An auction of contents of two Mercy convents has unexpectedly turned out to be the most successful auction in Ireland in 2015 with 100 per cent of the 532 lots sold.
Carrigtwohill, Co Cork-based auctioneers Lynes & Lynes held the sale last Saturday at the Mercy Convent, Balloonagh, Tralee, Co Kerry, and the sale also included some items from another Mercy convent at Rosscarbery in west Cork.
Auctioneer Denis Lynes said it was his first "white-glove" auction (in which every lot is sold) in more than 40 years in the business. He said interest had been "phenomenal" and bidders – from Ireland and overseas – included past pupils and priests "from Belfast to Cork".
He described the crowds attending the three days of viewing – over 1,000 people a day – as “unreal”, and said so many people had registered to bid he had to move the auction into a sports complex in the convent grounds.
Mr Lynes said: “Unlike in Dublin auctions, Kerry bidders tend to wait until the last minute to bid – they have a different way of doing it down there.”
Top sellers
But, in the event they did – in droves. Among the top sellers were items of 19th century Victorian furniture by Dublin manufacturers Robert Strahan, including a seven-door oak bookcase which made €8,000 (€5,000-€7,000).
But it was the huge selection of religious pictures and statues that really caught the attention of auction-goers.
An oil-on-canvas catalogued as a 17th century religious oil painting, titled Our Lord Breaking Bread with Figures at a Table, sold for €5,200 – over five times its top estimate (€600-€1,000).
A pair of statues of angels sold for €1,900 – over six times the estimate (€200-€300). A statue of Our Lady and Child Crowned made €550 (€100-€200). Even statues of relatively obscure saints were in demand – such as St Berchmans, the Dutch saint, whose image made a very surprising €460 (€60-€80); and St Elizabeth of Hungary €380 (€100-€200).
Mr Lynes said the buyers of the statues included priests, local people and past pupils. Some were bought to be shipped overseas, including to the US and Poland.
One of the biggest items of statuary St Margaret Mary Alacoque & the Sacred Heart – measuring 2.4m high by 1.8m wide (8ft by 6ft) – sold for only €320 (€200-€300) and was bought "by a Kerry charity doing work in Moldova", the former Soviet republic in eastern Europe. After the auction a group of "big, strong Kerry fellows came and lifted it out, watched by Mother Superior who touched it on the way out as if to say goodbye".
The nuns were said to have been “delighted” by the results of the auction.
Lynes & Lynes’s next auction – on Saturday, December 5th, in the saleroom in the Eastlink Business Park at Carrigtwohill – will feature items from “two Presentation Convents in Co Cork”.
