CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Quinn & Farmer’s April 18 Fine Furniture & Decorative Arts Auction may very well produce new benchmarks for Chinese furniture when three pieces that last appeared at auction in 1996 are offered for sale.
“That was a critical test period for the Chinese art market in the United States. It was just starting to take off, and no one could predict how quickly it would rise or how far it would go,” said Skip Usry, Vice President of Quinn & Farmer Auctions in Charlottesville, Virginia. Now, nearly two decades later, fine Asian art dominates Western auction rooms, and prescient investments of the mid 1990s are paying off handsomely.
There are high expectations at Quinn & Farmer for a pair of important 17th/early 18th century huanghuali cabriole-leg stools (fangdeng) that last appeared at auction on Sept. 19, 1996 at Christie’s New York gallery. They were described in Christie’s auction-catalog notes as being two of nine known examples and “almost entirely original.” A Museum of Classical Chinese Furniture label is affixed beneath one of the stools. In that auction, they sold for $68,500 against a $30,000-$40,000 estimate. At Quinn & Farmer’s event they will be offered with a much more ambitious $100,000-$150,000 estimate.
With provenance from the same Christie’s sale, a Chinese zitan kang table (kangzhuo) with cabriole legs on ball-and-claw feet is carved with images of mythological quilin, with fanged, gaping jaws, bulging eyes and flaring nostrils. Its 1996 selling price was $51,750, and its pre-auction estimate at Quinn & Farmer is $40,000-$60,000.
The fine art section is led by an impressive early to mid-20th-century marine oil-on-canvas by Montague J. Dawson (British, 1895-1973) titled Chrysolite & Havannah: The Homeward Race. Executed to a very high standard, the depiction of two galleons in full sail, one following the other in a wave-capped sea, is expected to make $40,000-$60,000 at auction.
A circa 1914-1917 casting of Alexander Phimister Proctor’s (Canadian, 1860-1950) bronze titled Stalking Panther carries a foundry mark for Roman Bronze Works, NY near its left hind leg. The work is estimated at $20,000-$30,000.
Made around 1800, a handsome George III double-sided library writing table made of mahogany with mahogany veneers and pine as the secondary wood is attributed to J. Taylor. Its leather inset top has a tooled Greek-key border, and it has three cock-beaded drawers on each side, with brass bail pulls. The legs have reeded and banded elements and rest on brass casters. Provenance: Sotheby’s, July 7, 1995. Estimate: $8,000-$12,000.
Historically significant, two pairs of skis were made circa 1910 by A.B. Otto Brandt, Helsinki, for Alexei Nikolaevich (1904-1918), the Tsarevich and Romanov family’s heir apparent to the throne of the Russian Empire. Alexei was the youngest child and only son of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The skis are accompanied by a pair of child-size leather boots and two sets of ski poles. All are contained in their original fitted mahogany case, which is impressed with the Russian Imperial Cypher. Provenance: Sotheby’s, April 11, 2011; Hammer Galleries. The pre-auction estimate is $30,000-$50,000.
The April 18, 2015 auction will begin at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time at the Quinn & Farmer Auctions gallery located at 2109 India Road, Charlottesville, VA 22901. All forms of bidding are available, including live online via LiveAuctioneers. For additional details on any lot in the sale, call 434-293-2904 or e-mail information@quinnfarmer.com.
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