The session, in which sleepers were the norm, contributed $1.347 million to the auction's gross of $7,025,870 which compared with estimates of $3.29 million to $4.78 million and while the latter does not include buyers premium this is still a lot better than anticipated. The result also celebrated the good eye for which the medical specialist was respected.
“Well, we’ve been right with our estimates on at least one lot,” said Paul Sumner well into the Chinese and Asian art which formed the fourth session of the sale. ”Something, at least, has sold within the estimate.” He was referring to the $900 bid which secured two 19th century rock crystal snuff bottles estimated at $800 to $1200.
The beneficiaries of this part of the estate dispersal would not have been the least bit unhappy. At a period of conceivable impending recession, a sale in which all the lots sold for the wrong side of the estimates might have been thought more Likely. But on Tuesday everything was going well over estimates and some for many multiples of them. Sleepers at intervals became far more common than mid estimate sales and well in excess of unsold lots.
The clearance rate of the 1013 lot sale at the Museum of Contemporary Art ($4.4 million worth of Australian art) and at the Byron Kennedy Hall at Fox Studios in Sydney was 98 per cent. Thanks to the blow out in the results compared to estimates, the percentage total sold by value was 213 per cent.
Other segments of the auction were conservatively estimated but the Chinese material was extremely so. Buyers, however, were forewarned of the immense build up of interest from the local and mainland Chinese, together with the overseas diaspora which had built up since the catalogue had been prepared.
Mr Sumner was effectively throwing a tongue in cheek “excuse us” to the traditional Anglo buyers who had hoped to get a look in, especially with reports that the Chinese economy was slowing, but were to be disappointed. The Australian dollar had fallen making an alignment with the Chinese currency.
The 200 buyers who filled the room bid more slowly and tactically than they used to, but they still left the old guard way behind continuously. Their confidence in doing so was built on the understanding that Dr Elliott had secured most of the key pieces in China several decades ago and some even several decades ago – not long in fact after World War II.
The pieces were also bought from respected dealers before the rise in values meant fakes began to proliferate.
It was also far removed from the fare they are thought to have encountered at some sales Down Under of late. That is material sent from China to attract bids from locals who might be trawling for material to send to China;
Dealers who not long ago continued bidding beyond their limits now bid more discreetly.
Not only was the cost of saving face in a trade replete with rivalry a factot, but the lesson had finally soaked in that if dealers who did not pick up and pay for their purchases as some had in the past they would not be permitted to bid again.
It also appears to have dawned on some that Imperial wares had become too rare and expensive solely to support their existence in the trade. A new Chinese economics of taste was being forged.
The session at the Byron Kennedy Hall (BKH) at Fox Studios was more packed than the session at the Museum of Contemporary Art where the Australian art was sold on Sunday night. The MCA did not resonate so much as an auction venue on this occasion but the offering prospered even without the buzz.
Absentee bids were a little more successful than at the BKH with several leading collectors and dealers flying in for the kill from Singapore and Hong Kong in particular.
The crowd was well behaved and considerate, just as the small group of interested parties had been at the Australian art sale at which there was no wine nor even water provided, and the numbers were small.
Possibly the major factor explaining any discrepancy between estimates and prices paid was a new aesthetic. While the estimates had not fully factored in the “Elliott factor”, Chinese buyers have moved on from their total infatuation with Imperial (Ming) antiques. On Tuesday when the Asian antiques came up green celadon was the new yellow.
Two pieces of the celadon went under the hammer for $60,000 and $40,000 12 times and 15 times their top estimates of $5000 and $3000 respectively. With buyer’s premium, a large Longquan Yuan Dynasty vase in crackled green glaze (lot 596) fetched $73,200 and a Longquan ware Yuan Dynasty tripod censer also in pale green (lot 600) sold for $53,680.
The first went to an Internet bidder whose paddle number turned up again later and the second to the second to a Chinese bidder known as “Red” from his pullover colour, who bought many lots at the sale. He touched his top pocket to secure the lot but the room would have known it was him as he had already left foot prints by way of his 158 bidding number, waved more valiantly on the previous lot.
Sleepers were no strangers in the blue and white ceramics either when an early 16th century ewer in the Turkish shape (lot 558) sold for $22,000 (or 26,840 IBP) compared with a top estimate of $4000, a near six fold lift in value; and a second ewer in a different shape (lot 559) which made $19,000 against estimates of $4000 to $6000.
A small rhino horn cup from the late Qing dynasty (531) which came into the collection through Wong Yin Hou, Kowloon, in the 1980s was another of the red pullover's buys for $38,000 ($46,360 IBP) or just over five times its top estimate of $8000.
Snuff bottles can vary individually in the eye of the beholder but the most unusual, in the shape of a white jade fish (lot 516) made $10,000 or $12,200 IBP against an estimate of $1000 to $1500. Internet bidding on the lots took some of the frenzy if not the value out of the sale.
Very slow bidding on one of the most exquisite objects in the sale, a Qingbai (greenish white) boy on a buffalo in iron spot and bluish glaze (lot 765) went to $10,000 or 10 times its mid estimate of $1,000, to buyer number 765 who was a persistent phone bidder, having bought the preceding lot of four double gourd ewers at $3600 (excluding the BP which is 22 per cent) compared with the estimates of $500 to $800, which seem more applicable to its 1982 appearance at Christie's as noted in the catalogue.
Prostrate, like those who followed the sale through to the very end a “fully taxidermied” Sumatran tiger skin rug made $7500 against $800 to $1200. It is not known if it is likely to go into a Chinese home.
The clash between East and West was visible in the room only on some of the Song Dynasty ceramics and the room did not respond heartily to the Tang Dynasty figures which are mortuary wares long eschewed by many collectors and a market which has been supplied by modern period excavations.
As we know from the iron ore price, a lot of these have now been built upon.
The Elliott family appeared active on a few lots during the sale but the only primary lot discovered to have gone in its direction was the painting by John Brack in the sale's first session. Auctions are often an opportunity for a family to settle its differences as to what each might want but this was done before the sale and the items not included.
When members of the family saw the collection in the Byron Kennedy Hall instead of the dark mansion in which it had been kept higgledy piggledy, they appeared to have had an epiphany. But the decision had been made to sell and estimates remained in place.
The dealer who bought a bevy of the top Australian paintings, Mr Denis Savill, said that they were very well published in a book on the collection so there could be no doubts about the strength of the property title and their provenance – unlike a lot of works that might flow on to the market from the Coles multiple-sale fiasco.
His acquisition of 46 paintings in the recent round of auctions enabled him to pause and take stock at a celebratory moment of his life.
