With everything from photographs of Yeti footprints to vintage film posters, an elephant bird egg and a fossilised giant palm frond Christie’s online auction Out of the Ordinary: The Online Edit runs from now until September 10. The sale offers collectors of all things extraordinary the chance to acquire unusual objects from around the world at any time. A group of photographs showing Yeti footprints in the Memluk Basin (£3,000 – 5,000) were taken by Eric Earle Shipton (1907-1977) during the 1951 Everest expedition. Shipton’s photographs ignited speculation about the existence of a Yeti which had been growing since N.A. Tombazi made the first European sighting during an expedition to the Sikkim Himalaya in 1925. Edmund Hillary had a strange experience at 19,000 feet in the Himalayas in 1952. In his book High Adventure (1955) he reported: “We were climbing quite a steep pitch when Pemba stopped and picked something off the rock. Obviously greatly excited he showed it to Angpemba. Feeling somewhat curious I asked them what it was all about. They placed in my hand a tuft of long black hairs – thick and coarse they looked more like bristles than anything else. “Yeti, Sahib, Yeti”. I couldn’t help being impressed by their conviction and it did seem a strange place to find some hair. We were well over 19,000 feet and the Abominable Snowman was obviously no mean rock climber”.
Eric Earle Shipton (1907-1977), Photographer
Yeti footprints in the Menlung Basin Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd., 2014.
I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE
Reynold Brown (1917-1991) Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd., 2014
1958, Paramount, U.S.