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.
Belmont House and other important clients is the title of a three day online sale by Sheppards of Durrow on February 3, 4 and 5. The auction will feature a large range of antique furniture, art, jewellery and collectibles among more than 1300 lots. The catalogue is online.
This William IV burr walnut and ebony inlaid card table sold for a hammer price of 800 at Victor Mee’s January decorative interiors sale yesterday. The auction of 1,140 lots continues today and can be followed on easyliveauction.com
The family collection of Patricia Mountbatten, whose father, son and mother in law were murdered by the IRA, will come up at Sotheby’s in London on March 24. The 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma was one of seven people aboard Shadow V when it was blown up by the Provisional IRA off Cliffoney, Co. Sligo in August 1979.The party comprised Lord Mountbatten, Lord John Brabourne (Patricia’s husband), their 14 year old twins Timothy and Nicholas, Lord Brabourne’s mother Lady Doreen Brabourne and 15 year old Paul Maxwell from Fermanagh, a friend of the family. Mountbatten, Nicholas Brabourne and Maxwell were killed immediately. Lady Brabourne died the next day and the others survived serious injuries. In a press release Sotheby’s say that Lady Mountbatten, who died in 2017, dealt with her tragedies with extraordinary courage and grace. More than 350 lots from Newhouse, the Brabourne’s 18th century home, will come under the hammer at Sotheby’s on March 24 with estimates ranging from £80 to £100,000. The sale unveils tales of an important family through the art and objects they lived with. Born in 1924 Patricia Mountbatten was great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, great niece of Russia’s last Tsarina, first cousin to Prince Philip and the daughter of Britain’s last Viceroy of India. She had an unconventional upbringing, from weekend parties with King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson at her parents’ estate in Hampshire to evacuation on the eve of the Blitz to stay with Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III in her palatial Fifth Avenue apartment in New York. In 1943 Patricia entered the Women’s Royal Navy Service and met John Knatchbull, 7th Lord Brabourne (1924-2005). They married in 1946. As a Captain in the armed forces, Brabourne had worked for Patricia’s father in India, and later became an Academy-Award nominated film producer, behind titles such as A Passage to India and Agatha Christie adaptations Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express. When Patricia inherited her father’s peerages, the pair became one of the very few married couples in England each of whom held a peerage in his or her own right and the custodians of two great inheritances. John’s included Mersham le Hatch, an elegant house by Robert Adam in the Kent countryside, where the Knatchbull family had settled in the 15th century. Furnished by the great Thomas Chippendale in the 1770s, it held within it objects with extraordinarily diverse provenances, including the explorer and botanist Sir Joseph Banks who travelled to Australia on Cook’s first expedition, Jane Austen’s beloved niece Fanny and the Marquesses of Sligo. Patricia inherited precious objects associated with her parents from their Art Deco penthouse on Park Lane – with treasures from Edwina’s maternal grandfather, the great Edwardian financier Sir Ernest Cassel – and their time in India. Among the lots to be offered is an Anglo-Indian inlaid bureau on stand supplied by Thomas Chippendale to Sir Edward Knatchbull in 1767. It is estimated at £40,000-£60,000. The stand was made by Chippendale for the sum of £4 to house the Indian inlaid miniature bureau. The sale of 350 lots will offer jewellery, furniture, paintings, sculpture, books, silver, ceramics and objets d’art.
UPDATE: Over 1,400 participants from 55 countries drove the sale total to £5,620,798, over three times the pre-sale estimate with 98% of lots sold.
There was a world record for a rare Oliver Cromwell 50 shilling coin, dating from 1656 at Dix Noonan Webb in London on January 21. The gold coin sold for £471,200 over a top estimate of £150,000. There were bidders on the phone and the internet from the Far East, North America and the UK. The piece, struck by Thomas Simon, Cromwell’s chief engraver, went to an American buyer.
Another highlight was a rare and fine silver Commonwealth Shilling by Irishman David Ramage. Once in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, the shilling is decorated with a small shield of England and sold for £74,400 against an estimate of £15,000-20,000. It went to a UK Collector. David Ramage was Simon’s competitor and fell out of favour with Cromwell but had the monopoly on the production of 17th trade tokens.
The Cromwell 50 shilling gold coin, dating from 1656, by Thomas Simon,
An extremely rare Irish Proof or Pattern Halfpenny is one of a number of valuable Irish coins coming up at Dix Noonan Webb in London. Bought for the equivalent of $2 many years ago it will be offered at a live/online auction of Coins and Historical Medals on on February 2. It is from the collection of the late Eric Newman, an important numismatist from the US. The George III halfpenny dates to 1774. Complete with a portrait of the long haired king and with a harp on the reverse it is estimated at £2,400-3,000. An Irish George III pattern mule penny from 1813, one of only three specimens known, is estimated at £6,000-8,000.
Irish Proof or Pattern Halfpenny UPDATE: THE HALFPENNY (ILLUSTRATED) SOLD FOR £3,000, THE GEORGE III PATTERN MULE PENNY FROM 1813 MADE £4,400
The catalogue for Dolan’s first timed online art auction is now online. There is art by John Shinnors, Maggie Morrisson, Harry Kernoff, Mark O’Neill, Charles Harper and others together with antique and collectibles, rugs and books. The auction runs until January 25.
Mark O’Neill – Marshmallow. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR 4,200
FROM jewellery to artwork there promises to be a diverse selection on offer at the virtual art fair which Hibernian Antique Fairs will run on January 16-17. A link to access the fair will be made available on the Hibernian Antiques Fairs facebook page on January 16. Dealers taking part will show photographs of what is on offer plus contact and delivery details. Among those taking part are Treasures Irish Art of Athlone. They will show a number of works by the self taught London born Irish painter Ken Moroney (1949-2018). He specialised in Impressionist painting and romantic Edwardian style subjects.
Ken Moroney oil on board 7 x 9 inches ‘Beach Study, Biarritz’
The James Adam timed online sale of contents from the Wellington Road, Dublin home of former restaurateur Peter White, who is downsizing, draws to a conclusion on January 11. Louis le Brocquy’s Red Roses For Me, a 1946 watercolour inspired by O’Casey’s play about a Dublin Protestant family against the background of the 1913 Lockout, is the top lot of 284. It comes with an estimate of €8,000-€12,000. There are no less than 31 works landscapes and cityscapes by the Dublin born Italian Irish painter Niccolo Caracciolo RHA, who died in a car crash near Siena in 1989. The sale offers a selection of furniture, silver, china, glassware, Persian rugs and household effects.
Rowan Gillespie Recumbent Nude, bronze on an oval base (€3,000-€5,000). UPDATE: THIS MADE 4,800 AT HAMMER
It isn’t great but it isn’t all bad either. Pandemic closures are horrible but there is much to explore online. If, for instance, you thought you might never get to visit the Mayfair Antiques Fair in London or the New York Winter Show, you were wrong. In 2021 they are available at the touch of a button on your computer.This is part of an ongoing shift online. All the data so far available from 2020 strongly suggests that large numbers of people who might never go to an auction viewing are buying online. At Christie’s, for instance, preliminary figures suggest that 36% of all buyers last year were new to the auction house. This experience is repeated everywhere else as the pandemic delivers new customers.Another statistic from Christie’s showed that 32% of all new online buyers were millennials (23 to 38 years old). In case you are wondering they are the ones who come after Generation X and before Generation Z. So the pandemic is leading large numbers of buyers straight to auction, spawning a new generation of young collectors and opening up specialist fairs to people everywhere. Anything positive in the midst of this lockdown is to be warmly welcomed and this bit of positivity is likely to have a long term impact.
A Chinese export reverse painted mirror in a Chippendale frame at the Mayfair Antiques Fair.
The Mayfair Antiques Fair usually takes place at the London Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square. This year it is in a new online guise. It opened on Thursday and continues today and tomorrow at www.mayfairfair.com There are 43 stands with a diverse mix of art and antiques dealers, mainly members of the British Antique Dealers Association or LAPADA, The Association of Art and Antique Dealers.There is much to choose from including a monumental first period Emile Galle vase enamelled with exotic flowers, a Chinese export reverse painted mirror plate in a Chippendale period frame, a pair of George III tea caddies made in London by William Frisbee in 1793, fine jewellery, art, antique furniture and collectibles.In New York the new virtual Winter Show runs from January 22-31 with preview access from January 19. It will bring together 60 leading international dealers with fine and decorative arts from ancient times to the present day. Visitors can taken in visual presentations and view close ups. All objects on view are vetted for authenticity, date and condition.There are leading dealers from New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Chicago, Zurich and a variety of other locations. Among them are Ronald Phillips from London, Aronson, Amsterdam, A La Vielle Russie, New York, Apter-Fredericks, London, Elle Shusan, Philadelphia, Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York and Les Enluminures of Chicago.
Masterworks of Modern Japanese porcelain will be displayed by Joan B. Mirviss Ltd. in New York
