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Still Life Study with Artist’s Materials on a Chair by Derek Hill comes up as lot 142 at the James Adam Irish Vernacular auction on April 12. The sale will be on view at Adams on April 7, 8 and 11 and the catalogue is online. This oil on canvas is estimated at €4,000-€6,000.
The growing market for collectibles and memorabilia is reflected in an increasing number of sales by auctioneers across the board. A 17th/18th century Irish yew wood birthing stool will lead Sheppards Irish Vernacular Part II sale in Durrow on March 28. This rarity has an estimate of €5,000-€8,000. An 18th century Irish Penal Cross has a well carved figure with a skull and crossbones at the base and is estimated at €2,000-€3,000, as is an 18th century Irish mether, the sort of four handled Celtic friendship drinking vessel on which the design of the Liam McCarthy Cup is based. At Sheppards you can take your pick between an Irish jaunting side car or a classic Honda 50 cc motorcycle. Among the earlier examples of Irish life are an 18th century sycamore hedge chair, a cock fighting dugout stool and a dugout chair. All are conversation pieces.
There are flour bins, griddle pans, copper measures, a one legged milking stool, a metal bound milk churn, pine dressers and tables, bookshelves, plate racks and even an early Irish dugout food cupboard. More and more collectors are opting for objects like these, laden with memory and redolent of a vanished lifestyle or homeplace. Sheppards will offer 368 lots online from Durrow.
Further up the country, at Blacklion, Co. Cavan there is viewing today and tomorrow for a retirement sale at McNean antique and salvage which Aidan Foley will conduct online only on March 27 and 28 The catalogue, with 1,232 lots, is online and features lots of enamel signs, road signs, street signs, vintage car parts, pub signs, garden furniture and Victorian mahogany furniture. With everything from a home bar styled like the front of a VW camper van to a decorative dug out canoe to a larger than life unique sculptural carved teak figure of a bull this sale will be a draw. Part one of the auction at McNeans last year drew enormous interest from right around Ireland.
The top lot this time round is a 1970 Rover 3.5 litre V8 (€8,000-€10,000). There are enamel signs advertising Player’s Please and Will”s Capstan cigarettes, once ubiquitous in Ireland. A London Underground Boston Manor sign might do it for all the Irish who once lived in west London and managed to make it home, an antique cast iron clothes wringer might still function and save money for someone energetic and if you feel so inclined you could light up a dark corner with an Esso petrol pump globe. The selection on offer is memory jogging for all sorts of reasons and the market likes it.
In Dublin James Adam plan to hold their first Irish Vernacular sale on April 12. This is a new auction category for Adams and the sale will feature original furniture featured on the set of The Banshees of Inisherin.
She was his lover and his model and Sir William Orpen kept this portrait of Yvonne Aupicq as a nun in his own collection. It comes up as lot 61 at the James Adam sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin on March 1 with an estimate of €30,000-€50,000. Adams understand that Yvonne had met Orpen while working as a nurse during the war. He had been admitted to hospital with a suspected case of scabies which ended up being a far more serious case of blood poisoning as he recounts in his wartime memoir ‘An Onlooker in France’. Their relationship continued after 1918 when Orpen was appointed as the official artist to The Paris Peace Conference. He gifted to her another version of this portrait with Yvonne set against a completely white background.
Is it Kerry or Connemara? A little bit of mystery surrounds the location of a small classical work by Paul Henry at the James Adam spring sale of Important Irish Art on March 1. The title of this 1930’s work is Cottages by the Lake, Outer Killary, Connemara. The late art historian Dr. Brian Kennedy, author of the catalogue raisonne on Paul Henry, thought otherwise. He reckoned that that this might well be a Co. Kerry painting possibly mislabelled at a gallery. In the mid 1930’s Henry produced a number of Kerry landscapes using similar type brushstrokes. Last at auction in 1977 Adams now estimate it at around €120,000.
The auction will include a selection of works from the collection of senior counsel Paddy McEntee including eight lots by Edward McGuire RHA. Seven are portraits. In a catalogue note Aidan Dunne writes that the renowned defence barrister was a committed supporter of the artist. Brian Fallon, whose portrait is included, wrote that McGuire was “possibly thefinest portrait painter of his generation, and was possibly the finest portraitist
since John Butler Yeats”. There are portraits of Nobel laureate Sean McBride, painter Patrick Collins and writers and poets Sidney Bernard Smith, John Jordan and Paul Durcan. The McEntee collection includes three full sized cartoons by Harry Clarke for stained glass windows, two for the Church of the Assumption, Bride Street in Wexford and a single lancet window Church of Ireland in Killiney. The Wexford windows are among a very small number in memory of soldiers who fell in WWI in Catholic churches. Executed in 1918 they commemorate Lt. William Henry O’Keefe who was killed at the age of 21. The Killiney window commemorates local solicitor Clifford Lloyd who lived at Ayesha Castle, now home to the musician Enya.
A pair of George III mahogany pedestals, urns and covers will lead the James Adam At Home sale in Dublin on February 14. Each six sided urn is complete with boxwood strung turned tops and finials. The estimate is €4,000-€6,000. This 494 lot auction opens with 134 lots of silver and jewellery headed by a single stone princess cut diamond ring of 2.5 carats (€4,000-€6,000). There is temptation for collectors too in a Florentine style pietra dura rectangular table top. Inlaid with various kinds of marble and hardstone with an abundance of flowers, foliage and birds it is estimated at €2,500-€4,000.
One well placed eye catching piece can change the atmosphere of a room and a sale like this is the exactly the sort of place to let your imagination run riot. There is a wide range of affordable choices from a pair of polished brass amphora shaped table lamps (€300-€500), a Persian rug (€1,500-€2,500) and a pair of 19th century cut lustre candlesticks (€50-€100) to a Meiji period Japanese carved ivory okimono of a fruit vendor (€300-€400) and a 19th century ebonised Anglo-Indian fold over card table (€300-€500). There are longcase clocks, porcelain parrots, sets of prints, clock garnitures. dining chairs, bookcases, cabinets, chandeliers, brass fenders, library chairs, fire screens and an Irish silver champagne bucket. The most expensively estimated art lot is a painting of horses with domestic fowl in a farmyard by J F Herring jnr (1820-1907) (€2,500-€3,500). The sale offers some Irish School and continental landscapes, a number of portraits, genre scenes, Snaffles prints, Spy prints, busts and bronzes. The catalogue cover lot is a pair of bronze and gilt decorated busts of Ramses, the great Egyptian Pharaoh and the Goddess Isis after Pierre Eugene Emile Hebert (1828-1893) (€1,500-€2,500).
Harvest Above is the title of this lithograph by Maria Simonds-Gooding. Signed, inscribed and numbered 2/50 it comes up as lot 22 at the James Adam timed online picture sale, which ends today. The estimate is €300-400. Born in India the artist has lived and worked in Kerry since 1947. One of Ireland’s foremost painters and printmakers here work is in many public and private collections including the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
With an estimate of €500-800 this untitled lithograph comes up as lot 61 at the current James Adam timed online picture sale. The auction ends from 11 am on January 31. A total of 348 lots are on offer and the catalogue is online.
This rare George I walnut combination desk made a hammer price of €13,000 at the James Adam At Home sale today. It had been estimated at €1,000-€2,000. It is formed with a kneehole desk on one side and a chest of drawers on the other. No less than seven bidders chased this unusual antique piece. A George IV pitch pine circular breakfast table with an estimate of €400-600 made €1,600 at hammer. A Pasha razor and barber brush by Cartier made €1,400, a gold charm bracelet made €3,200, an 1885 full sovereign gold coin in a pendant made €1,800, a pair of Victorian gilt and gesso torchere stands made €2,000, a Victorian giltwood rectangular mirror made €2,400 and a pair of continental porcelain figurines made €2,400 over a top estimate of €400.
A weathered leather couch and club chair at right angles to a blazing fire, a Victorian giltwood mirror and a carved mahogany framed ottoman combine to make an enviably comfortable image on the catalogue cover for Adams timed At Home auction on December 19.. The scene was set in the elegant surroundings of the St. Stephen’s Green Club in Dublin where the decorated Georgian fireplace and Christmas tree added a seasonal touch of cheer.
Here’s the thing. There is no reason why this ghost of Christmas past cannot be turned into the ghost of your Christmas future because with the exception of the fireplace all these lots are in the sale. The two seater button backed brown leather couch and matching armchair are estimated at €1,600-€2,000, the mirror at €500-€700 and the ottoman at €400-€600.
The most expensively estimated furniture lot is 441, a 19th century neo-Grecian maple and rosewood inlaid centre table (€3,000-€5,000) and there is a good collection of overmantle mirrors. Among the more unusual offerings are two Afghan war rugs woven with tanks and war apparatus, each estimated at €200-€300, based on the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. There is also a rare George I walnut combination piece with knee hole desk on one side and a chest of drawers on the other (€1,000-€2,000).
The first 156 lots is made up of jewellery and watches headed by an Italian 18 carat gold necklace and bracelet (€3,200-€3,800). There is no shortage of gift items like a Pasha razor and barber brush by Cartier. The top art lot is an oil by Joseph Horler (1809-1887) of Criccieth Castle in North Wales (€3,000-€5,000).
As if all this was not enough Adams will hold a fine wines and spirit auction on December 18. The catalogues for both sales are online and they are now on view in Dublin.
This Irish William IV mahogany side cabinet comes up as lot 362 at the James Adam At Home sale with an estimate of 1,000-1,500. Thought to be made in Cork it has a rope moulded top and is flanked by spiral pilasters on hairy paw feet. Viewing gets underway in Dublin today for two timed online sales at Adams, Vintage Wines and Spirits which closes on December 18 and At Home which closes on December 19. The catalogues for each sale are online.
