Antique furniture, collectibles, rugs and art will all come up at Woodwards first sale of 2022 on January 29 in Cork. Items from recent house sales and estates are featured in this online only auction which is now on view at Cook St. in Cork city centre subject to Covid restrictions. Georgian pieces include a walnut lowboy, an inlaid bureau and a walnut card table all estimated at €500-€800. A Regency sofa table is estimated at €800-€1,200 and chests of drawers and a d-end dining table feature as well. There is a painting of turf stacks by Douglas Alexander (€300-€400) and collectibles include three antique bronze Chinese ceremonial longstaffs (€800-€1,500) and a Rolls Royce Spirit of Ecstasy car figure (€400-€600). A large red ground Kashan carpet and a selection of Waterford Crystal is included too.
Georgian walnut lowboy. UPDATE: THIS MADE 280 AT HAMMER
Hibernian Antique Fairs, hard hit by the pandemic, held a number of virtual fairs over the past couple of years. This weekend they are doing something new. The contents of Bride Park Cottage, Kilumney, Co. Cork are on offer online priced and ready to sell. There will not be fees on purchases. Here is a link to the sale: https://hibernianantiques.com//fairs/cork-sale-1
This early mahogany drop leaf table, lot 192, is priced at 250
A lounge suite from the couple’s flat in the former Maeterlinck Palace
A rare glimpse into the glamorous domestic world of a couple at the heart of the glittering social world of Paris in the 1970’s is offered by a sale at Sotheby’s on February 24. Best known in France and the US François Catroux was one of the most important decorators of the 21st century.François and Betty Catroux married in 1968 when she was becoming the face of Yves St. Laurent and he was decorating bold modern homes for clients like the Rothschilds, Diane von Furstenbert and Princess Firyal of Jordan. He counted Roman Abromovitch, Helene Rochas and Antenor Patino among his clients.
François Catroux elegantly mixed antiques with contemporary furniture. He brought work by contemporary designers like Ron Arad, Ingo Maurer, Martin Szekely, Serge Manzon and Ettore Sottsass together with artists like Luis Tomasello, Lucio Fontana, Tom Wesselman, Zoran Music, Victor Vasarely, Xavier Veilhan, Christian Bérard and Jean Cocteau. On offer at Sotheby’s Paris is the entire contents of the apartment he created for their retirement at the former Maeterlinck Palace overlooking the Baie des Anges at Nice. The project was barely completed when Catroux discovered he had cancer. He died in November 2020. Catroux and St. Laurent were at school together, though they never spoke of their schooldays where St. Laurent had been bullied.
In a New York Times obituary Penelope Green came up with a wonderful quote from Betty Catroux: “I’m not interested in fashion, and I’m not interested in design, and I got the two geniuses on the subject. I could live in an empty room as long as there is a bottle of wine and good music. But I know what’s beautiful. I was so lucky. It’s been a fairy tale life”.
Betty and François Catroux. Photograph: Horst P. Horst/Condé Nast archive
A BLUE AND WHITE ‘MAGPIE AND PRUNUS’ PORCELAIN PILGRIM FLASK OR MOON FLASK, BIANHU
This 20th century Yongle style blue and white Magpie and Prunus pilgrim flask or moon flask made a hammer price of 95,000 at the James Adam Chinese New Year sale in Dublin today. It had been estimated at up to 100,000. The 25 cm high gourd is an adaptation of a much earlier foreign vessel inspired from leather bags or pilgrim bottles. This shape first appeared in Chinese ceramic production during the Han and Tang periods. This flask would have been made after renowned related models dating to the Yongle period, such as that preserved in the Sir David Percival Foundation and now exhibited at the British Museum, London, The United Kingdom, and that preserved at the Shanghai Museum of Fine Arts, China.
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 14, 2022)
The Enigma, a 555.55 Carat Fancy Black Diamond, comes up online at Sotheby’s next month as part of RE(LUX), a Luxury Sale Series. A treasure from interstellar space, The Enigma is extremely rare and the largest Fancy Black Natural Colour diamond in the world. It was listed as the largest cut diamond in the world in the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records. It is thought to have been created either from a meteoric impact or having emerged from a diamond-bearing asteroid that collided with Earth.
Cryptocurrency will be accepted as payment on the diamond, reflecting the fact that cryptocurrency has started to make its mark in the world of physical art and objects.
An Irish Neolithic bog oak dug out canoe comes up at Bonhams in Edinburgh on January 26. Estimated at £2,000-£3,000 (€2,398-€3,597) it is among the highlights of the Jim Lennon collection of silver, Asian and European works of art. One day in the 1970s, a Church of Ireland clergyman the Reverend Con Auld was driving through rural county Fermanagh when he noticed a group of boys tending a bonfire. Curious, he stopped the car and discovered that the firewood consisted of bog oak canoes recently uncovered by contractors constructing a nearby road. Anxious that this this piece of Irish history should not be lost for ever, Rev Auld bought one of the canoes from the youths and drove off with it in his trailer. It will be offered at Bonhams with no reserve.
Jim Lennon built up his collection over 40 years in Northern Ireland and writing in the forward to the sale catalogue he explains his guiding principles: “I like to think that everything I bought showed skilled individual workmanship, whether in wood, stone, silver, ceramics or any other medium.”
The outstanding group of six awarded to Patrick Donohoe with his Victoria Cross on the left. UPDATE: THE GROUP SOLD FOR £220,000
The auction of a Victoria Cross awarded to Patrick Donohoe for bravery during the Indian Mutiny at Dix Noonan Webb on January 26 raises a fascinating question. Is he the brother of Timothy Donoghue, awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for service during the American Civil War?
Both were born in Nenagh, Co.Tipperary. Patrick in 1820 and Timothy in 1825. And Timothy, who named his son Patrick, is known to have had an older brother of that name. If it turns out they are brothers it will be the only case of one family receiving the highest gallantry award of both Britain and America.
Research suggesting that they are indeed brothers has been produced by Col. James Tierney, US Army retired, Regimental Historian of the 69th (New York Infantry) Regiment. Timothy earned his Medal of Honor serving with the 69th New York Infantry at Fredericksburg, Virginia in December 1862. Patrick won his VC at the Battle of Bolondshuhur in 1857 during the unsuccessful mutiny against British rule known in India as the First War of Independence.
Patrick joined the 17th Lancers in Dublin in 1839 giving his trade as coachmaker. In April 1842 he transferred to the 9th Lancers, then bound for India where, in the space of the next 17 years, it was to see more fighting than in the whole of its previous 125 years.Timothy arrived in the US on the City of New York with his wife and son Patrick in April 1862. He enlisted in the 69th Regiment in September of that year.
In India Patrick Donohoe was among a select group, unique to his unit, to be present at all three major military episodes of the campaign, the Siege of Delhi, the Relief of Lucknow and the final capture of Lucknow. Wounded in Lucknow in 1858 he recovered to undertake the passage home with the regiment in 1859, now among a mere handful of comrades to have survived the years in India. His VC was sent to India while he was at sea, returned to London and eventually presented by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle in January 1860. Patrick Donohoe was discharged with chronic bronchitis from the British Army in Dublin in 1864 after 25 years of service. He died in Ashbourne, Co. Meath in 1876 and is buried in Donoughmore, Co. Cork.
On offer at Dix Noonan Webb on London on January 26 is the outstanding group of six Indian Mutiny medals awarded to Patrick Donohoe, including his VC. Lot 207 is estimated at £140,000-£180,000 (€167,440-€215,280).For now the question of whether two brothers from Tipperary received the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Victoria Cross remains open.
The Easter Rising medal awarded to Kathleen Lynn – whose Treaty debate photo alongside Constance Markievicz was published in this paper last Saturday – comes up at Mullen’s Collector’s Cabinet auction in Bray on January 29. Influenced while studying medicine by the writings of James Connolly and the poverty of the Dublin slums she joined the Irish Citizen Army as chief medical officer. Active in the Rising she was imprisoned in Britain, became vice president of Sinn Fein on her release and was on the run for much of the War of Independence. She was the driving force behind the establishment of Saint Ultan’s Children’s Hospital in 1919. The medal is estimated at €20,000-€30,000.The latest in the series of collectibles auctions at Mullen’s includes historical memorabilia, rare and antiquarian books, militaria, arms and armour, sporting memorabilia, model trains and toys.
Dr. Kathleen Lynn. UPDATE: THIS MADE 58,000 AT HAMMER
A single page of original artwork from an acclaimed 1984 comic featuring Spider-Man has sold for a record $3.36m (€2.93m) at Heritage Auctions in Dallas. This makes the webslinger the world’s mightiest auction superhero.
The page features the first appearance of Spidey’s black symbiote suit that would later lead to the creation of anti-hero Venom in artwork by Mike Zeck from Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars no. 8. The previous record for a single page of artwork from the interior of an American comic book was a frame showing the first image of Wolverine in a 1974 issue of “The Incredible Hulk”. The page sold for $657,250.
A FAMILLE ROSE ‘HUNDRED BATS’ VASE. UPDATE: THIS MADE 20,000 AT HAMMER
This Famille Rose hundred bats vase comes up as lot 119 at the James Adam Chinese New Year sale of Decorative Asian Arts in Dublin on January 18. The globular trumpet necked vase with the Guangxu six-character mark and of the period is estimated at €5,000-€7,000. The brightly enamelled vase has a profusion of iron-red bats in flight amidst multicoloured lingzhi clouds, between a band of ruyi heads at the rim and upright lappets around the foot. It is divided at the shoulder by a band of lotus sprays alternating with gilt shou characters on the shoulder above a gilt relief border.
