But at Lawson’s sale in Sydney of the collection of Queensland craftsman and sculptor the late Elvin Harvey it was a western artwork that proved the sleeper.
An Argy-Rousseau glass vase from the Harvey collection topped the sale with a price of $37,000 on the hammer - $44,400 including buyer’s premium. Its estimate was $5000 plus, which was the level where local trade buyers dropped out. There was also overseas interest.
But Lawsons says the vase, decorated with fish amid stylised leaves in swirling Art Nouveau style, will stay in Australia.
The French art glass figure Gabriel Argy-Rousseau trained in Sevres and won instant acclaim in 1914 when he first exhibited wares using his pate de verre (glass paste) technique at the Exposition du Salon des Artistes Francais. His work was all hand made and produced in limited numbers.
A large 19th century Meissen hunting jug modelled with Diana, Pan and other figures (with slight damage) brought $12,600 from an overseas buyer.
In contrast the furniture, some by, or attributed to, Harvey or his prominent father Louis Harvey, founder of Brisbane’s Harvey School of Applied Arts, was unspectacular, though a carved and faceted Queensland maple standard lamp marked ‘LC Harvey’ brought $840.
Sets of woodworking tools and chisels - some with the Harvey’s initials - sold for double the estimates.
Elsewhere in the sizable auction a Maud O’Reilly pottery kookaburra on stand, signed and dated 1926, attracted $14,400 from a buyer apparently keen to invest his retirement nest-egg. The kookaburra was no sleeper, however. Its estimate was a weighty $12,000 to $16,000.
And in what must have been an exceptional busy weekend for Lawsons its inaugural Kensington Fine Interiors sale on February 28 also saw some buoyant prices, including an impressive Chinese carved rosewood partners desk, probably 1900s, which fetched $14,400, and a large 19th century French mahogany brass mounted bookcase with glazed doors flanked by columns which brought $9900.
A large Japanese Meiji period cloisonne vase brought $5400.
Striking specimens from the animal kingdom included a zebra skin that went for $3120 and a mounted male bison head that brought $3480..