Valentine vases among auction highlights
Author: Richard Brewster | Posted: 29th March, 2017
Two large Valentine vases are among the highlights of Kim’s Auctions forthcoming on site sale at 15 Gardiner Road, Hawthorn from 11am Sunday April 2.
Owners of the large home have now moved overseas and all contents must be sold at the auction.
The 45-centimetre high vases come from the Valentine factory, founded in 1832 in the central Pyrenees town of Saint-Gaudens on the banks of the River Garonne.
The only porcelain factory in southern France, by the 1850s it employed 250 workers and continued producing its wares – distinguished by very bright enamel and coloured cobalt blue often enriched with floral bouquets and gold lines – until 1878.
The vases are named after Valentine hill from where the six factory ovens obtained their wood.
Other porcelain features include Sevres, Royal Doulton and Moorcroft vases.
The auction contains plenty of other items of interest to auction goers and collectors.
A large William Ricketts sculpture featuring four Aboriginal heads is a major drawcard.
An Australian sculptor and potter, Ricketts (1898-1993) is famous for the sanctuary named after him at Mount Dandenong in Victoria, where many of his major works now reside.
From 1949 to 1960, he frequented central Australia to live with the Pitjantjatjara and Arrernte Aboriginals whose traditions and culture inspired his sculptures.
Many of his central Australian works have been left behind at a bird sanctuary at Pitchi Pitchi near Alice Springs because he considered the landscape integral to these sculptures.
Another interesting item is a large rhinoceros horn, which has been carbon dated by the Australian National University Radiocarbon Laboratory to somewhere between 1697 and 1950.
An early Chinese silk tapestry should attract plenty of interest along with a Han Dynasty rare Neolithic vessel more than 5000 years old.
Other attractions feature several 19th century French ormolu mounted furniture items including an 1850s ebony writing desk, three glass door display cabinet, single door Boulle vitrine and marble top Wellington chest, and a new Yamaha upright piano.
Among the paintings on offer is Pro Hart’s The Creek Picnic and works by David Boyd, J.A. Turner, Leonard Long, Septimus Power, David Bromley, Richard Chamerski and Jeffrey Makin.
