The price put Oceanic art up there with some of the less pricey leading African art which through closer association with the major masters of 20th century Western art, has tended to overshadow it in the saleroom.
The one metre tall figure from the Biwat people (population now estimated at around 4000) in northern New Guinea, went to a telephone bidder who was underbid by the Paris dealer Alain Bovis, apparently for himself, in the room.
Five of the top lots in the sale including the Jolika collection (included with its own special catalogue) were Papuan and New Guinea art. This collection totalled €3.17 million which is said to have made it making it the most valuable collection of Oceanic art ever to be sold at auction.
The sum was nearly a half of the €7.89 million raised by the two days offerings and must have brought a glow of satisfaction to the Australian tribal art trade which was the ultimate source of many of the key lots.
Some of its original members were district commissioners in the former Australian colony and did a great job saving it. Led by Sydney's Christopher Thorpe, the trade was well represented in the room for what was expected to be a new milestone in the market for New Guinea art.
There was no substantial information pointing to the identity of the successful phone bidder of this rare surviving artefact of a very mysterious civilisation. Christie's said only that it was bought by a private collector.
In view of this great unknown, opinions were divided as to whether this sale represented a big new all-embracing reassessment of New Guinea art. The previous day's sale at Sotheby's in the same city was very patchy with buyers sitting on their hands despite some quality material.
The prices certainly had a lot to do with provenance. Unprovenanced or lightly provenance works are probably still going to be difficult to offload.
The carved figure had a great provenance having firstly once belonged to Melbourne's Savage Club whose members, past and present, would have been gnashing their teeth had they been in the room.
The price incidentally pointed to the perils of de-accession. It had been sold by the club in the 1970s for a now elusive sum of money which must have been well short of this, even allowing for depreciation in the value of money.
The sale price is apparently not recorded and presumably the sale was undertaken to enable the club to keep a roof over its head and ensure members looked after in the way to which they might feel accustomed.
Indeed it may have jarred, even in the club's highly exotic holdings because of the Biwat people's curious representation of figures
Indeed the figure may have jarred, even in the club's highly exotic holdings, due to the factor which made it valuable, its curious elongated head which made it definitively Biwat.
Provenance did not matter quite so much in those days - and in the meantime the piece had gathered an added provenance which heightened its desirability.
The figure was one of 15 lots being offered in a separately published catalogue on behalf of the San Francisco de Young Museum.
It was a highlight of the Jolika collection put together by medical-imager John Friede and his wife Marcia, the collection name being formed from initials of their children.
The Friedes have displayed great taste and attracted much admired enthusiasm. Their encouragement of interest in Oceanic art through donations of the de Young Museum to set up a gallery wing devoted to Oceanic art was much lauded, given that other museums, particularly in Australia, have tended to keep it in their basements.
The usual inference then that the de Young was selling its lesser offerings could not be made. The consignment was part of the resolution being worked out to solve the financial complications raised by the Friedes' over enthusiastic buying in anticipation of a family fortune which only partly came their way.
From the 1990s onwards the Friedes had become the biggest spenders on Oceanic art but Friede's enthusiasm had got the better of him. A large quantity has come back on the market through Sotheby's from which it had been acquired,
This cast a pall on the Oceanic market which the sale of the piece at Christie's last week has temporarily at least dispelled.
But the buyer of the figure, bidding through Christie's specialist Susan Kloman, appeared to buy nothing else. This could have suggested the buying was also a bit of the "one-off- ism" which has led to intense upward press on spectacular lots offered across most categories of goods offered in the saleroom.
Russian tycoons and Middle East Museums are among the culprits popularly demonised for lifting the disparity between the singular pieces offered on art markets and the also-ran.
In this case it was not one, but two-upism as there are two of these figures known to exist. The other, in Cambridge University's art collection is admittedly unlikely to ever come on the market.
A lot of the success of the sale was also credited to, Susan Kloman whose professional activity has taken Christie's from also rans to top dog in Paris, which is the centre of the world's tribal art market.
A respectable 92 of the 132 lots offered found buyers ( 70 per cent of the offering) while sale by value (helped by the roof carving) was 84 per cent.
The Quai Branley Museum, France's highest profile tribal art museum, purchased a 1.8 metre ceremonial bowl from the Friede collection for €85,500 estimated at €40,000 to €60,000 with curator Phillipe Peltier standing after the winning bid to announce the purchase for the nation as a pre-emption. (That is cancelling out the last bid in the room by reserving it for the museum.).
This unusual turn of events, with one museum buying what another museum was selling and reversing the usual flow of museum quality material from the New World to the Old, was greeted by another of the several rounds of rapturous applause, some of which was given to the African pieces.
The curator had been looking for one such piece to fill a specific gap for some time.
