Horsedrawn Carriages Prove Drawcard
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday July 16, 1996
HORSE-DRAWN buggies and vintage barbershop equipment proved major drawcards when the New England auctioneer Corcoran and Co offered the contents of various local museums at Tingha on June 15 and 16.
Sulkies, carts and carriages went for a gallop. The top price for the weekend was $8,000 for an 1880 Victorian-style carriage with original hood, according to Corcoran's David Bearup.
A very rare and ornate drop-shaft sulky with chrome fittings brought $5,500 and a canoe-front church buggy brought $3,500, while a draught-horse saddle and harness gear brought $1,000.
The vendors might have expected to take a haircut on a big collection of 1920s barbershop fittings that once belonged to a local hairdresser, Jimmy Flood - but Sydney retailer Gowings sent in a hit squad with a truck and carried off most of the material.
A barber's chair for ladies fetched $800 and a cabinet $600, while mirrors, combs and other items also headed south. It seems Gowings, which still takes pride in its $5 haircuts, will go to any lengths to complete a museum celebrating the days of Brylcreem and short-back-and-sides.
A large offering of Aboriginal material was withdrawn from sale and bought on behalf of the local land council. However, Sydney dealer Bill Evans, of Caspian Galleries, braved the Inverell chill to secure tribal and Melanesian items.
Enamel advertising signs were keenly sought, with a Neptune Depot sign fetching $310 and a big Mobil sign $280. A Shirley Temple "Bright Eyes" movie poster from the Tingha theatre fetched $160 while most other movie posters commanded $50 to $100.
THEY LOVE YEW
ENGLISH yew, a modest tree commonly seen in churchyards and mainstay of the English longbow of the Robin Hood era, is not often encountered in furniture. Even rarer is burr yew, the strongly marked timber from the base of the tree. Perhaps that accounts for the premium price of ?23,100 ($A44,000) paid at a Phillips sale in the English provinces on March 18 for an attractive Chippendale-style chest of drawers, or commode, veneered in burr yew wood.
Yew is especially rare in the sophisticated "town" furniture of the last half of the 18th century.
It all goes to highlight how unusual timbers, money-is-no-object cabinetmaking, small or unusual proportions and the right decorative flourishes can add a lot of value.
For instance, a serpentine front (like a bow window but indented at each side) elevates a piece from the mundane to something quite special, since that graceful triple curve means a lot of extra shaping to drawer fronts and so on. The yew commode offered serpentine front and sides and also featured two tiers of graduated "short" (not full-width) drawers rather than the more common single row of four long drawers.
Other chests sold recently at top prices in the UK were:
* A George III Chippendale-style mahogany commode with serpentine front and sides, angled bracket legs and neat carving brought a high-flying ?50,000 in February.
* A Chippendale dressing chest circa 1770, around one metre wide, which sold at Bonhams in March for ?25,300, including premium. It was in finely figured mahogany, with serpentine front and carved decoration to the angles, the top drawer pulling out to reveal fitted interior and hinged mirror, raised on bracket feet.
* Another dressing chest with fitted top drawer, this time Hepplewhite-style and 1.2 metres wide, brought ?8,800 at a North Country provincial auction. This chest was bow-fronted with original gilt-brass acanthus handles and bearing the stamp of the well-known firm Gillows.
CASKET FLIES
A CIRCULAR, black- lacquered casket, the cover finely painted with two young men but the interior damaged, proved a flyer at Lawson's decorative arts sale in Sydney on July 2 when it sold for $1,595 compared with an estimate of just $50 to $80.
A Japanese 19th-century Shibayama cylindrical box in bronze brought $1,320 (estimate $300 to $500). Shibayama is a type of inlay, in this instance with insects and a sprig in ivory and mother-of-pearl.
In the furniture, a set of six Victorian mahogany dining chairs with turned and fluted legs sold for $2,640 ($1,200-$1,800 estimated), an early George III mahogany three-seater settee in the Chippendale manner with single drop-in seat brought $9,900 ($4,000-$7,000), and a 19th- century cedar, two-height bookcase $3,740 ($1,200-$1,600).
CLOCK WORK
CHRISTIE'S is claiming a world-record price for a marine chronometer which brought ?216,000 at its sale of clocks and chronometers in London on June 12. Described as a Napoleonic silver-cased chrono meter of great historical import ance, it went to a London dealer.
The sale saw three other timepieces sold for more than ?50,000 - an Empire ormolumounted and Spanish brocatelle marble month-going astronomical skeleton clock at ?62,000; a Regency small-size 55-hour observatory chronometer at ?56,500; and a Napoleon III mahogany early electric regulator at ?51,000.
London's prestigious Grosven or Fair saw the sale of several valuable clocks, including an enamel Faberge' clock by Henry Wigstrom, bought by Albert Rothschild in 1912, for more than ?100,000, and a silver-mounted grande sonnerie bracket clock by Joseph Knibb, circa 1680, for an undisclosed price.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald