14 29th May 2010
london selection
Cash in the Attic
■ Two sales, 762 lots, and more than £4m to show for it
■ Crossover appeal and good provenance help boost totals
Anne Crane
reports
MORE than £4m from 762 lots in 48 hours. Briefly, at the end of last month, antiquities were a major focus on the London art market when two rooms offered substantial and attractive selections back to back.
Bonhams’ (20/12% buyer’s
premium) April 28 sale at New Bond Street had 396 lots, followed by another
366 at Christie’s (25/20/12% buyer’s
premium) South Kensington rooms the next day. Take-up for both was high, with 81 per cent getting away at the former and 83 at the latter to net impressive totals of £1.57m and £2.46m. It is almost certain that having two contiguous strong selections worked to the sales’ advantage, not least in simply bringing more potential customers to town. “Everyone came over,” said Bonhams’ Madeleine Perridge of the full room that turned out for her sale. That said, in an international market like antiquities, absentee bidding is equally important these days. At Christie’s, in the first sale organised by specialist Georgiana Aitken, who moved to South Kensington from Bonhams late last year, a quarter of the sale was bought or underbid online through their Christie’s Live platform and
Above: this red figure amphora attributed to the Berlin painter c.470 was the most expensive piece of Attic pottery in Christie’s South Kensington’s sale at £150,000.
A private English collection of classic 5th century Greek vases provided five of the ten highest prices in Bonhams’ sale. Topping the bill at £175,000 was this rare red figure vase, above centre, from the workshop of the Antimenes painter decorated with the three protagonists from the story of Theseus (shown here) and the Minotaur. The collection also featured the unusual 61
/2
above, finely painted with a youth standing in a wine stall and with two faintly discernable inscriptions. Ex the Jakob Rosenberg collection in 1937, it fetched a double-estimate £72,000.
over 22 different countries participated. European buyers took the biggest volume of lots – 36 per cent – closely followed by the UK (30) with the Americas on 23. At Bonhams the audience was similarly international with 37 per cent of the
Left: this Mycaenean kylix painted with an octopus c.14th-13th century BC, sold for £36,000 at Christie’s South Kensington.
buyers from the UK; 28 per cent from Europe and 35 from the rest of the world. But critical mass alone won’t drive a
sale’s success; what is on offer counts and buyers respond to rare purchasing
opportunities. Top-quality antiquities of
any scarcity have also been performing well for some time. Their crossover
properties mean that the appeal
/2in (17cm) high albastron top right.A rare intact survival, with the well-
preserved white ground decorated with a female figure and a black lion, inscribed Kalos, this fetched £40,000. Another well-preserved piece was the 51
in (14cm) diameter red figure of a stemless kylix,
broadens beyond specialist collectors to those who value their decorative qualities and ability to meld with contemporary interiors. Christie’s Georgiana Aitken also speculated that with interest rates low and economies struggling, buyers could be looking to put their money into these pieces as an alternative investment. Another consideration with antiquities is that the private provenance that signifies market freshness for so much of the art market has the bonus of conferring added security. If that provenance is also of some real age, it can combine with quality to send bidding soaring, as was the case with the Egyptian papyri from the 19th century photographer William Henry Fox Talbot that performed so strongly at Christie’s a year ago.
These latest sales had material ticking many of those boxes, which underpinned their buoyant performance. This time their strength was rooted
Right: a 17in (43cm) Roman cinerary urn carved from Breccia marble – £50,000 at Bonhams.
predominantly in the Classical world, especially in Attic pottery and Roman marble sculpture.
Bonhams’ highlights were provided by
a core collection of Attic pottery from the 5th century BC, assembled by their private English owner between 1986 and 2000. These were iconic pieces in terms of period, shape and decoration, chosen for
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