Flying off the shelves: furniture was strongly in demand in London this summer, and spectacular new records have been set for ceramics in both Hong Kong and Paris

Apollo, August, 2005 by Susan Moore

What was most striking about the London summer sales? Perhaps it was the dawning realisation that in almost any field the salerooms can find prices the like of which dealers can only dream. Again and again, from furniture to Old Master paintings, the exceptional found any number of takers ready and willing to bid up trophy pieces. Again and again, one saw the top dealers in those fields look on in wonder, and comment that even if they offered such a piece for a quarter of the price, the punters would shake their heads and propose a deal. Such is the triumph of the auction-house--a triumph, incidentally, not without its dangers.

A perfect case in point was the fabulous Florentine pietra dura table top offered by Christie's on 9 June (and illustrated in the June APOLLO). The most illustrious lot in a sale drawn from an English country house collection packaged as 'Two Late Regency Collectors: Philip John Miles and George Byng 1815-45', the octagonal top was almost certainly commissioned from the Grand Ducal workshops by an earlier Byng around 1718 and is a tour-de-force not only in terms of the opulence and expense of the various hardstones used but in their infinitely subtle arrangement. Fruit, flowers and scrolling foliage, birds and butterflies grace this particular design, attributed, not unreasonably, to Giovanni Battista Foggini. The opulent base with its four gilded griffins was fine too, commissioned a century later by George Byng and attributed to George Bullock. The sole problem was their slightly unhappy marriage, not least because the table was lower than it ought to have been. Christie's presented it with an estimate of 300,000 [pounds sterling]-500,000 [pounds sterling]. Bidding rocketed to 1m [pounds sterling]--and even then there were still six buyers chasing it. In the end, the table went to an Italian collector for just over 2m [pounds sterling].

Other extraordinary prices followed. A delectable George II mahogany serpentine commode (Fig. 4), handsomely plain but with a wonderful line and good carving and original rococo handles, soared way beyond its 250,000 [pounds sterling] 400,000 [pounds sterling] estimate to sell for 792,000 [pounds sterling]. A pair of silver-gilt wirework flower vases (Fig. 3) supplied to Queen Caroline sold for a staggering 276,800 [pounds sterling]-and this was not the only lot to sell for ten times its estimate. The sale was 98 per cent sold by value.

At the various single-owner sales in the afternoon, a glorious, crisply carved George III mahogany breakfront secretaire-bookcase (Fig. 1) designed by Robert Adam and made by William and John Linnell for Lady Scarsdale's bedroom at Kedleston Hall, and now offered by the late Lord Scarsdale's executors, fetched 1.46m [pounds sterling]. It is a measure of how inured we have become to the best pieces doubling, tripling or quadrupling expectations, that the fact that it made more or less what was expected came as a bit of a shock. Could there have been something wrong with it? The bookcase is, of course, just about as good as it gets, and boasts an impeccable provenance to boot. It fetched a good price. Unlike a table or commode, however, it is rather difficult to place in a house: you either have the right wall or you don't. The National Trust, which owns Kedleston Hall, was the underbidder; it now hopes that there will be an export stop to give it a second chance to return the bookcase to its original setting. Although 84 per cent sold by value, the sale, revealingly, was only 63 per cent sold by lot. Such is today's demand for and quality and rarity.

Huge prices for outstanding works of art were achieved in Paris too. On 22 June, another high-quality private collection was offered at Christie's Avenue Matignon premises (100 per cent sold by value). Here, a pair of white porcelain Meissen herons modelled around 1732 by the inimitable J.-J. Kandler for the Elector of Saxony's celebrated Japanese Palace in Dresden (also illustrated in APOLLO in June) doubled expectations to sell for 5.6m [euro] (3.7m [pounds sterling]). It was the highest price ever paid for a European work of art at auction and the highest price paid for any work of art in France. It was even higher than the big prices found for Chinese porcelain in the May Hong Kong sales, where Sotheby's found a new world auction record for Qing porcelain, HK$44.9m ($5.76m), and Christie's for Ming blue and white (Fig. 2), HK$30.36m ($3.9m).

Inevitably, in a month that also boasted Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales, prices for fine art were also, on occasion, sky-high. The Impressionist sales lived up to tradition by proving the most erratic, conjuring up the most unexpected prices for perhaps unlikely objects of desire. Sotheby's top lot on 20 June, for instance, was Kees van Dongen's bilious Femme au grand chapeau which soared to a record 5m [pounds sterling], while Christie's biggest price on 21 June was for a hardly extraordinary Modigliani Portrait of Jeanne Hebuteme (3.26m [pounds sterling]), albeit fresh to the market and in good condition.