NEW YORK – LiveAuctioneers.com, which provides Internet live-bidding services to more than 900 auction companies worldwide, has entered into a marketing agreement with the renowned British auction house Dreweatts.
It is anticipated that LiveAuctioneers will be working cooperatively with Dreweatts on 30 to 50 auctions in their first year of collaboration. Under the terms of the new agreement, LiveAuctioneers will present and promote Dreweatts’ auction catalogs online, and enable bidders to participate in Dreweatts’ sales either absentee or live via the Internet as those sales are taking place.
“It is a great honor for LiveAuctioneers to be working with a company as highly regarded as Dreweatts,” said LiveAuctioneers’ CEO Julian R. Ellison. “Dreweatts has operated at the top tier of fine art valuation and auctioneering in Britain for 250 years. They respect tradition, and their long-held reputation for appraising and auctioning quality estates is impeccable, yet they’ve also been open to adopting new methods of generating maximum returns for their consignors. They were right on the front lines in adding Internet technology to their marketing plan. Their Newbury-based Donnington Priory salerooms first embraced online bidding in 2006, which was a signal to other auction houses that they also had better get on board with the Internet.”
It will be an especially busy year for Dreweatts, said Scott Miles, LiveAuctioneers’ Senior VP Sales. “Dreweatts has formed a marketing alliance with another of our clients, Bloomsbury Auctions – a world leader in antiquarian books and manuscripts. This has cemented Dreweatts as a major force in the UK market. They’ll be reciprocally sharing their resources with Bloomsbury’s galleries, not only in London but also New York and Rome. Dreweatts is poised to become much more of an international force.”
Miles said LiveAuctioneers views the new association with Dreweatts as “a wonderful opportunity to expand our presence in the UK and Continental Europe, and at just the right time, since bidders are now able to take advantage of our bidding platform’s foreign language translation and instant currency conversion features.
“We have always had a strong commitment to both the British and greater European market, but an association with Dreweatts lends further credibility to our company,” Miles continued. “We’re extremely pleased to be included in the overall marketing strategy that Dreweatt so effectively employs.”
Dreweatts’ first auction conducted with Internet live bidding through LiveAuctioneers will be a 334-lot, April 14 sale featuring furniture, carpets and works of art. A star lot in the sale is a circa-1615, James I sculpted and painted alabaster bust believed to be a depiction of the eminent 17th-century botanist and physician Dr. Peter Turner. The bust reputedly was erected in the South Aisle of Saint Olave’s Church in the City of London, where Turner was buried. Saint Olave’s famously survived the Great Fire of 1666, the flames coming to within 100 yards or so of the building. Sadly, the church was gutted by German bombs in 1941 during the London Blitz. Presumably the bust of Dr. Turner was salvaged from the ruins, but its history since the Blitz is undocumented. The highly important architectural element is expected to make $75,000-$105,000 at auction.
