The secretaire chest, essentially a fairly standard piece of Victorian-era furniture featuring a pullout desk section above three drawers, rated a mere four lines of description in Bonhams Australia’s bumper catalogue for the sale of the Owston Collection at Circular Quay on June 25 and 26.
Described as mahogany with a satinwood interior but distinguished by canted pilaster corners with leafy capitals, it rated an estimate of $800 to $1200 – just one of many low-ball estimates at the sale, which was held to disperse the assets of troubled developer Warren Anderson. As with many of the Anderson pieces it fetched well above the estimate – a cool $7200 including premium.
But now, two months after Owston, the supposed ugly duckling is back as something of a swan - an Australian swan. It’s Lot 430 in the Mossgreen antiques and decorative art sale, where it is catalogued as being fashioned from cedar and NSW rosewood, the fitted interior featuring the Tasmanian timbers huon pine and myrtle. And the estimate? $15,000 to $25,000.
If it sells at the lower end of the latest estimate it would be 18 times the figure Bonhams put on it, and double the actual price realised in June. If it fetched the upper estimate that would represent more than threefold appreciation. Not a bad punt.
On a closer look it is indeed a fine piece of furniture, with extensive cross-band veneer, cockbanded drawer fronts with lion head handles, and unusual tapered lambs-tongue legs. Apparently an exceptional piece of cabinetmaking that would surely be beyond the capability of an early 1800s colonial maker, it probably hails from the 1850s.
It wasn’t the only misattributed piece of timber at the Owston sale. The London-based Bonhams auction house has admitted that the stars of the sale, the cabinets once used by Sir Joseph Banks to house his antipodean specimens, were largely mahogany - rather than cedar and rosewood as catalogued by its specialists. The Banks cabinets fetched $300,000.
The secretaire chest with its new-won Australian citizenship is one of more than 1000 artworks that will be on show at the two-story racecourse tea rooms complex on the weekend of August 28 and 29 prior to the sales.
As well as important collections of Aboriginal and Oceanic paintings and artefacts (as detailed elsewhere on this website), there are more than 700 lots of antiques, art and decorative art. There’s interesting Asian art including Lot 171, a Chinese 18th century blue and white censor with wooden lid and stand from the Jane Carnegie collection, some classic English furniture from a southern highlands collection including Lot 247, a good William and Mary kneehole desk, Australian pottery by Castle Harris (Lot 414 ) and Grace Seccombe (Lots 412,420), an offering of African art, contemporary glass, clocks, silver, even medieval material. And with the Sydney Harbour Bridge celebrating 80 years this month since its two ends linked above the harbour, there’s sure to be interest in Lot 416, a little-known medallion commemorating the Sydney Harbour Bridge Steel Arch Support.
Mossgreen managing director Paul Sumner puts a value of some $3 million on the total offering, saying it will be a good test of the market ahead of the August/September round of art sales, traditionally held in Sydney.
The antiques, pictures and decorative art auction comes with its own large-format catalogue titled The Interior Decorator + the Modern Collection, giving it, in Sumner’s words, “a bit more of a contemporary spin”, which will be accompanied by an increased marketing spend. The initiative follows a lead set some time ago by Christie’s in London, with “interiors” sales pairing antiques and 20th century collectables in stylish settings. Brings in the punters, apparently.