The sleeper in the coming Bonhams Australia auction of an estimated $1.3 million to $1.8 million of decorative arts in Sydney on June 29, leaps out of the catalogue right into the reader's lap.
It is supported by a page entry with five photographs and a half page of text, our special correpondent writes. If there is any life left in the patchy Australiana market, there is no doubt about its identity.
The sleeper is even an object made of the precious metal that everyone seems to trust, and which catches the observer's eye. It is a fine and rare Victorian snuff box of 18 carat Tasmanian gold estimated to make $18,000 to $25,000.
If the snuff box were and could have been catalogued as a Tasmanian 18 carat gold snuff box it might have been easier to estimate. But manufactured in Birmingham, by Edward Smith, with the Sydney Royal Mint stamp on the rim makes it a curious hybrid.
The box is made from gold sent to London for shaping and working. For Australians, little value seriously attaches to the name of the silversmith in valuing a presentation piece if he did a good job, and and in this instance he appears to have done so and is well enough known.
The snuff box is important because it is spiritually and materially (at least settler) Australian, unlike so many trays and cups which are presentation pieces, - because of its associations and mineral content.
But above all it is a prime specimen of something very Australian - colonial cringe, like it or lump it.
The cringe is magnificently encapsulated by the graphic reference to transportation - an engraving of a man with balls and chains attached to his feet - on the lid.
The NSW Governor Lord Beauchamp later put it rather differently with remarks about colonial Australia's birth stains. The snuff box is a much better cheeky reminder of the past than an accidental insight.
How appropriate that the box is being offered by a London-based auction house through an operation owned by the only one left auctioning here, after the two others (Christie's and Sotheby's) have essentially washed their hands of Australia
In 1858 great esteem was obviously thought to attach to overseas manufacture. The donors decided not to trust the job in hand to be done locally even if the metal was at hand.
And what metal - probably from the Fingal Cave area, as the lately troubled Beaconsfield mine was not then on the go..
The presentation was made to an exceptional Tasmanian and the box's descent from the original owner to the present vendor is excellent provenance.
Three letters of contemporary correspondence relating to the commission are being offered with the lot. The box was presented to William Robertson (1798-1874) an explorer and pastoralist who arrived in Tasmania from Scotland in 1822. He was obviously a good man and a visionary. He was a leading anti-transportationist and a financial contributor to Batman's first exploration of Victoria. He later settled and developed pastoral interests in Victoria.
The object would be more desirable if it were of an earlier date. Gold snuff boxes presumably of British original were being presented as early as 1825, judging by a reference in the Tasmanian and Colonial Times to a presentation to a departing regimental office in October that year in Hobart.
It was gold and not, unlike other snuff boxes, silver.
Bonhams would probably have been foolish to go into all that as it suggests early other gold snuff boxes of Tasmanian interest waiting to be discovered or even offered for sale, making it not such a rare item. But that is by the way. Rare objects, recorded or not, can turn up any time.
This is an object to interest at least three museums. The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery may miss out because of its redevelopment programme and its principal patron, David Walsh, appears to be tightening up, charging now for admission to his own museum to all but two headed people - that is, by his reckoning, again in jest, Tasmanians but also a bit of a cringe..
The other museums which might like it are faced with budget cuts. The new big spenders in the West, from all accounts, would prefer fancy present day cuff links to wear with their silk tie and Armani suit collections. Some admittedly have bought historic gold rocks. Kerry Packer collected gold racing cups but these surely are little more than weak relations of gold bullion.
With widening gaps between rich and poor, trophy hunting at auction in democratic Australia is not "on" - not even on the telephone.
However, trophy hunting is still on overseas judging by the latest Russian masterpiece sales and some Australiana collectors come from places as exotic as Switzerland, or do their banking there.
Less wealthy buyers should not desert the fray as sleepers never emerge on cue.
The Australiana market may be as fragile at the top end as at the bottom. Local auction houses have certainly not been game to offer top traditional or colonial material for public sale of late.
The bid by the international chairman of Bonhams, Robert Brooks, to take on Sotheby's in Australia now looks more like a well thought out strategy than the pique with his former partner Tim Goodman for which he has been credited.
The "departure" of the other two global auction houses has left a gap. His holus bolus purchase of some of the wise owls of the industry after Goodman struggled to master his Sotheby's purchase seems like it just might pay off.
This box came through Bonhams employee, Dalia Stanley whose goodwill and good self were acquired in the 1990s for Bonhams and Goodman by Goodman in a similarly ambitious run of appointments.
A few more outstanding finds might have been expected from this highly experienced team, but some have barely taken to their desks.
Like Sotheby's grand mixed-vendor "decorative arts" sales in the 1980s and 1990s the offering the 429 lot offering contains some very special lots of considerable value.
But they have little to do with dec. arts and might have been considered better as private treaty material and may end up effectively as such.
Bonhams Australia seems determined to make the biggest public splash it can and Brooks must be very happy that a big Sydney Opera House lot came into its hands.
A collection of 171 gelatine silver chronological photographic prints by Max Dupain showing the Opera House under construction appear to have done so not entirely with surprise. Bonhams Australia in its various formats has sold Dupain Opera House material before.
The lot is estimated at $40,000 to $60,000 and presumably has a limited range of buyers albeit some of the must have variety such as libraries, museums or even architrectural firms.
Brooks wanted to have his first auction to be held at the Sydney Opera House in March 2010 and launched his company's operations in Australia with a big party there.
Unable to auction there, he held the auction a thousand metres or so away at the Overseas Passenger Terminal. There was a photograph (not by Dupain of course) on the cover of Sydney Harbour with the terminal. This time Bonhams has been able to legitimately include the Opera House..
The collection of Patrick White correspondence (estimate $55,000 to $75,000) and a Distinguished Flying Cross set of medals might require similarly specified buyers.
The medals, however, might stir privates by their topicality. Awarded to Squadron Leader B.L.Duigan, they were for dive bombing shipping in Benghazi (Libya) harbour.
Maybe a catalogue should be sent to Lord Ashcroft, a big backer of Britain's Conservative Party, weaning him away from his obsession with VCs.
One West Australian, Kerry Stokes, at least has taste in this regard and has seen that homeless VCs at least find their way into the Australian War Memorial..
Warren and Cheryl Anderson's taste for the extraordinary still pervades the offering. The taxidermy, both from the Owston liquidator and those who rushed to Bonhams Australia to obtain the results achieved at the first Owston auction, are missing. There is not a single rhinocerous horn.
But three scent bottles are especially quirky. They could take off even if though they are not Chinese. The bottles are in the shape of swans' heads and were made by the Stourbridge, UK cameo glass manufacturer homas Webb.
This is not overlooked in the estimate of price ranges of between $8000 and up to $20,000 per lot.
A pair of 54 cm tall Russian amethyst coloured cut glass and gilt bronze amphora vases are possible more eyestopping in the catalogue than the snuff box. At $60,000 to $90,000 even these could be sleepers, however. In an unusual twist of the international antiques trade, they were consigned from Italy. In an earlier Owston sale a similar pair made $250,000!
A Ferdinand Preiss (Art Deco) figure, Torch Dancer stands - or rather leaps out - from pages at an estimate of $30,000 to $40,000 which appears to compare well for the buyer, with the $55,000 paid for one at a London auction not long ago.
There is a spread of over-the-top large late Meissen jugs and figure groups, and before one has chance to say Faark, the Moomba crown worn by the inventor of the word, Graham Kennedy. This is to be auctioned for charity (the Japanese earthquake and tsunami appeal).
It maybe a coincidence that the Andersons were keen on Japanoiserie ranging from the ivories to suits of body armour of which there are more in this sale.
A few pages of Clarice Cliff and more ex-Owston bird prints help fulfill the sale's roll call of providing a bit of this and help give the sale the requisite mix of standard fare.
Apart from the random special lots the catalogue one might have hoped for more excitement at a lower level. But these may not be the times for excitement. The furniture which tends to take over It is practical, presentable, decorative antique gear.
There are further lots from the Owston collection but these are seriously expected to be the last. Fern Hill, which housed the collection, is now officially for sale.
Ten lots of Chinese jade doubtless will be thoroughly examined by Chinese buyers but none are expected to soar (but then few ever are, and many do). These are followed by a run of antique ivories carved in various parts of what was once called the Far East.
The managing director of Bonhams Australia, James Hendy, says that only 18 of the 426 lots are from the trade. More may look as though they do, or at least look familiar. This is because Hendy has sold some of them before. The sale opens with a run of quality decorator furniture and furnishing lots which come from a vendor who is moving overseas and downsizing in the process. Many of the pieces were purchased by the vendor when Hendy was at Bonhams and Goodman, the foreunner to Bonhams Australia.