This c1720 pair of Italian (Trapani) gilt copper and copper mounted pricket sticks sold for $243,750 at Christie’s sale of the collection of Mr. and Mrs. John H Gutfreund in New York. They had been estimated at $60,000-100,000. Trapani, in Sicily was a famous centre of coral-work production between the 16th and the 18th centuries. Famously expensive and collected or exchanged as diplomatic gifts between European nobility, coral-work form Trapani generally combines a gilt-copper ground with enamel embellishments and was fashioned into a variety of religious and secular items. The two day sale of the Gutfreund collection totalled $6.2 million.
