Sale-rooms
A couple of gems
Alistair McAlpine
Autumn wonders to come are now being heralded by sale-rooms after the dullest of summers in London. Christie's have two important sales. 'The George Washington Camera', the rarest ever made by Kodak Eastman, estimated at £5,000- £7,000, is included in a sale of cameras and optical toys on 10 September. Only two cameras were made to celebrate Washing- ton's bicentenary in 1932, then production was abandoned because of the Depression. How ironic that the camera could fetch a world record price just now. Then, on 30 September, the sale that all true collectors have waited for: 'A unique collection of early gas and electric cooking appliances'.
At Sotheby's the spare jewellery and fur- nishing of Princess Gloria Von Thurn and Thaxis are for sale at an estimate of £8 mil- lion. The Princess has been quoted as say- ing: 'The Thurn and Thaxis were always good business people. We go where the best prices are. We won't be selling any- thing under it's real worth.' Poor dear! Does she not realise that the market has turned? This is not a time to sell unless you badly need to because the best price today is only a fraction of what you would have fetched three years ago — and may fetch in three years' time.
'Is the whale rare?' The Duke of Westminster is having a sale as well. He is reported as saying: 'I am getting rid of a lot of stuff we don't need following renovation.' He will probably do rather well with his sale. Ducal 'stuff usu- ally fetches far more than it is worth.
At the end of July there was the sale in Australia of the Dallhold Collection — not a name that springs as readily to mind as that of its former owner, Mr Alan Bond. He is now in jail and the Dallhold Collec- tion has been sold by Christie's on the instruction of receivers. The sale — which included Australian paintings of the 19th century — went extremely well, considering the financial climate in that country, four of the lots making sale-room records.
Another Australian who is finding busi- ness in Australia less buoyant than in the past and certainly a lot less fun, has this year sold his collection of weapons. He sold them at the San Franciscan office of But- terfield & Butterfield, a firm which has traded since 1865. Each year they have a range of sales, from vintage postcards to modern paintings, from animations to ori- ental rugs and carpets; they also have sales of antique and vintage firearms.
The Warren Anderson sale in March was a triumph. Lot 4028, a de luxe engraved army percussion colt revolver, 1860, in its original case with a detachable shoulder stock, fetched $308,000. Lot 4062, a cased colt Paterson belt percussion revolver inlaid with silver, was knocked down for $770,000. The prices were high by any stan- dard and the bidding strong.
For me, far more interesting than the Spectacular prices fetched by these lots was the £200,000 that lot 4000 was sold for. I have known of this wondeful pair of pistols for 32 years; they are six inches long, their metal parts engraved, grips ivory-carved with the bust of Prince Louis VII. They were in mint condition, in the original box, with unopened packets of ammunition.
Keith Neal, one of the most famous of all gun collectors and a man whose collec- tion was legendary, bought them in 1960 for £2,000 from an Italian gun dealer who had a shop in Saint Martin's Lane. The late Pip Roberts, that dealer, was in his day regarded as one of London's shrewdest operators. Arriving in London as a young man, he worked as a waiter in the Savoy Grill, where his cousin was the head waiter. He began a small business trading with the Savoy's customers. A visit to him invariably produced a small parcel wrapped in news- papers containing some marvel.
Roberts bought the pistols from a US serviceman for £200. The serviceman had them from a 'knocker', asking if household- ers had anything to sell, who found them in a Cardiff council house. The housewife who owned them thought the unopened box contained cutlery but they found these remarkable pistols instead. The knocker said to her, sadly: 'What a pity! I would have given a fiver for knives and forks. I can only give 50 shillings for these guns.'
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