The first-class White Star Line tartan deck blanket, recovered from a Titanic lifeboat, took £76,000 at the Devizes, Wiltshire, saleroom on November 11.
It had been owned by Frederick Toppin (1868-1941) who worked at White Star and acquired it when Cunard’s rescue ship Carpathia docked in New York. He was at the pier to help the Titanic survivors. It last sold at auction at Bonhams Knightsbridge in April 1999.
Watch recovered
Pocket watch owned by, and recovered from, second-class passenger Sinai Kantor who died in the Titanic disaster, £75,000 at Henry Aldridge & Son.
A pocket watch owned by, and recovered from, second-class Titanic passenger Sinai Kantor was hammered down at £75,000. After his body was pulled from the water, his effects were returned to his widow, via the White Star Line offices in New York, on May 24, 1912.
Titanic first-class dinner menu from April 11, 1912, £66,000 at Henry Aldridge & Son.
A Titanic first-class dinner menu from April 11, 1912, the first dinner after Titanic left Queenstown, sold for a hammer price of £66,000. This example shows signs of water immersion with some of the lettering partially erased but no other surviving examples are known.
Sister ship
Pair of three-branch ceiling light fittings from RMS Olympic, £18,000 at Anderson & Garland.
Ceiling lights from the First Class Smoking Lounge of the Titanic’s sister ship RMS Olympic came for sale on December 1.
Offered at the Winter Country House & Fine Interiors Auction at Anderson & Garland (25% buyer’s premium) in Newcastle upon Tyne, a number of the fixtures from Cunard White Star’s ‘floating palace’ remain close to the Tyne as it was here (in Jarrow) where the ship was broken up and a huge 4456-lot auction of components conducted in 1935.
The three cast-brass and cut-glass light fittings at Anderson & Garland were part of the famous cache of material bought at the time by Douglas Smith. A partner in a firm of paint manufacturers, he spent around £700 on the Olympic’s luxurious panelling, flooring, doors and windows to fit out his company’s new concrete-built factory in the Northumberland town of Haltwhistle.
The firm (later Crown Paints) held on to its treasures from the Golden Age of travel until the site was redeveloped and an auction held in 2004.
The lights – a pair of three branch fittings and a single five-branch chandelier – were offered in two lots with guides of around £1000 each but sold well above expectations at £18,000 and £14,800 respectively.
