When he set about cleaning out the his grandfather’s former home on Birch Street, in the “KK Village” section of Jaffrey, David Trifiletti did not expect to find anything valuable – certainly not a pair of items that would sell at auction for more than $30,000 combined.

“It’s just a normal house, and my grandfather was a regular working-class guy, a simple man. The house had been in the family since the 1950s,” Trifiletti said. “My grandfather lived and worked in this area his whole life. He worked in the mills.”

Trifiletti’s grandfather, Tauno Anttila, lived in the home until the 1990s. After he died, the house stayed in the family, and Trifiletti’s uncle, David Tauno Anttila, lived there most recently. After David Anttila died, it fell to Trifiletti and his wife, Lori Pedrick, to clean out the house.

“My brother lives in San Diego, so Lori and I made it our summer project to clean out the house before it went on the market,” Trifiletti said. 

The house was full of furniture and clutter, and while Pedrick and Trifiletti were able to sell a few items on online, most of the contents went in a dumpster. Then, in a dark corner of the attic, Pedrick discovered a strange, intricately carved wooden chair. The chair matched a table which Trifiletti’s uncle had been using as a coffee table and was still in the living room. 

“I remembered that chair. It was honestly a little scary as a kid,” Trifiletti said. “It was always out of place in the house, and it was not comfortable to sit on. We just used it as everyday furniture.”

Trifiletti said his uncle David was a woodworker who made furniture himself. 

“He appreciated woodwork, and he did a lot of carving himself, which may explain why he hung on to it,” Trifiletti said. 

The arms of the chair have grimacing, lion-headed handholds, carved discs over the back that look like sun gods and intricate,  vine-like carvings on every surface that would look more at home in an “Indiana Jones” movie than in an attic in Jaffrey. 

When Trifiletti’s brother Anthony flew out to help clean out the house and saw the chair, he said he thought it might be worth something. 

“We called a local antique shop about the chair, but for some reason they never got back to us. Then, luckily, Lori’s friend Kirsten (Colantino) suggested we show the chair to Molly and Nick at Peterborough Auctions,” Trifiletti said. “We had found some other things, too, some nice paintings by Monadnock region painters, a few other things that we were curious about.” 

Nick Prior, founder of Peterborough Auctions along with his partner, Molly Williams, came out to look through the house.

“Nick told us that the paintings and other things were not things that could be sold at auction, but he was really intrigued by the table and chair. So we signed a contract, and he took the table and chair and started to research them,” Trifiletti said. “After about a month, Nick called me and said ‘David, are you ready for a long story?’”

After tracking down similar items around the world, Prior learned that both the table and chair were designed by Lockwood de Forest of the Ahmedabad Wood Carving Company, a company de Forest had founded in the 1800s with Louis Comfort Tiffany to export Indian style and design, to the United States. De Forest, who traveled extensively in India, was especially inspired by the style of art and furniture especially inspired by the region of Gujarat and the city of Ahmedabad, particularly the wood carving by craftsmen known as “mistri.” 

According to Williams and Prior, the carved discs, called support disc finials, over the back of the chair,  are Janus masks, inspired by the two-faced Roman god.  Other examples of Ahmedabad chairs are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the art collection at Bryn Mawr College. 

Prior contacted museums he believed would be interested in the table and chair, and in late September, both pieces sold at auction -- the table to a private collector and the chair to the Art Institute of Chicago. The private buyer of the table has said he will donate the table to a museum as well. 

Together, the two pieces of furniture fetched over $30,000.

Prior and Williams said such a find is unusual, and one of the most-exciting things about the auction business. 

“Ninety-five percent of the time, we have to tell people something is valuable only for sentimental reasons,” Prior said. “This was pretty exciting; we don’t see things like this very often. It’s definitely one of the most unique items I have ever seen.” 

“Our business is a little bit like treasure hunting,” Williams said. 

Trifiletti credits Prior with tracking down the obscure history of the table and chair. 

“If Nick hadn’t looked at the chair, I don’t know what would have happened to it. We probably  would have sold it for like, $500. This is all thanks to Nick. It was a labor of love for him; he was like a detective,” Trifletti said. 

Trifiletti has not been able to determine exactly how his grandfather ended up with the furniture, but he has a theory.

“It turns out that Lockwood de Forest had a daughter who lived in Marlborough, and my grandfather lived nearby there for a time. After the daughter was widowed, she had a caretaker on the property, a local person she was close to. So I can only guess that my grandfather knew the caretaker, or he knew Lockwood de Forest’s daughter, and that at some point, someone gave him the table and chair, but that is the best I can do as far as an explanation.”

Trifiletti says he and his brother will probably never know exactly how their grandfather ended up with rare, museum-quality furniture, but for now, they love that something from their grandfather’s life is part of a larger story.

“That’s what we are most happy about,” Trifiletti said. “That part of our grandfather’s legacy will go on.”

After being packed in a custom-made crate by a fine-arts handler, the chair will be shipped to Chicago, where it  will undergo a restoration process before going on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. 

“I’m hoping once the chair is on display, we can all go out there and see it,” Trifiletti said. “That will be pretty special.”