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The expected buyer for the key lot (a very rare captain’s chest) harpooned it for $73,160 (against estimates of $40,000 to $60,000) EBP but only after four serious other bidders emerged in the upper price echelon. This was hardly a battle out of Herman Melville (Moby Dick) but the chest’s origins and status still invites some investigation, which the buyer, a former policeman, is doubtless well qualified to undertake.
This is by no means due to any hanky panky, but because the buyer, Mr Colin S Thomas, is the author of the definitive book on scrimshaw in Australia, Scrimshaw the Ancient Art of the Mariner (that was also the catalogue of a watershed exhibition) and is now also the proprietor of a highly regarded and busy start-up in the field of industrial detection-through pathology….better known as random breath testing, and its variants.
The early 19th century chest is made from Australian red cedar and whale bone with inset and incised patterns and designs that left all the amateurs sleuthing for a name to match the initials D-L and the ship upon which it might have travelled. The chest's provenance including recent auction origins are uncertain.
With what appears to be an American sailor inset in the designs, the consignment and its reception will add new zest to the Australiana market, especially coming just after the completion of a deal which put the log of a Confederate ship in the State Library of Victoria for a slightly larger sum.
The timber localises it, but Australia has been rich in early American sailing connections resulting in some exceptional discoveries of works relating to the two continents Down Under. American whalers were very active out of Hobart in the 19th century and it is to one of these that Mr Thomas is believed to be looking to firm up an association.
Tasmania’s most sensational auction find, a painting of an African American boy playing toy soldiers, was lost to a museum in Fort Worth, Texas, nearly half a century ago. It is thought to have originally been taken to Tasmania by an American sea captain.
There was some danger the chest could have been lost to Australia. A few American accents were heard in the back row of the auction. Not that scrimshaw, or whalebone carvings traditionally done by sailors to while away any hours of boredom, has an easy time crossing frontiers in an ethically concerned world whatever its age.
The chest not only did not head off to the US, where scrimshaw related objects have fetched hefty prices, but is staying in Tasmania of which Mr Thomas is a proud citizen.
About 120 buyers turned up for the sale which is in the equally proud tradition of real, if hard to read, auctions. They can be very discreet and/or secretive affairs with buyers shielding their intentions and bids from interstate buyers and from each other very intently.
Many buyers were there to buy the huon pine furniture, although there was not as much of it there has might have been expected and little of the quality that had been seen in some previous sales. Frank Bennett, one of the founders of De Witt Antiques had sold some of the best pieces in an auction held by Sotheby’s Australia in 1997. At that time Paul Sumner, chief executive of Mossgreen was a head honcho at Sotheby’s Australia.
The Frost collection was sourced, by family connection, De Witt Antiques, the much loved antique Hobart shop which most avidly pursued furniture of this mainly Tasmanian timber.
The Frost collection was mostly garnered over the years through the family's connection with the dealership which started life in De Witt Street in the Hobart suburb of Battery Point.
After moving to Bathurst street in the city, the business in which David Frost was a partner, specialising in restorations, closed 15 years ago, with only a small portion of its stock being dispersed through an auction at Gowan’s in Hobart in the meantime.
Collectors outside the state do not have the same affection for the wood as locals and do not put up the same competition for this furniture. And few locals anyway would want to do much more than their bedrooms out in pieces made from the yellow, honey coloured wood. It can be a little rich on the eye.
In what for a long time has been a squally market for antique furniture, especially brown, Mossgreen sold an especially impressive chest of eight drawers for $12,400 IBP against estimates, EBP of $5000 to $8000 and one of graduated drawers for $8680 ($5000 to $8000).
The collection had very little for the purist Australian furniture collection but provided plenty of pieces with decorative qualities and functional value.
The sale enabled the local trade to stock up with smalls, a stronger market now by far than furniture, and it provided plenty of opportunities for the furnishing of men’s sheds of which there are many around Tasmania, especially on the waterfronts.
It came at a good time for Warwick Oakman as he is settling in after his move from Battery Point to Richmond and purchased a property for a shop.
His purchases for stock and clients began at lot 11 with a watercolour in a huon pine frame of a whaling scene for $3720 IBP (or $3000 EBP which was $1000 more than the top estimate.) Oakman also paid $10,000 (hammer), double the top estimate for a circa 1898 terrestrial globe.
Three pieces of flame cedar furniture catalogued as “William Champion” failed to sell although there appears to have been some confusion as to whether Champion was a furniture maker or a man of that name who had them in the house in which he lived.
A red cedar Bank of van Diemens Land-stamped desk sold for $9300 ($7500 EBP) against estimates of $6000 to $8000 but there could of course be bankers looking for fresh ones, which no doubt in their redundancy they will be able to afford.
Another failed lot was a Napoleonic prisoner of war model of a tall ship which was passed in at $5000. a fraction of what the De Witt Antiques had paid for it. Made of whale bone it would have had problems in international transit.
Some of the lots, especially international, would not have made what they did in the 1980s but that has been the reflection of the twists in the antique market, including this piece, or assemblage of piece, said to have cost the dealership $16,000.