Australian House & Garden

Auction gems in Tasmania

Lovers of antique Australian cedar furniture are spoiled for choice in the coming months. No fewer than three major sales in Tasmania feature some fine examples of colonial craftsmanship.

Launceston-based auction house Tullochs has a number of rarities in its November 22 sale including a superb gentleman’s press by James Penman, a convict cabinetmaker from Scotland who worked in Campbell Town in Tasmania in the 1840’s, and a stylish cedar twin pedestal sideboard in the manner of William Hamilton of about the same date. Hamilton was a leading cabinetmaker in Hobart Town.

A week later the old-established auction house of Gowans in Hobart has a sale that includes not only cedar furniture but other items of interest to collectors of colonial antiques including walking sticks made of whalebone, souvenirs of an era in the 19th century when whaling was an international industry and ships from many countries hunted the leviathan in Tasmanian waters. Also included in the sale are two watercolours by Charles Henry Theodore Costantini who was born in France in the early 1800’s and died in Tasmania in the 1860’s. His charming naïve portraits bear a striking resemblance to American primitive art.

The third and perhaps the most interesting sale will be held not in an auction room but in one of the many Georgian homesteads scattered throughout Tasmania.

Somercotes, just off the Midlands Highway south of Ross, is an historically significant complex of some seventeen buildings clustered a central single-storey Regency style house. It will be the venue for a special sale organised by Mossgreen Auctions of Melbourne on Saturday, December 7. Mossgreen director Paul Sumner, who was a decorative arts specialist from the big international firms of Christie’s and Sotheby’s before launching his own auction house, understands that a ‘house sale’ inevitably attracts more bidders than one held in conventional auction rooms and many punters will roll up to have a bit of a stickybeak at Somercotes on account of its history. But there are some pretty special lots to attract the well-heeled connoisseur, including the earliest recorded Australian secretaire bookcase which could fetch well in excess of a hundred thousand and a newly discovered early 19th century card table in cedar and eucalypt which is estimated to bring between forty and sixty thousand dollars. Plus some exceptional early Australian silver. Rich pickings for discerning buyers and a good reason to visit Tasmania now that overseas travel has become so expensive.

• Posted By: Leo at Large at 3.29PM

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