Rare Embroideries At Lawsons
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday April 16, 1996
SYDNEY auctioneer Lawsons is celebrating the arrival of carpet and textile expertise in the form of Edward Wilkinson, who is also a tribal art specialist, by organising a sale devoted to old and interesting carpets and textiles from private collections.
The first carpet sale will be on May 27, and highlights include a good Turkman Yomut, Persian Senneh and Kerman, an Indian Agra and several Caucasian rugs.
Among the textiles are three 19th-century suzanis - Central Asian coverlets embroidered in silk with bold floral patterns.
The suzanis are estimated at $2,000 to $3,000 each but could go higher, depending on quality and age. A late 18th-century suzani sold for $65,000 at Sotheby's in London in April last year, while the Powerhouse museum reportedly paid $22,500 for the fine example in its collection, which came from an exhibition held in 1992 by Sydney's Nomadic Rug Traders.
The Powerhouse does not have its suzani on display but it is illustrated in the book Treasures of the Powerhouse Museum by director Terence Measham.
While serious interest in carpets and textiles is relatively new in Australia, the Oriental Rug Society of NSW numbers some 70 members, and the Powerhouse in particular has purchased well over the years.
Lawsons' Mr Wilkinson says he believes some interesting early carpets and textiles came to Australia as precious possessions with Armenian, Uzbek and South Russian emigrants in earlier decades.
ON THE CARPET
THE extraordinary tribal rugs and weavings of South Persia are featured at an exhibition at Nomadic Rug Traders' Pyrmont gallery from Saturday evening. Nomad and village carpets from the Qashqai, Khamseh, Afshar, Luri and Bakhtiyari tribal groups will be on show. Prices range from $600 to $700 for Gabeh rugs to $12,500 for an important antique Qashqai.
Coinciding with the exhibition, the gallery has arranged a series of lectures on the various tribal groups and their weavings. The cost of $50 (proceeds to the new Children's Hospital) for the four sessions includes an exclusive screening of the classic 1920s silent documentary Grass.
Grass, made by the producers of King Kong, traces the migration of 50,000 Bakhtiyari people and their livestock through breathtaking terrain to find winter pasture.
Inquiries to Nomadic Rug Traders on 660 3753.
BIG AND SMALL
THE David and Goliath of rare Australian bird books made a brief appearance together at Christie's book sale in Melbourne on March 26.
Goliath, John Gould's Birds of Australia (1849-69) in eight volumes - each volume being about 50 cm long and 12 cm thick, complete with 681 hand-coloured plates - sold for $354,500, including buyer's premium. The buyer was believed to be a private collector.
David took the form of John Lewin's diminutive Birds of New South Wales, dating from 1813, comprising one slim volume just 28 cm long with 18 handcoloured plates. It sold for $266,500 to Sydney rare book dealer Hordern House.
Hordern House was anxious to acquire another copy of the Lewin - its last copy went to the transport magnate Lindsay Fox last September as part of the sale of the Wettenhall Library - virtually an A to Z collection of rare Australian books. Mr Fox obviously didn't think it was worth fiddling about buying the books one by one, so he paid $3 million for the lot.
The Lewin book claims a few firsts - including the first natural history book printed in Australia and the first book with plates engraved, printed and published in Australia. (Its virtual twin, Birds of New Holland, was published in 1808, but in London.)
Considering only some 14 copies of Lewin's Birds are known, quite a few copies have hit the market in recent years. The one at Christie's was formerly in the library of the American collector H. Bradley Martin, and is reported to have been bought by the brewing baron John Elliott in 1989 for $535,000.
Anne McCormick, director of Hordern House, reckons the Gould and Lewin are the top of the tree among Australiana books - they are among just a handful of rarities worth more than $200,000 apiece.
The others are Blaxland's journal of his Blue Mountains crossing of 1823, Bland's account of the Hume and Hovell journey to Port Phillip of 1824 and 1825, the "NSW General Standing Orders" of 1802, and Flinders' "Observations on the Coast of Van Diemen's Land" of 1801.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald