Friday 9 October 2009

Oxford Wednesday 7th October 2009

Venue:   Bonhams Oxford
Sale:   The Robin Symes Collection - to sell without reserve

To those of you following the Banier / Bettancourt story in France, there is also another case ebbing and flowing through courts across the World at the mo - that of the Papadimitriou vs. Symes story.   Symes was at the very top of his game - antiquities - until the tragic death of his partner Christo Michaelides when things took a nasty turn.   Read the story, perhaps biased here:

http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/projects/iarc/culturewithoutcontext/issue15/watson.htm

Anyway, thats by-the-by, I'm more interested in Bonhams on Wednesday which was full to brimming with some of the greats of the European antiques trade, circling the contents of one of Symes' warehouses.   From Picasso drawings to homo-erotic photographs to Antiquities - needless to say the sale went down a storm.

Here are a few of the gems:


Lot 205 - £15,600
Lot 204 - £14,400
Lot 155 - Estimate £200 - 300
Lot 155 (5 in the lot) - £21,600
Lot 133 (inuit goggles) - £4,800
Lot 88 (Kupka) - £28,800
Lot 61 (Picasso) - £28,800
Lot 231 - £7,800
Lot 2 (Tiepolo) - £8,640

Presumably the expectation is that all of the above had suitably placed estimates before the sale - not so everything was low hundreds!

Expect many to rise from the ashes at the Armory, Olympia, Maastricht and perhaps into museums..........

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