Sotheby’s Autumn Auction Report

The significance of Sotheby’s sale of Fabergé, Imperial & Revolutionary Art in London on November 26 lay not so much in its contents or results but in the fact that a lengthy sale devoted exclusively to Russian Art was again being held in the U.K. capital just before Christmas – like in the Good Old Days.

The market, of course, is radically different since Putin invaded Ukraine and sanctions swamped every aspect of Russian commercial life. Perhaps the sale was tough to put together, which might explain why the catalogue went online only three weeks beforehand (alas, there was no printed version). That tardiness did not augur well and, in the event, only six of the 187 lots made it past £100,000, with 138 lots (74%) finding takers. Seven lots were withdrawn just ahead of the sale; 15 lots were offered without reserve.

 

PORCELAIN

Top price was a rather disappointing £216,000 (£180,000 hammer, i.e. low-estimate) for a Nicholas I Imperial Porcelain Factory Vase fronted by a painted panel reproducing the Oyster Eaters by Franz von Mieris (Lot 218). I was not convinced about the date being given as circa 1848: another IPM vase of identical baluster form, offered at Sotheby’s Treasures sale on December 4 (est. £250,000-300,000), was categorically dated 1830. I sold this latter vase twenty or so years ago for $250,000 – a standard price in those days, even though the handles had broken off when some moron tried to use them to pick the thing up. The vase was skilfully restored, although the gilding to the handles is a slightly different shade from the rest of the vase (it’s always difficult for restorers to replicate gilding). Despite being in better condition, the ‘circa 1848’ vase was assigned a low-estimate of £180,000 compared to the 1830 vase’s £250,000: a £70,000 disparity that will have struck potential bidders as incongruous (the 1830 vase remained unsold). The disparity also seemed devoid of logic… unless the lower estimate derived from the vase being erroneously donated to circa 1848: IPF vases from early in Nicholas I’s reign (1825-55) are considered more refined, and tend to be in higher demand.

Another Imperial Porcelain Factory Baluster Vase from 1859, painted with a child portrait by Kirsanov, unsurprisingly failed to sell (Lot 352, est. £150,000-200,000). As I noted, it exuded far less finesse, and the colours were unenticing. Imperial Porcelain Factory vases from the reign of Alexander II are not as coveted as those from the reign of his father Nicholas I. And this particular vase had been available in London – at Gray’s Market in Mayfair, from a dealer-friend of mine – for a long, long time.

Altogether there were 52 Porcelain lots in the sale: 37 of them (71%) found takers. A quarter of the porcelain took the form of 19th century, gold-bordered Imperial Military Service plates (Lots 205-217), nine from a Notting Hill Gate Collection. Such plates remain extremely popular. There are lots of collectors and all of them sold – with, as usual, prime attention focused on plates from the reign of Nicholas I. These never fail to sell: I know collectors who bid every time one appears at auction! Prices ranged from £30,000 up to £50,400 for a colourful plate showing a Standard Bearer & Trumpeter of the Don Cossack Life-Guard Regiment in front of a wooden chalet, dated 1832 (Lot 209, est. £25,000-35,000).

Plates made during the reigns of Nicholas I’s successors Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II invariably command less money. Equestrian plates sell best, along with those with lively subject-matter where plenty’s going on. That was precisely the case with the costliest Alexander III plate, showing an Officer of the Hussar Life-Guards on a rearing grey steed, with two colourfully unformed officers standing alongside and two more riders in the background (1890). This galloped to £26,400 (Lot 213) whereas the two other Alexander III plates (Lots 214 & 215), and both Nicholas II plates (Lots 216 & 217), each sold for £12,000.

Dainty Imperial Porcelain Easter Eggs used to be very popular and attracted dedicated collectors. This is sadly no longer the case. Sotheby’s offered five such eggs, but the only one to sell was an ‘apparently unmarked mid-19th century’ egg, 10cm tall and featuring St Alexandra holding a sword, for a mid-estimate £6,000 (Lot 338). No doubt it will be finding its way into some lucky Alexandra’s Christmas stocking!

In all, 23 of the 34 lots of Imperial Porcelain found takers. The proportion was higher for Soviet Porcelain (14 lots sold from 18), though most of these items sold around low-estimate. Take Naum Kongiser’s two-figure group (height 25cm) Radio for the Village (1927). This tuned in with a premium-inclusive £48,000  – i.e. £40,000  hammer, well short of a £50,000-70,000 estimate that I thought over-ambitious (Lot 371). In the event, it just managed to out-perform another version of the same subject that fetched $54,400 (equivalent to £43,000) at Doyle’s in New York on October 16. How many more are out there? Two identical knob-twiddlers hitting the auction airwaves one after the other sounds too good to be true.

The only Soviet piece that caught fire, so to speak, was a Tatar Woman by Pavel Kamensky, 39cm tall, from the Peoples of Russia series. This brought £30,000, more than triple estimate (Lot 364). Sanctions or no sanctions, this sultry female will doubtless end up in Tatarstan. Where else would anyone want her?

 

 

ENAMELS

 

Perhaps the auction’s most eye-catching price was £132,000 – against an estimate of £20,000-30,000 – for a silver-gilt and cloisonné enamel kovsh by Vasily Agafonov (Moscow 1908-17), its prow surmounted by a tiny, gilt double-headed eagle (Lot 275). This was a nice commercial Kovsh by a maker of modest renown – of average quality, but with attractive shaded enamel. I’ve seen similar kovshi time and again, so I was surprised by the price… which augurs well for the stellar collection of Russian enamels coming up at Heritage in Dallas on December 16.

A very pretty, albeit somewhat puny, gold and pale green enamel Fabergé Photo-Frame, just 4.3cm tall, saw the gavel fall at a mid-estimate £40,000 – or £48,000 including premium (Lot 241). Having its original case must have helped, and certainly enhanced the frame’s value.

Three little Fabergé Rückert Kovshi (Lots 266-268) sold modestly in the £3,000-5,040 range – rightfully so, as there was nothing exciting about them. Kovshi like this, in such a low price band, are really Rückert for beginners. Junior Varsity!

 

SILVER

Top Fabergé silver price was £90,000 for a Louis XVI-style, 228-piece Canteen (Lot 260, est. £30,000-50,000). It’s always nice to dine in style! This was engraved throughout with the crowned cypher ЭН, possibly – according to Sotheby’s catalogue description – for Grand Duchess Elena and her husband Prince Nicholas of Greece (both first cousins of Nicholas II). It’s a shame that Fabergé – unlike many European silvermakers – did not produce many dinner-sets but mostly flatware. European flatware sets, even of far superior quality, sell for much less than those by Fabergé. By and large Fabergé replicated European (especially 18th century French) designs rather than produce services in topical Russian design style. Yet the magical name of Fabergé has irresistible appeal to Russians, who often want to use Russian silver.

Most of the Fabergé Silver, however, did not fare particularly well. A silver and hardstone ink-well in the form of an Owl (Lot 226) on a black hardstone base, by the 1st Silver Artel, made do with a lacklustre £45,600 (£38,000 hammer): I imagine it was sold on the reserve. As I wrote: the Owl had ‘little chance to fly away with a £40,000-60,000 estimate’. The same was true about Rappoport’s silver and hardstone Sturgeon (c.1890), which edged to £15,600 – barely squeaking to low-estimate (Lot 227). His silver bell-push in the form of a Grimacing Pig fetched £24,000 (£20,000 hammer), again on low-estimate (Lot 228, est. £20,000-30,000). Silver animals used to sell really well. Silver Elephants were popular, and I remember a Rabbit Bell-Push motoring to £85,000 some happy yesteryear. Rumour had it that Joan Collins was the lucky bidder. I never knew she was a bunny girl!

A Fabergé matchstick holder in the form of a Wild Boar (Moscow 1894), with sandstone body and silver head, was unsold as I expected (Lot 229, est. £40,000-60,000), as was a silver bell-push in the form of a Bear (Lot 230) with a £30,000-50,000 estimate that I considered a ‘hefty deterrent.’ The same excessive estimate was slapped on a parcel-gilt silver Dove doubling as a table-box with hinged lid (Lot 231). Sotheby’s initially described the item as ‘Fabergé,’ but the revered name was absent from the final version of the PDF catalogue and the Dove crash-landed, unsold.

A Fabergé silver neo-Rococo Mantel Clock by workmaster Hjalmar Armfelt (Lot 232, est. £60,000-80,000) was withdrawn on the eve of the sale – no reason given – and a Fabergé trompe-l’œil Fruit Bowl lacking a glass liner flopped short of its £30,000 reserve (Lot 255).

A plain, circular, silver and royal blue enamel Perkhin Desk Clock fetched £22,800 (Lot 243, est. £18,000-25,000). Before examining it in person I thought it might attract rather more, but when handling the clock I found the enamel to be very flat and way too dark. Quality Fabergé enamel looks different from every angle – in strong light you can see all its depth and detail, like a symphony. Royal blue is a beautiful colour, but the blue here was dead. A Fabergé specialist friend of mine looked at it with me, and the clock left both of us feeling uncomfortable. Was the piece re-enamelled? A re-enamelled surface is always slightly wobbly, not uniform as here… a bit of a conundrum.

A plain Fabergé parcel-gilt silver Cigar-Box (Moscow 1899-1908) rated a mid-estimate £6,600 (Lot 261). The inscription inside its lid – reading To Alderman Thomas Fletcher J.P. In remembrance of his election to the civic chair of Derby 1899-1900 – hardly set the pulse racing (and Sotheby’s incomprehensibly mistranscribed J.P. – ‘Justice of the Peace’ – as I.P.). A Fabergé six-piece silver Tea-Service (Moscow 1896), grotesquely described as ‘in Art Deco taste’ (the term Art Deco did not come into use until 1925 – don’t Sotheby’s cataloguers study art history these days?), was also mid-estimate at £16,800 (Lot 259).

 

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Large Russian silver sets struggle to find takers – no one uses them any more, and they present scant interest for collectors. Take the anonymous seven-part silver Tea-Service (St Petersburg 1876-1886) that failed to sell against a £6,000-8,000 estimate  (Lot 278). This one was as plain as they come, and could not even be rescued by an unusual (if hardly verifiable) provenance – according to family tradition, it was gifted by Empress Alexandra to the paternal aunt of Vladimir Nabokov (of Lolita fame). Such a modest present from the Empress? Really? Unconfirmed stories about imperial largesse abound on the market: hearsay can be a great price-enhancer.

When previewing the sale I picked up on two items by Moscow silversmith Nikolai Tarabrov – mass-produced in Russian style using tinny, low-quality silver embellished  with small enamel plaques. Both pieces, I noted, had been granted ‘daunting estimates.’ And so it proved – though both just about managed to sell.

A tastelessly ugly Centrepiece (yet another consignment from Notting Hill Gate), with an enamel side-plaque after Solomko’s By The Fence, made £96,000 (Lot 262, est. £100,000-150,000). It contained a great hunk of glass that didn’t seem to fit, and which I strongly suspect was not original. It should have been much lower in height, and in plain rather than cut glass, with its design more subtle and attractive. It fails woefully to complement the silver structure, and whoever put the monstrosity together was singularly lacking in taste.

A Bratina with an enamel cartouche featuring Vasnetsov’s Bogatyrs fetched £72,000 (Lot 263, est. £70,000-100,000): low-estimate maybe, but a pretty good price given that an almost identical bratina, with similar plaque plus ladle, is coming up at Heritage in mid-December with an estimate of just $50,000-70,000 (equivalent to £40,000-55,000).

A 34cm silver statuette of a seated Peter the Great brought £31,200, or £26,000 hammer (Lot 225, est. £20,000-30,000). In 1996 the same statuette appeared on the cover of a Christie’s catalogue; it sold for £11,000 hammer (worth £21,600 today, according to the Bank of England’s Inflation Calculator). Silver statuettes of Peter the Great – or any Russian monarch – are rare, and I thought the price pretty modest… especially as it would have made a great Christmas present for that latterday incarnation of Russian Greatness, Vladimir Putin. The statuette was made in 1872 by the Sokolov factory in St Petersburg, after a bronze original by Alexander Opekushin (itself inspired by Nikolai Ge’s 1871 painting Peter the Great Interrogating Tsarevich Alexei). A slightly smaller (29.5cm) but otherwise identical bronze statuette, from the estate of Dr Horst Muno, appeared at Von Zengen Kunstauktionen in Bonn in February 2018. It was catalogued (rather casually) as ‘Russian, c.1880-90.’

The two mundane, silver-mounted onyx Desk-Sets offered by Sotheby’s – one ascribed to Vladimir Gordon (Lot 297, est. £5,000-7,000), the other by Ovchinnikov (Lot 298, est. £40,000-60,000) – both aroused complete indifference. The discrepancy between the two estimates was bewildering and, it proved, purposeless. I dubbed the desk-sets ‘useless encumbrances’ and thought the sale could have done without them. That said, in times like these, auction-firm beggars can hardly be choosers when it comes to accepting consignments.

 

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Fabergé decanters have little following among collectors – after all, they’re not collectibles but utilitarian objects. I’ve had a couple for a while: it’s always more interesting to have a pair than just one, not least because any self-respecting host likes to ensure his dinner-guests have a choice between white wine or red! Two of the three available here went unsold: a Plain Jane Claret-Jug (Moscow 1899-1908) with a £6,000-8,000 estimate (Lot 258), and an unexciting Rappoport Glass Decanter (Lot 257, est. £15,000-25,000). We were informed that the Fabergé mark and Rappoport’s initials were ‘struck to the interior of the lid,’ yet Sotheby’s provided no photographic evidence of this. For £15,000 you can buy a wonderful vintage English decanter – maybe even a matching pair.

The one Decanter that did sell was of tapering design (Moscow 1899-1908) and, despite its handsome Art Nouveau silver Iris mounts, was allowed to depart for £8,000 hammer (£9600 including premium) – no doubt on the reserve. The estimate read £10,000-15,000 (Lot 256).

 

JEWELLERY

Pretty Fabergé jewellery always sells well, and three small items in gold and guilloché enamel sold briskly: a Perkhin Brooch, with a  diamond-set trellis over translucent purple enamel,  for £14,400 (Lot 233); a silver-topped Pendant Brooch by August Holmström (St Petersburg c.1900), in the form of two overlapping hearts in lilac enamel within rose-cut diamond borders, for £9,600 (Lot 234); and a heart-shaped moonstone Pendant by Oskar Pihl (Moscow c.1890) for £10,200 (Lot 235).

A pair of Fabergé silver, gold and champlevé enamel Cuff-Links, made by August Hollming (St Petersburg c.1900) for Nicholas II’s cousin Grand Duke Andrei, claimed an expected £5760 (Lot 238). Imperial cuff-links always do well: their new owners can prance around in them, laying claim to imperial family connections.

 

 

BRONZES

 

Just two of the sale’s six Bronzes found buyers, the 39cm tall Blacksmith Ivan Chekmenev after Napoleon Jacques (St Petersburg 1850s) for a modest £3360 (Lot 384). A Shtange casting of Lanceray’s sword-brandishing Kievan Prince Svyatoslav on the Way to Tsargrad (the Slavic name for Constantinople) raced past top-estimate to £42,000 (Lot 385). Similar bronze models can be found in the Tretyakov and State Russian Museum. Evgeny Lanceray’s original sculpture was one of the last he produced before his death in in 1886. Sotheby’s did not make it clear whether Shtange’s casting also dated from that year or from after they had obtained the copyright to Lanceray’s models in 1892.

 

PICTURES

 

The name Serebriakova continues to weave its magic, even though the auction had none of her prized erotic adolescent nudes. A trio of beautiful pastel portraits that Zinaida dashed off shortly after settling in Paris in September 1924 (again consigned from Notting Hill Gate) had each been touted in the £50,000 range – yet surged well past that: Prince Felix Yusupov (famed assassin of Rasputin) to £276,000 (Lot 202); his wife Princess Irina to £204,000 (Lot 203); and their nine year-old daughter, another Irina, to £144,000 (Lot 201).

From the same collection came six lacklustre copies of famous portraits of late 18th century/early 19th century Russian bigwigs. All six sold in line with their modest estimates (£5,000-30,000) – though a Portrait of General Suvorov after Nicolas Sébastien Frosté, signed G.B., spurted to £57,600 (Lot 221).

A sombre Winter Landscape catalogued as ‘19th century Russian School,’ that had been assigned a steep estimate of £30,000-50,000 (Lot 383), was unsold. So was a typically small Pokhitonov 1888 landscape showing Château d’Anglet near Biarritz (Lot 377, est. £40,000-60,000). There used to be two punters besotted with Pokhitonov. Their longstanding interest must have abated for financial reasons, or a simultaneous drop in interest – after all, why should miniature works by Pokhitonov command six-figure prices? I could never understand that. Apparently our collectors have come to the same conclusion; the market they created has simply collapsed. They both, while bidding furiously against one another, amassed huge collections of the artist’s works. I’m not quite sure why. Two or three Pokhitonovs is surely enough for anyone. Dozens upon dozens of works by the same well-known but hardly top-rank painter is pure overkill. What’s the purpose? Did either of them harbour plans to build a resplendent museum in Pokhitonov’s tiny home village of Matryonovka in Ukraine, so that local peasants could pay homage to their most famous son?

 

ICONS

 

There was a healthy take-up for the sale’s Icons (27 of 34 sold), though only the really good ones fetched prices of note.

A silver, seed pearl, paste and champlevé enamel Mother of God icon by Ivan Alexeyev (Moscow 1899-1908) tripled predictions on £96,000 (Lot 311, est. £20,000-30,000). A Christ Pantocrator by Andrei Postnikov (St Petersburg 1899-1903) with superb cloisonné and champlevé enamel, and beautiful seed-pearl vestments, also did well at £84,000 (Lot 307, est. £30,000-50,000). Pearl icons are highly desirable and, in good condition, extremely rare: pearls are fragile and tend to fall off, and restoration is complicated.

Other Russian icons of no more than commercial quality met a mixed response. Several failed; most sold according to expectations; a couple took off. A gem-set Art Nouveau icon of St Nicholas the Wonderworker by Sergei Zharov (Moscow 1908-17) on £33,600 (Lot 312). A Smolensk Mother of God by Ovchinnikov (Moscow 1899) sold on mid-estimate for £45,600 (Lot 302).

Most of the sale’s older icons sold on low-estimate, with the exception of three from Crete: a 17th century St George Slaying the Dragon, 62 x 50cm, at £19,200 (Lot 325, est. £10,000-15,000); The Last Supper, 39 x 68cm, attributed to Mikhail Damaskinos (late 16th century) at £42,000 (Lot 326, est. £20,000-30,000); and the side wings from a triptych by Georgios Klontzas (c.1600), each 20 x 16cm, featuring the Crucifixion and Beheading of John the Baptist, at £57,600 (Lot 327, est. £40,000-60,000).