High prices - some ten times the guide - were made in a Dublin saleroom this week. Eivlin Roden reports
Georgian furniture fetched some staggering prices in a sale at James Adam in Dublin on Wednesday, with the top price of the day the €165,000 paid by a London dealer for a pair of Georgian mahogany folding card tables. These unusual tables had a catalogue estimate of €8,000 to €10,000, while other items in the sale made up to ten times their pre-auction estimates.
A small Georgian snap top table with a pie crust top made €46,000 instead of the estimated €5,000 to €6,000 .
An unusual set of 10 Georgian dining chairs with elaborately pierced backs sold to a Dublin businessman for €110,000 instead of the €10, 000 to €15,000 estimated.
Auctioneer James O'Halloran said that while the estimates may appear low in retrospect, in reality they did not know what they would get for them.
"When good, genuine old pieces that haven't been messed with or restored come up and provided the estimates aren't prohibitive, they will sell well," he says "But those sorts of pieces don't come up very often. We were all absolutely thrilled to generate such prices, and it does give the lie to the belief that you won't get such good prices at an Irish auction."
Most of the pieces that fetched really big prices all came from one house in Co Kildare whose owners looked after the furniture and who were buying in the 1960s and 1970s when it was possible to buy 18th century furniture at affordable prices. Elsewhere in the sale, a George III kneehole desk fetched €20,000, double its estimate of €8,000 to €10,000, while a pair of 19th century satinwood demi lune folding tables made €24,000 instead of the estimated €5,000 to €8,000.
Not everything met its reserve however, including a large 19th century Chinese porcelain jar which sold at €1,800 - well under the estimated €2000 to €3,000. And an attractive Murano glass chandelier estimated to sell between €400 and €600 stirred no interest at all. Taste is a funny thing, but the moral of the story is: look after any good furniture you have, nourishing and protecting the wood, and if you are about to start collecting, expand your horizons outside the mainstream best sellers.