Gardner’s growing fan base

At 295 lots this was not that much bigger than the 226-lot picture sale but it was much broader in scope taking in silver, Fabergé and other objects of vertu, porcelain Russian memorabilia and icons. And if it didn’t manage the same clutch of record-breaking prices for Russian artists that helped provide the auctioneers with their highest ever total for a Russian picture sale, it nonetheless achieved a creditable total of just under £550,000 and saw the same take-up in lottage terms as the pictures at 75 per cent.

It also owed a degree of success to same element of Russian buying that made such an impact on the picture sales, for while expatriate or Western interest has been a mainstay of buying at these events
for many years, increasingly now some of that money comes from collectors within Russia. Sotheby’s described the overall results as “healthy, indicating a strong market although buyers were selective”, and certainly some sections fared better than others. The closing 70-odd lot icon section was the most difficult (although the opening silver section had its ups and downs too) but better received were the sections devoted to Fabergé, ceramics and glasswares, while a single-owner collection of Russian porcelain figures and a miscellaneous section devoted to Imperial memorabilia, printed material and bronzes were both complete sell-outs.

The strong porcelain figure represented a more dramatic reinforcement of a trend that was seen in the auctioneers’ equivalent Russian sale last year. The 33-lot collection offered in this latest sale, which belonged to an English vendor, was market-fresh (formed probably as much as half a century ago, reckoned Sotheby’s specialist Joanna Vickery) and comprised mostly of figures from the Gardner and Popov factories, rare models not often seen on the market. The Gardner factory in particular has always had a very strong following in America, but this is also a field in which the new Russian buyers are particularly keen and it was their interest that was responsible for giving prices an extra boost with two or three particularly active participants. Despite last year’s high prices, Sotheby’s hadn’t been tempted to push expectations too high and estimates were generally pitched at conservative levels which they duly outstripped several times over. The most dramatic instance came with a single Imperial Porcelain Factory offering, a 9in (23cm) high figure of the Lady with the Mask, dated 1911 and impressed GA in cyrillic. An estimate of £2000-3000 was left in the shade as several bidders contested it to no less than £18,000 with the hammer falling to a Russian collector. The particular attraction of this piece is that the design is by the sought-after artist K. Somov and is in currently popular World of Art style. Any number of other popular examples could be cited but pictured here are three of the collection’s other strongest sellers.

Although Russian interest is there, expatriate Russian and Western buyers still tend to have more of a input into the fields of Fabergé and other vertu and Imperial memorabilia. While there were no blockbuster Fabergé results at this sale, demand appeared steady with the notable exception of a gold and jewelled nephrite cigarette case, St Petersburg, workmaster H Wigstrom, which failed at £18,000 against predictions of £25,000-35,000. The top price in this section was a low estimate £25,000 paid by a private collector for a c.1900 diamond and platinum pendant of openwork circular form with a central diamond-set Imperial eagle, in the original holly wood case, followed at £14,000, again low estimate, from a private collector, for a silver-gilt and translucent enamel oviform bonbonnière, Michael Perchin, St Petersburg c.1900. By contrast there was a rather better than expected result for a 31/2in (9cm) high silver and translucent grey enamelled cigarette case applied with a jewelled beetle, St Petersburg c.1910, which ended up going to the Russian trade for £7500 where just £1000-1400 had been predicted.