Before the ban, antique ivory figures among the top lots in British art sales

Last week saw the disposal by Edmund de Waal of 78 of the tiny Japanese netsuke figures that featured in his bestselling family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes. A total of ￡99,000 was raised, nearly three times more than estimated, to support the charitable Refugee Council – an appropriate recipient given that the collection would have been lost to the Nazis had a housemaid not hidden the pieces in a mattress. The greater part of the collection has been lent to the Jewish Museum in Vienna. 

Specialist dealers said the works on sale were not of the highest quality. Max Rutherston, a dealer in Japanese art who conducted the sale, said that estimates, which ranged from ￡50 to ￡800, reflected this, but that prices were driven up by the provenance.

The highest price was a triple-estimate ￡4,000 for a large ivory carving of a performing monkey, c1800 (pictured, top). Buyers, said Rutherston, were mostly private and were from all over Europe, Australia and America.

The sale also took place just months before the British Government is due to ban the sale of antique ivory works of art in the belief that sales encourage the slaughter of elephants today.  Interestingly, the ivory netsuke performed just as well as the wooden ones, which, said Rutherston, will not be subject to a trade ban.

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To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, rare book dealer Peter Harrington has teamed up with Callisto Fine Arts to present a display of rare autographed letters and a first edition with the only known sculpture of the author.

The presentation is also timed to coincide with London Art Week, during which more than 30 dealers mount special exhibitions of historically interesting works of art while the auction rooms conduct their sales of Old Master paintings and sculpture, antiquities, manuscripts and works of art. 

The literary material at Harrington’s includes more than a dozen revealing letters, from ￡5,000 to ￡25,000 each, the latter incorporating an extremely rare signature of her husband, the romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a first edition of Frankenstein, of which only 500 copies were printed, priced at ￡275,000.

Callisto’s marble bust is by the Italian Camillo Pistrucci. It had previously been thought to have been taken from a painting of her in the National Portrait Gallery, but is now more likely to have been executed from life on Shelley’s visit to Italy in 1843, making it more valuable. The price is ￡130,000.

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