BRISKER BIDDING

Southland Times, Issue 24882, 23 October 1942, Page 5

BRISKER BIDDING

CHURCHILL AUCTION AT DUNEDIN

(Special) DUNEDIN, October 22. More than £5OO will be added to the Otago patriotic fund as a result of the Churchill Auction in Dunedin, the first of three to be held in the main centres. The second day’s bidding, when the honorary auctioneer put under the hammer a very choice and varied collection of pictures and prints, art objects and items of historical interest, was unusually spirited and values were, generally speaking, good. There were some beautiful and unusual items for which a top market could not readily be found in this part of the world. Members of the Chinese community saved from ignominious sacrifice a handsome embroidered silk banner at £l4. The University Museum paid £l5 for a rare Maori long-handled tomahawk. £4 for an Austral Island paddle and offered the 5000-year-old vase from Ur of the Chaldees a suitable home at 2gns. The University Library was a buyer of many interesting documents and authors’ holographs, including an illuminated sixth century manuscript (£2/2/-), a Thackeray letter (£2/12/6) and a Dickens

autograph (£l/15/-). PICTORIAL ITEMS The Baxter print “Vive I’Empereur” at 6)igns and the delicate Whistler etching at 7%gns were among the most sought-after pictorial items. Other pictures of appreciable value were Tenier’s etching (2gns). an amusing Nerli caricature (6gns), O’Brien pencil sketch (6gns), a Piranesi (rtigns), six Chodowieski engravings (4gns), a miniature etchings by Marple executed by Royal command (sgns) and several drawings by David Hutton (ranging from 2>/ 2 gns to 4gns). A Sheffield plate tea urn of the last century made £l5. A fine Paisley shawl at £l3/15/- and a length of tapestry brocade from the Rothschilds’ Hampshire home at £7/10/- were below values, but for most of the items the bidding was reasonably generous.