Salerooms
Lots and lots
Leslie Geddes-Brown
The day cannot be far off when an auc- tion house auctions its own catalogues. In the highly important and most magnificent bracket we will start with those produced to sell Diana, Princess of Wales's 80 dress- es in New York on 25 June. You may have heard about it: Christie's is producing no fewer than three catalogues. The first, the A4 softback for impoverished collectors, is £33 inc. p&p (£30 over the Christie's counter); the second, which is Important but not Magnificent, is a hardback A3 for Egyptian Revival cufflinks c. 1920, to be sold by Christie's South Kensington on 17 June £160 inc. p&p as indeed it should; then there is the leather-bound, 250 limited edi- tion, personally signed by Diana. This costs £1,250 and, if you need to ask about p&p, you can't afford the catalogue. No doubt it will double its value in minutes.
Because all the auction's profits are going to charity, Christie's obviously felt they could load it on a bit. Their last most important and magnificent sale, of contents from Houghton Hall in 1994, only rated a £43 hardback catalogue while a normal softback for an ordinary sale runs out at about £15. Nonetheless, ordinary cata- logues may well be worth the investment. That for Christie's first sale of drawings and watercolours of Interiors in 1993 sold out and is much prized, as is the catalogue of the 1996 P&O collection of Thomas and William Daniell's paintings which is virtual- ly a reference book. The catalogue for Sotheby's 1996 auction of the Dina Vierny Collection of Highly Important Dolls and Automata was reputed to be in such short supply that doll collectors were offering hundreds for it even before the event.
Single collection auctions — a growing area — are good for embryo catalogue investors because no collector worth the name seems willing to see his babies lumped in with any old auction. He or she should hold out for a Highly Important Cat- alogue even if, like the Private Collector of Highly Important Ming and Quing Imperial Porcelain, he wants to stay anonymous, as St Blasien Psalter, 13th century, to be sold by Sotheby's on 16 June did the Gentleman whose Library was dis- persed by Sotheby's in May, and L'Amateur whose Bibliotheque went under the ham- mer at the same house four days earlier.
No anonymity, however, for Andrew Lloyd Webber's wine or the deceased 10th Duke of Northumberland, the Rt Hon. John, 6th Baron Methuen and the Earls of Warwick who pooled, from the grave, the contents of their attics (£15 catalogue, 5,000 items, £1.5 million estimate doubled to £3.1 million) to good effect at Syon House last month. Why remain anonymous when the Importance or Celebrity of the vendor `Blue Boy, c. 1820 by Henry Bone, RA, to be sold by Christie's on 18 June demonstrably increases the value? This, too, must/ have been the thinking behind Christie's sale, at South Kensington, of over 700 lots from grand houses like Knepp Cas- tle and Lyegrove House earlier this month. On offer were cricket pads, skates, curtain poles, prams and trunks. This month, too, Christie's are selling Terence Donovan's cameras; thimbles and sewing accessories (tape measures, pincushions, you know); while Bonhams had an auction devoted to guitars, and on 2 July in their Arms, Armour and Militaria auction are selling two 1947 coding machines as well as a Chinese-Rus- sian bronze helmet dating from 500-450 BC. On 17 June, Christie's holds the first ever cufflink sale (including a pair of diamond dachshunds with ruby collars) followed by a cricket sale (18 June), tennis sale (20 June with the Fred Perry collection) and auction of Globes and Planetaria (25 June).
It seems that there is nothing that cannot be auctioned, especially if it is a single col- lection. In March, Sotheby's New York, sold the Feiertag Collection of Fine Movie Posters and the Fine H.O. Scale Model Railroad Collection of Richard Knopf while Christie's took on the Bruce Weiner Micro- car Collection Ca unique collection of 43 Bubble-cars, the property of Canadian bub- Slazenger tennis racket used by Fred Perry, to be sold by Christie's on 20 June ble-gum magnate, including a powder blue 1964 Pell Trident dubbed 'the flying saucer' and 'the cosiest courting car in the world') and the Doris Frohnsdorff collection of Beatrix Potteriana (Christie's East, New York). Bonham's Sale of a Lifetime in April auctioned Dame Lucie Rie's own pots (and doubled the £300,000 estimate). In May Christie's had the Dr Bernard Watney Col- lection of Corkscrews and the Levant col- lection of magnificent trains, toys and teddy bears. Sotheby's and Corinphila auctioned the Anna-Lisa and Sven-Eric Beckerman collection of Postage Stamps of China (the Large Dragons) and Phillips offered the last airworthy de Havilland Comet in the Min- istry of Defence aircraft sale on 8 May. But it was suddenly withdrawn, the MoD citing `National Heritage interest'. This still allowed the sale of 17 de Havilland Chip- munks, finally being retired after a gruelling 50 years' training young pilots.
Coming up are the Raymond and Francis Bushell Collection of Inro and Lacquer (Sotheby's, 18 June); Rolls Royce and Bentley Motor Cars (Sotheby's, 14 June at Althorp Park); the first ever French Car- riage Clock sale (Christie's, South Kensing- ton, 3 July); and, in the same rooms on 11 July, a macabre collection of medical instruments including the second amputa- tion chainsaw to be sold at auction. Very Rare and Very Fine because they were `found to go too fast, too far'. Like some auction sales, you might say.
Roullet et Decamps musical automaton of a snake charmer, sold at Sotheby's for £155,500
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