The furniture came up at an auction held by Launceston auctioneers Tullochs on Sunday, July 4.
No buyers could be identified, but auction house director Scott Millen says he believes all the lots may be headed for the mainland.
Several local and interstate dealers attended the sale. John Hawkins, a dealer based at Chudleigh, Tasmania, was an underbidder on both the table, (Lot 82 ), and the sideboards, which sold separately as (Lot 85 ) and (Lot 86 ).
An agent who acts as curator for former media figure and Australiana collector Trevor Kennedy is also believed to have attended.
There were no phone bidders, with interested parties obviously preferring to be on the spot. “There was a fair bit of interest right across the room,” Millen says.
Sydney Australiana specialist Andrew Simpson, who also attended the auction, says he does not know the identity of the table’s buyer, saying it was “a face I hadn’t seen before”.
He describes the table as having made “a whopping price”, with the sideboards an “even bigger surprise”.
The table brought $130,000 on the hammer, to which is added 12.5 per cent buyer’s premium, bringing the price to $146,250. The pre-sale estimate was $100,000 to $150,000.
The “loo” or snap-top table has a circular top richly veneered with radiating segments of huon pine surrounded by thick cross-banding in birds-eye figured huon pine. Its central pedestal, shaped as an inverted vase, is also veneered with huon pine as is the base. It bears a partial label for Hobart maker James Lumsden and another handwritten label referring to its purchase at the London exhibition.
The cedar sideboards, offered as the Killymoon sideboards for the Fingal Valley pastoral property for which they were made, are in 19th century “revival” style. They feature architectural backboards with three panels framed by cross-banding, a cross-banded break-front top, and are raised on twin pedestals with cupboard doors carved as classical pillars.
Scott Millen says that when the first, slightly wider sideboard sold for $80,000 on the hammer – well above the $25,000 to $40,000 estimate – the second was offered to the buyer at the same price, as laid out in the catalogue. But the buyer declined, and the second sideboard was then put up separately, finally selling to the same canny buyer at $64,000 hammer. With premium, the combined price came to $162,000 – which is a good price, but below the price achieved for the Tasmanian blue gum Regency 'Hamilton' sofa, sold by sold by Gowan's Auctions in Hobart in November 2005.
John Hawkins, an authority on Australiana, has suggested the table owes its form and style to Irish cabinetmaker William Hamilton, who came to Tasmania in the early 1830s.
He says Lumsden may prove to have been working as an apprentice to Hamilton and James Whiteside in Hobart at the time the table was made.
This is contested by auctioneer Millen, who says Lumsden would have been in business by himself for more than 15 years by the 1840s and 50s, the era from which the table is believed to date.
Hawkins also ascribes the Killymoon sideboards to William Hamilton, saying the techniques of veneering and cross banding would have been beyond the abilities of an estate joiner who might otherwise have been called upon to do the job.