perhaps one of the rarest items for sale is the 14 Stations of the Cross, which was in a chapel that is now leased to a charity. It was a duplicate, so it went in the sale.
“You will never find another,” Stubbs said. “It is only used in a church setting so it is very rare that a convent would let go of those.”
There’s also several watercolors and paintings including an oil painting, “Gathering Peat” by 19th century Scottish painter Peter Graham.
“I think it is interesting that the sisters lived with it for such a long time and enjoyed the view, the earth, the landscape of the painting,” Stubbs said. “I was just in awe that it was in the sale.”
The company has spent four weeks polishing the silver, appraising the antiques and pricing items.
Money from the estate sale will go to support charitable work. The convent belongs to a larger web of communities called the Congregation of St. Joseph. There are centers in several states with a voted-upon leadership council that will determine where to best allocate the money from the estate sale, Nugent said.
The sale begins at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 6. Directions to the sale will be posted on estatesales.net Tuesday.
This story was originally published November 4, 2019 at 11:01 AM.