Taxing Time
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday June 26, 1996
Several of next week's sales are deliberately poised on the cusp of the tax year for the advantage of the over-incomed, Ted Craig's Australian Art Auction is at the Wynyard Vista Hotel at 9 York Street on Monday at 6pm. He's known for traditional, accessible art up to $10,000. This time he's offering 300 oils and works on paper, a big Arthur Boyd Carrington Falls, Shoalhaven painting, a little John Perceval scarecrow in a wheatfield, a Josef Wolinski self-portrait at the grand piano with his sister, and a generic Sidney Nolan explorer. There's also a Doris Zinkeisen (English charm school painter, rather dated) of Josephine Baker.
All sorts of antique and secondhand goods have been pouring in for the Tim Goodman sale in aid of the Muscular Dystrophy Association of NSW on Monday at 10am in the Double Bay rooms at 7 Anderson Street. The MDA advertised the sale nationwide, Goodman's will donate the buyer's premium and if vendors donate 50% or more of their proceeds, this amount will be commission-free and tax-deductible. However, the description Extraordinary Fine Art auction cannot be wholly verified as the auctioneer tells Lots & Lots the finest pieces may be moved on to his August 12 and 13 art sales, when, of course, the same rules will apply.
Time sale . . . Lawsons' thrice yearly Clocks and Small Timepieces sale is on Monday at noon at 202 Cumberland Street, The Rocks. There's a marine chronometer and a good English Dent pocketwatch, but best are certainly the modern and vintage wrist-watches, Vacheron et Constantin, early Omegas which the collectors love, and those contemporary media darlings, Tag Heuers, which the collectors have yet to warm to. When old movements are guaranteed in working order, it doesn't necessarily mean they keep time: Lawsons is not Mussolini. As auctioneers they operate as fairly and with as much expertise as they can, but this is an area of complexity and rampant faking with the need for Buyer Beware signs to appear in three-metre flashing neon letters. You may be pleased to know that one big-ticket ruby and diamond-encrusted gold bracelet Rolex failed to be accepted for this sale and was returned to the vendor marked fake. With the correct movement it could have been worth $40,000, but it had a worn movement from a stainless steel watch. The impostor was worth only its value in gold and gems: $5,000.
Lawsons' Decorative Arts and Antique Furniture sale on Tuesday at 9.30am catalogues some plainly useful furniture - a George III settee in the Chippendale style ($4,000 plus) and a mahogany breakfront secretaire bookcase ($6,000). There is also Australian pottery, a Clytie Pate bowl, a Marguerite Mahood chameleon vase.
Tomorrow, Lawsons' Friday general sales are all the more interesting for a toys and dolls segment which starts about 1.30pm with donkey engines, tin toys, Barbies of most races, creeds and colours, a significant German Simon and Halbig musical automaton doll of about 1890 (though what she rock and rolls to we cannot say), and two dolls' houses. One is a well-made repro Victorian house, with two floors with verandas and an attic. The other, a trashed but restorable red-and-green-painted house with embossed wallpapers, lino floors and pelmets and curtains fashioned from paper doilies, is clearly from a nice suburb.
Inquiries: Australian Art Auctions 267 7363; Tim Goodman 327 7311; Lawsons 241 3411.
© 1996 Sydney Morning Herald