This pair of Imperial Porcelain Vases from St. Petersburg, 1852, made 1,945,250 sterling.(click on image to enlarge)
THERE was a new record price of £2,505,250 for English silver at Sotheby’s on July 6. A monumental silver wine cooler weighing 168 pounds and measuring well over a meter across was reckoned to be the
The top of an Italian engraved ivory inlaid rosewood centre table which made 937,250 at Sotheby's. (click on image to enlarge)
most important piece of English silver to come on the market for 50 years. It was sold to a private Asian buyer.
Sotheby’s 21 lot Treasures sale brought in an above estimate total of £13,951,250 and was described by Mario Tavella, Sotheby’s deputy chairman Europe as a fantastic achievement in the field of decorative arts. There was buying from Europe, the United States, Russia, Asia and the Middle East.
An Italian engraved ivory inlaid rosewood centre table, made for the Duke of Urbino Francesco Maria II Della Rovere (1549-1631), c 1596-7, and subsequently part of the collection of the Medici family, made £937,250. Its Medici provenance was unknown when it was sold for £6,000 at auction in 1989.
A North German amber casket bearing the arms of Prince William IV of Orange and Anne, Princess Royal of Great Britain, probably made in Danzig around 1734, realised £657,250 well beyond its pre-sale estimate of £200,000-300,000. (See earlier post for June 7 on antiquesandartireland.com).
A pair of porcelain vases from the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, St Petersburg in 1842 made £1,945,250. A set of three ivory painted and parcel-gilt Royal Pliants by Jean-Baptiste-Claude Séné (1748-1803) made for Queen Marie Antoinette’s Salon des Jeux at the Châteaux of Compiègne and Fontainebleau, c1786-87, made £541,250.
A total of six sales at Sotheby’s in London on July 6, Old Master Drawings, Western manuscripts and miniatures,, furniture, decorative arts and silver, and aristocratic heirlooms made a combined total of £27,488,438.