News and Opinion — Year 2021

The Morgans are an important part of Australia’s heritage with Gary’s father Roy, who was educated at Brighton and Melbourne Grammars, establishing the best known market research company in the country. Their East Melbourne home is a living museum to Australian artworks, sculptures, pottery, wood carvings and furnishings.

Melbourne socialite the late Shirley Strauss (1925-2021) and designer Geoffrey Stewardson share the limelight at Gibson’s Auctions Interiors auction from 11am Saturday November 20 at 885-889 High Street, Armadale.

Their collections feature a comprehensive range of porcelain, paintings, upholstered furniture, jewellery, clothing and other collectables in a sale rarely seen in Australian auctions.

More than 1500 lots are on offer at Leski Auctions in Melbourne on Saturday November 6 and Sunday November 7. The lots cover a broad range of categories from silver, porcelain, ceramics and glassware to Chinese and Asian art, furniture, lamps, rugs, clocks, jewellery and paintings. Other categories include antiquities, tribal artefacts, musical instruments, cameras, tools, radios and military memorabilia.

Almost everything in the comprehensive collection of late Melbourne businessman Harry Oviss sold at Gibson’s Auctions three-day sale from October 3-5 at nearly twice its total estimated catalogue value.

Perhaps it was his humble and uncertain childhood that made the late Harry Oviss such a successful businessman.  In any event, his property and development ventures enabled him to indulge a passion for the arts and build a comprehensive collection of paintings, ceramics, designer furniture and jewellery that is now being auctioned online by Melbourne-based Gibson’s Auctions over three days from 11am Sunday October 3.  The sale will continue from 11am Monday October 4 and close from 10am Tuesday November 5.

The home has been in the Foster family for six decades and each of the items being offered by Leski Auctions from 2pm Sunday September 5 is, in the words of the auction house, “new to the auction market”. Each lot has been in the family for years with many arriving with Dr Bryan Foster and his family in the 1930s when they arrived from England. Some of the earliest invoices for items purchased after the family arrived in Australia (from Melbourne antique dealers) date from the 1950s to the 1970s. The Leski auction is a comprehensive representation of artworks, ceramics, furniture and glassware from the mansion.

Melbourne-based Gibson’s Auctions features the collection of leading Melbourne socialite the late Billie Tyrrell, whose former Naval lieutenant husband Harry founded National Can Industries.

Born in 1924 in Malvern, Billie spent most of her early life at Katanga, an elegant home designed by famous architect Harold Desbrowe-Annear for her prominent lawyer father Wesley Armstrong Ince.

Both he and his wife loved to entertain and Billie and her sister Betty grew up surrounded by fine art, furnishings china and silver.

A practising physiotherapist, Billie married Harry Tyrrell in 1957 and they had two children – living in both Toorak and Hawthorn before retiring to an elegant apartment in Clivedon, East Melbourne and also spending time at their Gippsland farming property in Victoria’s east.

Together Billie and Harry amassed a substantial local and international collection of sterling silver and porcelain during extensive travels to Europe, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Around the time that Captain James Cook was exploring the east coast of Australia, London silversmith Emick Romer was making a sterling silver epergne centrepiece stunning in its beauty and now considered extremely rare in the time of George III and Queen Charlotte.

The son of Norwegian goldsmith Michelson Romer, Emick was apprenticed in 1749 and is believed to have left Norway sometime after 1751.

Renowned for his silver epergnes, he is first registered as working at 123 High Holborn, London in 1773 supplying sugar and cream baskets to Parker & Wakelin – so must have enjoyed royal patronage.

This circa 1771 epergne centrepiece (lot 25) is a major highlight of Melbourne-based Leski Auctions forthcoming two-day Decorative Arts & Collectables sale from 10am Saturday August 14 and continuing at the same time Sunday August 15 at 727-729 High Street, Armadale featuring 1470 lots.

For enthusiastic collectors of scientific instruments, it probably came as no surprise that a Grand Orrery (lot 12) made by Hungarian refugee engineer George Gyori sold for $53,680 (Including buyer’s premium) – more than double its catalogue estimate – at Gibson’s Auctions Melbourne sale on July 11 of his comprehensive collection of Australian, maritime and exploration memorabilia.

When George Gyori arrived in 1957 in Australia as a 19-year-old Hungarian refugee courtesy of the Red Cross, he probably never believed that he would end up with a massive collection of Australian, maritime and exploration memorabilia – let alone clocks, watches and the tools with which to make them.

George trained as an engineer and in 1963 started his own general engineering business. However, he had always had a hankering for wristwatches that his Hungarian family could never afford.

But it was different in Australia and his business success meant he could then buy the watches of which he had always dreamed and this soon expanded to clocks, their mechanics and workmanship and from there to scientific instruments.

The sideboard was part of his extensive collection of colonial furniture, silver and other collectables built up over many years. In 1972-73, Kennedy was founding editor of The National Times, became editor-in-chief of Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings from 1981-86 and then its managing director until 1991.

Trevor Kennedy, former journalist and right-hand man to Australian media tycoon the late Kerry Packer, is auctioning much of his colonial furniture, silver and other collectables collection through Gibson’s Auctions over two days from 12pm Sunday June 20 and from 10am Monday June 21 (changed from June 6 and June 7 due to lockdown restrictions) at 885-889 High Street, Armadale.

Due to Victoria’s current COVID-19 lockdown – the fourth in 15 months – the two-day auction is likely to be held entirely online, even though Sunday’s sale was originally scheduled to be live.

For the Australian couple who in 2010 won a commemorative 18-carat gold beer glass by Hardy Brothers Jewellers organised by Carlton Draft Brewery, Leski Auctions weekend auction (Saturday May 29 and Sunday May 30) in Melbourne was a real bonus.

The glass (lot 64) fell short of its lower catalogue estimate of $120,000, bringing $100,000 (hammer) ($119,500 including buyer’s premium), and was the top-selling item of more than 1300 lots – 90 per cent of which sold for $1,401,735. (Catalogue estimates do not include buyer's premium).

The two-day of more than 1300 lots worth over $1 million in pre-sale estimates begins at 11am on Saturday May 29 and continues from the same time on Sunday May 30. The auction commences with the Edward Clark collection of important Australian silver (lots 1-38) that features such treasures as Christian Ludwig Qvist’s stunning pair of mounted emu egg urns adorned with Aboriginal figures seated in strikingly natural poses with weapons and spears (lot 14) and a catalogue estimate of $30,000-$40,000.

The full-size plaster version of this sculpture was exhibited at the 1874 Paris Salon, winning both the Medaille d’Honneur and critical acclaim. The City of Paris then purchased the sculpture for 12,000 francs and had artist Victor Thiébaut cast it in bronze for an additional 8000 francs.

The original bronze is now pride of place in the Hotel de Ville’s central courtyard and the plaster version was re-exhibited at the 1878 Paris Exposition Universelle. Merci’s modern sculpture – portraying a winged female figure of hope carrying to glory a dying French hero, his broken sword a sign of defeat – had become an instant classic as much for the patriotic fervour it inspired as for its aesthetic beauty.

The Orthodox and Catholic icons – including a circa 1800 rare and important Palestinian School Proskynetarion or Pilgrim’s Memento comprising images of the Holy Sepulchre within the City of Jerusalem and holy people and scenes from Scripture (lot 9) which changed hands for $26,290, more than four times its lower estimate  – were part of his and his late wife Veronica’s (Roni) Mount Martha estate.

Estimated at $30,000-$35,000, the rectangular screen is intricately carved on one side with a panel of scholarly figures crossing a bridge towards a pavilion on a rocky shore and a similar work is illustrated in the National Palace Museum’s Masterpieces of Chinese Carved Lacquer Ware.

Joseph Greenberg doesn’t fit the mould of the everyday collector.

Born in 1923 in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond after his family escaped the anti-Semitism of eastern Europe, Greenberg studied graphic design under prominent established Australian artist Sir William Dargie and alongside fellow student and lifelong friend Ray Crooke – before in 1942 enlisting in the Australian Army and seeing service during World War II against the Japanese in New Guinea and New Britain.

Although neither celebrity wishes to be named, the items themselves are an impressive part of both sales, with both finishing from 12pm Monday April 19, 2021.

Someone must have really desired the George III flame mahogany linen press (lot 7) at Gibson's Auctions Melbourne Interiors March 28 sale because they were willing to pay $5368 including buyer's premium when it was listed in the auction catalogue with a $500-$800 estimate. A Gibson's representative commented after the sale 'it was good to see brown furniture finally making a bit of a comeback.