Date: Fri 27-Feb-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: JUDYC

Quick Words:

Butterfield

Full Text:

Butterfield & Butterfield Reflects

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. -- Fine art, collectibles and decorative arts sold well in

1997 at Butterfield & Butterfield, which has reported sales of $87.5 million.

Nearly 150 auctions were held in Los Angeles and San Francisco and more than

100,000 lots (groupings of objects) were sold to the highest bidders.

The house's top price was achieved in an Asian art sale prior to the

fluctuations in the Asian stock market. A rare and massive white glazed

porcelain storage jar, fired in the Choson Dynasty, Eighteenth Century,

standing two feet high with an inverted pear shape, sold in May for

$1,020,000, a world record for the sale of a Korean white jar of its type.

Another top lot from that May offering was a Ming style 20-inch painted stone

torso of Guanyin, which brought $68,500. The top seller in one of the November

sales was a marquetry decorated Huanghuali low table, similar to one within

the Imperial Palace collection, which sold for $63,000.

Early in the year, in the sale of the collection of Bowie knife scholar

William R. Williamson, a world record was achieved for a Bowie knife at

$145,500. While many arms sold last year for higher amounts, such as the

$420,500 paid for a Holland & Holland American Civil War set of four guns, in

a display case, the arms department achieved another world record when a Smith

& Wesson model 3 Russian style single action revolver taken from desperado

Cole Younger in 1876 sold for $211,500.

In November, a record price was achieved for a Queen Anne style flattop

highboy, referred to as the Dorr family highboy. Its rarity stemmed from the

japanning on its exterior, done by Boston artisans circa 1730-1750. The

highboy had been moved with its owners to the West Coast and was handed down

within the same family. It returned to the East Coast when it sold for

$772,500, a world record for a Boston piece, to New York American furniture

dealers.

A world record price was achieved in June when $43,125 was paid for a Francois

Linke-signed Louis XV style gilt bronze mounted mahogany and cane bergere. The

offering of property from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco created world

record prices for Louis XVI rooms from a Dijon, France chateau. The salon,

library and bedchamber, including paneling, parquet floors and marble mantels,

sold for $425,500.

Butterfield's sales of California and American paintings included two records

of Guy Rose works. "Lady Sewing Amongst Trees (in the Garden)" sold in June

for $442,500, and "La Grosse Pierre, Giverny," circa 1910, executed at the

height of his career, fetched a world record price of $365,500.

May's European paintings sale yielded a record $211,500 for "A Moment of Rest

in the Garden," an oil on canvas painted in Paris by American Daniel Ridgeway

Knight. This price was the highest ever paid for a work by this artist.

California Book Auction Galleries, a division of Butterfield & Butterfield,

achieved a world record price of $101,500 in October for illustrator Robert

Havell's personally owned copy of Priscilla Susan Bury's A Selection of

Hexandrian Plants, 1831-34. The family library of author Mark Twain, which

fetched $200,500 in July, sold to the Mark Twain House of Hartford, Conn.