When Auction Estimates Go Haywire - NYTimes.com
LONDON — An earthquake shook the market for the “Arts of the Islamic World” this week and professionals are bracing themselves for the tsunami that might follow.
Sotheby’s
A painted page from volume five of a set of six volumes recounting the "Life of the Prophet"(Siyar-i Nabi) that were commissioned by Sultan Murad III in 1594-1595.
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Sotheby’s
A silk shirt probably dating from the ninth century. Despite the browning of the material, the birds have a striking presence.
The first tremor, which was felt at Sotheby’s on Tuesday evening as the “Harvey B. Plotnick Collection of Ceramics” came up, has no precedent in market annals. The ceramics, mostly from Iran, were fine enough. In 2007, they were granted the honor of a seven-month long exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. But looked at coolly from a commercial standpoint, Mr. Plotnick’s wares suffered from a weakness that repeatedly proved lethal — the Sotheby’s estimates were wildly over the top.
Cut by half, they would still have been excessive. The same was true of sundry works of art — manuscript pages, silver vessels from Sasanian Iran — thrown in for good measure to build up a super deluxe evening sale. In just over an hour, the market returned its verdict. Of the 44 lots, 31 crashed unsold in a room where dealers sat in glum silence.
The first three lots summed up what would become a recurring pattern that evening.
The sale opened with a leaf from a manuscript of the Koran written on vellum in a script that the experts called “Hijazi” and tentatively dated to the second half of the seventh century. Tattered and faded, it was estimated to be worth £300,000 to £400,000, roughly $465,000 to $620,000, plus the sale charge. Take out a zero and the vellum leaf would still be inordinately expensive. It went nowhere.
Next came another Koran leaf from a beautiful manuscript in gold Kufic lettering on blue ground about which scholarly opinion varies. In 1968, I saw a slim portion of this manuscript in the library of the Shrine of Emam Reza in Mashhad, the great Khorasani metropolis in eastern Iran. As the script of the blue page is also seen on Khorasani manuscripts and ceramic bowls datable to the ninth century, the balance tilts in favor of Iran until proved otherwise. In any event, the page was sold to a telephone bidder for an astounding £277,250.
The third lot was a magnificent vessel with one line of grayish-blue inscription on ivory ground typical of eastern Iran, where bowls of this type have turned up at Neyshabur, in Khorasan. The ceramic bowl never stood a chance at £150,000 to £200,000. It fell unsold without a battle.
While an Iranian provenance might perhaps have acted as a commercial deterrent since it bans entry of any such goods into the United States, no such excuse can be invoked regarding objects of Arab make.
A monumental revetment tile from 13th-century Raqqa in Syria, reproduced on the catalog cover, was killed by the Alice in Wonderland estimate, £200,000 to £300,000. A similar fate was meted out to two fragments of 11th- or 12th-century bowls in so-called “lustre ware,” portraying characters from Fatimid Egypt. A Syrian bowl painted with a peacock, intact and of considerable rarity, fared no better. Here, a zero could have been dropped from the £150,000 to 200,000 estimate.
With some irony, the two big scores came for Iranian works of art. A silk shirt probably dating from the ninth century must have been found in some cave in northern Afghanistan where dry conditions allow perishable materials like textiles to survive. Despite the browning of the silk, the birds have a striking presence. The garment sold over the telephone for a phenomenal £713,250.
Another extraordinary price greeted an emerald-green glass bowl carved in low relief with a stylized hare on each of its five lobes. Ascribed to 10th-century “Persia” — meaning Iran — it climbed to £623,650.
The shirt and the bowl are each unique in their categories and that rescued them from failure.
On Wednesday morning, the second part of Sotheby’s sale started in an icy atmosphere. The dealers who occupied many of the seats looked tense and fretful. While intense rivalry pitches them against auction houses, the two camps need each other. Dealers represent a vital source of supply for auction houses. Auction results, on the other hand, provide dealers with a public record, which they use to justify the prices they charge. That morning, the public record was none too helpful.
