Author Topic: Auctions of royal memorabilia  (Read 78506 times)

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Offline Lucien

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Re: Auctions of royal memorabilia
« Reply #30 on: October 22, 2008, 03:38:22 AM »
http://www.christies.com/

You´ll find a few Romanov related surprises there,

Je Maintiendrai

Dominic_Albanese

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Sotheby's Auction & Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich
« Reply #31 on: April 22, 2009, 06:12:55 PM »
See this article and the Sotheby's web site.  So I am guessing that Grand Duchess Marie must be selling of atleast some of the antique's she has (see the article on the Vases below) or how else did these antiques from the late Grand Duke make it to Sotheby's?  I'm just curious.

best,
dca


http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=30271

LONDON.- Sotheby’s will be offering a number of extraordinary objects with Russian Imperial provenance in its spring and summer 2009 Russian Art sales. An Imperial Russian silver tea service by Nichols and Plinke, St. Petersburg, 1879 from the Collection of Anastasia Mikhailovna - grand-daughter of Emperor Nicholas I - is one of the highlights of the Russian Art Sale in New York on 22 April 2009. Sotheby’s biannual sale of Russian Works of Art in London on 10 June 2009 will feature the two largest vases ever offered for sale at Sotheby’s estimated at £1.2 – 1.8 million and formerly in the collection of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich - the son of Tsar Nicholas II’s first cousin.

An Imperial Russian Tea Service
The tea service was made as a wedding gift on the occasion of Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna’s marriage to Friedrich Franz, Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who was related to Emperor Alexander III. It will be on view at Sotheby’s New York from April 17-21. Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna (1860 – 1922), the grand-daughter of Emperor Nicholas I, was an extremely charismatic figure, remembered by friends and contemporaries as “very beautiful, tall and slight with Grecian features, in fact, she seemed the perfect princess.” The Grand Duchess’s great-great grandchildren include Princess Alexia of Denmark and Greece and Prince Pavlos of Denmark, Crown Prince of Greece. The service is estimated to sell for $320/380,000 and will be a highlight of Sotheby’s upcoming sale of Russian Art on April 22, 2009.

A Magnificent Pair of Imperial Porcelain Vases
The magnificent pair of Imperial porcelain Palace vases (estimate: £1,200,000-1,800,000), with masterfully decorated ornamental plants in two-colour gold and copies of Old Master paintings, comes from the collection of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich (1917-1992). In keeping with the European trend for decorating porcelain with academic subjects, which flourished in St. Petersburg during the reign of Nicholas I (1825-1855), this pair features scaled-down versions of Stable Interiors by Philips Wouwermans and beautifully demonstrate the majestic splendour of the court of the Tsar. Traditionally works of such importance and grandeur were intended as presentation gifts for foreign rulers or formed part of wedding dowries and were made at the special request of His Imperial Majesty. From the 1940s, the vases were in the collection of the Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, who assumed the title Head of the Imperial Family and Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russians upon the death of his father. Vladimir Kirillovich died in 1992 and is buried in the Grand-ducal tomb of the Peter and Paul Fortress of Saint Petersburg – the last member of the Russian Royal family to be laid to rest there.

Benjamin

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Re: Auctions of royal memorabilia
« Reply #32 on: July 06, 2009, 09:20:54 PM »
The vases from the collection of the late Grand Duke Vladimir sold for £2.6 million.

http://en.artron.net/news/news.php?newid=78666&column_id=65

Offline Annette

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Re: Auctions of royal memorabilia
« Reply #33 on: October 23, 2009, 03:46:00 AM »
Hi

I saw in the paper today that there is an auction of bejewelled Faberge cigarette cases and cufflinks originally belonging (I believe) to GD Marie Pavolva coming up for auction at Sothebys on November 30th. The paper says that these were smuggled out of Russia and "lost" until recently when they came to light in Sweden.

http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/event/EventSearchResults.jsp

I work close to Sothebys so I will definitely visit to check this out beforehand!

Kind regards.

Annette

Offline Annette

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Re: Auctions of royal memorabilia
« Reply #34 on: November 30, 2009, 05:11:30 AM »
On Friday I went to the presale viewing of the Romanov Heirlooms, the lost inheritance of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna.  There are 102 items, mainly cufflinks and cigarette cases, which were stuffed into a pillowcase during the Revolution and deposited with the Swedish Legation in Stockholm on behalf of the GD, then forgotten about for the next 90 years.  Various sets of cufflinks and cigarette cases were made to commemorate different events in the couple's lives, some of the cigarette cases still contain cigarettes and or matches.  To think that this is just a tiny fraction of the valuables they owned is amazing.  At least one of the cigarette cases is valued at around £50,000.  The staff in Sothebys actually let me pick up and handle some of the items, awesome.  And I am registered to attend the sale this afternoon!

Offline newfan

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Re: Auctions of royal memorabilia
« Reply #35 on: December 01, 2009, 03:42:56 AM »
annnette did you get anything?

Offline Annette

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Re: Auctions of royal memorabilia
« Reply #36 on: December 02, 2009, 10:15:48 AM »
Well, no.  I was there early, a very Russian crowd.  There were about 100 chairs which quickly filled and 10 minutes before the sale Sothebys decided to remove a partition wall and open the adjoining room.  They then put out another 200/300 chairs and still loads of people stood at the back.  The place was packed.  There were about 40 Sothebys staff also doing telephone bidding on top of the bids which the auctioneer had from people who had put in bids before the auction.  It was quite chaotic. 

I did get to bid for some cufflinks but was outbid unfortunately, it was quite a terrifying experience!  The shame of it all, and I may be being harsh here, is that it seemed most people were interested in the intrinsic value of items, especially the Faberge items, where I was actually interested in the Imperial Russian aspect, as any of us from this Forum would be.  There were about 10 bidders who between them bought most items (4 were telephone bidders), of the whole crowd of a good few hundred people only very few were bidding.

The cigarette case that the lovely Sothebys' ladies let me hold on Friday went almost £800,000 (taking into account all the sale charges payable), I read it is the most expensive Faberge cigarette case sold to date.   

There was one particular pair of cufflinks I had  my eye on but they went for way out of my price range.  I was pretty miffed when they were sold and it wasn't to me!

The last two lots in the sale were the two pillowcases in which the jewels had been smuggled out of Russia.  Their estimated sale price was around £200-300 so I was definitely going for those.  However, one sold for around £5,000 and one for £4,000, it was astonishing.  They told me the sale would last just over an hour, in reality it went on for 3 1/2 hours, the bidding was so intense.  I wasn't actually far out with my thinking that most jewellery items would go for around 10 times more than their estimates.  One pair of cufflinks estimated sale price of £3-5,000 went for over £100,000 though!  A guy sitting next to me bought a couple of things. 

One guy who was sitting by me bought something (I didn't see what, the bidding was all over the place) and went off to collect it, bringing it back in a Sothbys carrier bag which he casually dropped into another bag he had between his feet.  I thought "I hope you appreciate that you've just bought a piece of history and that you cherish it accordingly". 

I kept thinking that the items had been all together for over 90 years but now they were all going off to different places, most probably a good percentage never to be heard of again, it made me feel very sad.  It was such a shame that it couldn't be kept all together.  I was also thinking that GDMP ended her days in (relative) poverty whilst now 90 years later her descendants have had a surprise very large lottery win!  I felt very priviledged to have been able to see the items beforehand, to have handled a few, to be present at the sale and to bid.  Just goes to show that even after all these years the Russian Imperial Family that we, in this Forum in particular, know so much about still have a few secrets to reveal to surprise us from time to time, good for them.

Maybe one day...

Annette
 



Offline Inok Nikolai

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Re: Auctions of royal memorabilia
« Reply #38 on: October 29, 2014, 03:12:41 PM »
This could be put under so many threads, but Paul Gilbert reports on the upcoming auction of Yussupov documents, letters, photos, etc.

http://tinyurl.com/q7xvh54

The full catalogue is mouth-watering.
http://www.angelfire.com/pa/ImperialRussian/blog/1479cat.pdf
« Last Edit: October 29, 2014, 03:14:30 PM by Inok Nikolai »
инок Николай