Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

A cabinet of curiosities, from 1950s robots to a piece of Concorde

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • A cabinet of curiosities, from 1950s robots to a piece of Concorde

    The Times (London)
    August 31, 2013 Saturday


    A cabinet of curiosities, from 1950s robots to a piece of Concorde
    Collecting

    by Huon Mallalieu



    For some years now Christie's and Sotheby's have been sniped at for
    discouraging new collectors by closing specialist departments and
    turning away anything likely to sell for less than £10,000 or so -
    before the addition of premium and tax. Such policies may appeal in
    the short term, but over time must surely damage the health of the
    market, so it is good to see at least a gesture towards buyers other
    than the very rich in the Out of the Ordinary sale at Christie's South
    Kensington on September 5.

    Estimates on the 155 lots range from about £1,000 to £250,000, and the
    organisers have done their best to create a modern-day Wunderkammer,
    or Cabinet of Curiosities. They have certainly gone to extremes in
    their quest - from an unimaginably small - 0.118in by 0.0078in -
    sculpture by the Armenian artist Edward TerGhazarian (1923-2012),
    estimated to £15,000, to an 8ft-high skeleton of an Ice Age cave bear
    (£25,000) and an 8ft 4in Italian robot created in 1957. The lastnamed
    item, originally famous as "Cygan" (right), would surely make more
    than the estimated £12,000 were the electronics that made him dance
    and respond to command still in place.

    The first lot, Hiroshi Furuyoshi's realist painting of an Edwardian
    girl in a curiosity shop (to £5,000), and the last, a waxwork of the
    Emperor Hirohito (to £3,000), are Japanese; between is almost
    everything from everywhere. Several claim to be the biggest of their
    kind, including a 15ft 3in rocking horse (to £40,000) and a silver
    caviar dish commissioned in 2002 by the Israeli businessman Erwin
    Eisenberg (who may have sold the family silver - Israeli Chemicals -
    at the wrong moment, but his collection of actual Georg Jensen silver
    at the right one). There are the skull of a triceratops, a tail
    component from a Concorde, three pinball machines, a miniature Louis
    Vuitton trunk, and a film prop flying machine.

    Sometimes association is all, as with a Batchelors Butter Beans tin
    containing eight very used paint brushes, estimated to £25,000. Having
    painted Lucien Freud with them, in 1978 Francis Bacon gave them to his
    friend and fellow artist Clive Barker.s

    The sale has been on exhibition all month, and there are still a few
    days to view.

    The Petersfield Antiques Fair celebrates its 40th outing in the
    Hampshire town's Festival Hall from September 6 to 8, and fittingly
    there will be 40 quality exhibitors in traditional areas, mostly from
    southern England, but others from Scotland and perhaps farther. The
    specialist Cynthia Walmsley has a fine, surprisingly unattributed,
    miniature, circa 1810, of Commander E. S. Crouch, RN, who died in 1821
    in command of the Victory (£3,750).

    >From September 5 to 13 the Sussex auctioneer Bellmans is holding an
    online sale of drawings by the late Times cartoonist Richard Willson.
    About 800 examples, singly or lotted together, carry estimates of
    between £50 and £150. Willson also worked for The Ecologist, and there
    is often a country side to his politics. www.bellmans.co.uk

Working...
X