(The first) Mrs. Hilfiger's furniture is going to auction up on Riversville
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Already there’s excitement, with bidders arriving from South Carolina, check books in hand
The house itself will remain where it started off back in January, 2021: 591 Riversville Road, though the price has dropped from $40 million to $17.995, but now the furnishings are leading the exodus.
The Collection of Susie Hilfiger at Denbigh Farm on April 19 & 20 @11 am
The Collection of Susie Hilfiger at Denbigh Farm represents the life-long interests and connoisseurship of a family whose name is synonymous with style, luxury, and uncompromising taste. Furnished and decorated by Susie Hilfiger, Denbigh Farm has been her residence for over twenty-five years, welcoming family and friends into its classic country interiors and elegantly designed gardens. Ms. Hilfiger’s interior design prowess and keen collector’s eye added to the property’s storied past by incorporating the comfortable English country furnishings that fill much of the house with French and American decorations and fine art, complemented by classic Colefax & Fowler upholstery and window treatments, and charming personal touches throughout. Denbigh Farm is stately yet inviting, full of carefully chosen fine art and decorations that speak to Susie Hilfiger’s sense of style and her ability to bring together American and European collecting traditions to create the personal and bespoke interiors that define Denbigh Farm.
Ms. Hilfiger can only hope that the sale of Queen Anne night soil cabinets and Amish cheese graters will generate the same buyer’s frenzy exhibited at last Thursday’s auction of Alex Murdaugh’s belongings, an auction that featured murder weapons, longhorn cattle horns, and Yeti coffee cups. Everything sold, and for astonishing prices.
The auction, which was held about 100 miles away at Liberty Auction in Georgia, lasted over six hours, and Steven Dugger, the auctioneer handling the sale, told CNN that the event was “the largest auction I have seen here for sure.”
Liberty Auction owner Lori Mattingly agreed, telling CNN that for the firm, the Murdaugh lot was the “largest lot ever sold … by a lot.”
The property became a household name during the nationally televised trial of its owner, Alex Murdaugh, a former lawyer, who was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month for shooting and killing his wife and son there.
The bidding began just after 4 p.m. in a packed, stuffy room. And when the auction finally came to a close at 10:30 pm, all of the Murdaugh items were sold.
It will take several days to do a full accounting of the sales but some of the items sold for eye-catching sums. A Yeti cup, which typically retails for $35, sold for $400, according to Mattingly. A beer koozie sold for $500, while mounted antlers went for $10,000 and a furniture set for $30,000.
The sale also included beds, chests, tables, chairs, a popcorn maker, and picture frames that once hung on the walls of the Moselle estate, along with a large rack of hunting equipment. Robert Daley’s book “Man with A Gun,” a story about a man who commits an accidental homicide, was also among the items sold.The auction, which was held about 100 miles away at Liberty Auction in Georgia, lasted over six hours, and Steven Dugger, the auctioneer handling the sale, told CNN that the event was “the largest auction I have seen here for sure.”
Mattingly described the scene of the bidding as “frenzy buying.” Bidders “were just determined to get what they wanted,” she said.
“That just proves people have more money than sense,” she added.
Certainly, the Hilfiger name is far more famous than Murdaugh’s, or it was until a few months ago. Can it command prices close to what stuffed animal heads and loose shotgun shells did down in redneck country? We’ll just have to wait and see.
