BRIGHT young thing: ''Have you seen the ...er... disgusting one?'' as
she scurried towards the hanger at Christie's South Kensington. For the
occasion, one of the many viewing sessions for the Coluzzi Collection,
the old pre-fabricated warehouse at the rear of Christie's St James's
junior offshoot in West London had been converted into a stage set of a
Continental railway station.
Count Antonio Giansanti Coluzzi's fascination for trains was fired as
a little boy by the sight of the Blue Train steaming its way through the
Cote d'Azur in the 1920s. One of his earliest pieces was a locomotive
given him by King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, a friend of his parents.
After the 1939-45 war, the count formed his own company to make fine
quality model railway stock, a helpful adjunct for the avid collector.
This week, some 3000 pieces from the collection came up for sale,
fetching more than #1.2m. For the future, the count intends to
concentrate on building his business.
Top price was #33,000 paid by an American collector for a 1909 model
of the German liner, Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse. British dealers, Jeffrey
Levitt, paid a total of #24,200 for clockwork models of a train and a
paddle steamer.
There is no doubt about it. The items in the sale were exquisitely
made, right down to the finest detail, but perhaps the most interesting
lot was the final one, a 132cm long model of a sleeping car with
removable roof and side, built in 1984 to the special order of the
count.
The auctioneers tactfully catalogue the finely executed automated
figures in the sleeping compartments as en deshabille. Useful, perhaps,
as a study in anatomy or the wilder forms of human behaviour, the
carriage attracted enough attention at the viewing -- viz. bright young
thing, but failed to find a buyer at #11,000.
In the meantime, Christie's has lost its motor specialist. Robert
Brooks, who started at South Kensington, and masterminded the sale of
the world's most expensive car in 1987, has gone off to start his own
auction house for classic motor cars.
Financed with #2m from Brooks himself and Swiss financier Martin
Streichenberg, the company will be based near Clapham Common in London.
Since he started in the business, he has seen the classic car market
grow to the present rate of nearly 300% a year.
Brooks was responsible for knocking down a Bugatti Royale for the
incredible sum of #5.5m at Christie's memorable sale at the Royal Albert
Hall.
For those who are still interested in second-hand cars, Sotheby's
Belles Automobiles de Collection auction takes place in Monaco tomorrow.
With exceptions such as the monstrous 1934 Mercedes-Benz 500K special
roadster, which is expected to fetch #1m, estimates seem modest by
comparison with recent sales in the UK. A 1981 Maserate Quattroporte
sports saloon is estimated at Ff150,000 -- 180,000 (around #16,00).
I was amused to see a 1989 car in the catalogue -- a Porsche 911
speedster -- with only 900km on the clock, just in time for the new
''G'' letter registrations.
* ENOUGH of such trivia -- or is it? A private collector paid #935 for
a light bulb at Phillips this week. However, the bulb, which had been
estimated at about #500, is a five-watt multistar neon lamp, etched with
the signature of John Logie Baird, and was used in one of his prototype
television sets in the 20s.
Sotheby's has just announced that it will be auctioning the only known
autograph manuscript of Schumann's piano concerto in November. It is
expected to fetch up to #1m.
Robert Schumann began his great A minor piano concerto in 1841, the
year after he married Clara Wieck, and it was certainly written for her
to play. The Sotheby's manuscript, which has been sent for sale
anonymously from a private European collection, is almost entirely in
Schumann's hand, except for some sections of the first movement in that
of a copyist and parts of the piano part in the last movement in the
handwriting of Clara Schumann.
As the season of major fine art sales draws to a close, it looks as
though interest in the French Impressionists is waning, or at least
becoming more selective. Up until quite recently anything even remotely
resembling an Impressionist painting could command extraordinarily high
prices. There were queues round the block for Christie's and Sotheby's
sales in New York.
Now, hopefully interest is swinging towards other modern movements --
and Old Masters. The successful sale of the Clifford Collection, started
when Timothy Clifford was a schoolboy, is a case in point. The director
of the National Galleries of Scotland had put together a careful and
exquisite collection of Old Master drawings with few major discoveries
among them, and now is half a million pounds the richer for it.
Another was the success of Sotheby's sale of Old Master paintings on
July 5, which exceeded all estimates with a total of over #14m.
I never was one for a set of sunflower pictures painted in a hurry by
an artist, who never sold during his lifetime, to decorate a room for a
friend coming to stay. (Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh sold in 1987 for
#24.75m at Christie's to a Japanese insurance company.)
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article