Signs of recovery

The June auctions in the UK capital brought together a number of interesting bows and instruments, with signs that the market is on the up and up, writes Kevin MacDonald

Ingles & Hayday sold this 1767 cello by Johann Joseph Stadlmann for £33,600

COURTESY INGLES & HAYDAY

Cellos of quality were present in abundance

The sweet cacophony of public viewings was once more absent this June as the London auction houses kept browsing to appointment only. The Covid crisis had already managed to push the habitual spring auctions into summer for the first time in many years, leaving many of us feeling like tethered migratory birds that should have been winging somewhere in March.

This summer is also a time of change in the London violin world. On a less dramatic note, Brompton’s has moved from its offices at the Royal Institution to attractive new premises at 33 Percy Street in Georgian Fitzrovia. More surprisingly, Tarisio appears to be – at least in the near to medium term – moving its European auctions from London to Berlin. I am assured that the London offices will remain open for business, including their restorers, and that they will also be in use for viewing items from the Berlin sales.

This June, Ingles & Hayday (I&H) were very much the winners with £2.66 million in sales and 79.4 per cent of lots sold. Tarisio managed £1.3 million total, with 73.1 per cent sold in the first round and 86 per cent following the after-sale. Brompton’s policy, effectively allowing buyers to delete both their purchase and its price from the internet record immediately, makes any meaningful consideration of the full range of their top and medium-priced lots impossible. Despite this, calculations made on the day show slightly less than 50 per cent of their lots sold at first offering.

Big six-figure lots, both classic Italians and illustrious successors, were available across the houses. I&H sold a Stradmodel Vuillaume violin – made for Alexei Lvov (composer of the anthem God Save the Tsar) – for well above estimate at £384,000. Making an undisclosed amount somewhere above that was a fine Giuseppe Guarneri ‘filius Andreae’ violin at Brompton’s with a Charles Beare certificate and a Ratcliff dendro determination of 1689. Other big violin sales for I&H included another Vuillaume at £168,000, a Gennaro Gagliano (c.1770) for £284,000, a 1784 Antonio Gragnani for £144,000, and a 1914 Enrico Rocca, formerly owned by Aaron Rosand, at £144,000. Tarisio managed to sell its top lot, a c.1715 violin by Vincenzo Rugeri, over estimate at £269,500. However, there were a number of major violins that did not sell on the day including an interesting c.1700 Giovanni Tononi at Tarisio (formerly attributed to Nicolò Amati) with supporting dendrochronology, and the well-provenanced ‘ex-Tibor Zelig’ David Tecchler (c.1720) at I&H.

The bow of the season was undoubtedly a spectacular Émile Auguste Ouchard cello bow made for the 1937 Paris Exposition Internationale. Sold by Tarisio, this was the maker’s highest-grade gold-mounted bow, with star inlay to the tortoiseshell frog. It was purchased from the maker (probably new) by cellist André Navarra in 1942. The lot was contested by several bidders before selling for almost double its top estimate at £59,000.

Prime and historic cello bows were also the order of the day at I&H with the collection of the late Martin Lovett on the block. Both the aura of the illustrious Amadeus Quartet and the quality of the bows themselves drove some of these ten lots sky-high, most particularly a gold-mounted bow attributed to F.X.Tourte (high estimate £10,000, selling for £66,000) and a gold-mounted c.1880 Heinrich Knopf (high estimate £3,000, selling for £21,600).

Cellos of quality were also present in abundance. Illustrative of a point made in my last column, that fine German and Austrian instruments are finally on the rise, was a handsome Johann Joseph Stadlmann of 1767 at I&H, which more than doubled its top estimate reaching £33,600. Also at I&H was a cello ascribed in the 1920s to a member of the Testore family, now of less certain attribution, overshooting a cautious estimate and achieving £60,000. At Tarisio, similarly interesting cellos sold well: one by John Betts (c.1780) for £30,000 and another of the early 18th-century Bologna school for £66,000.

This Strad-model Vuillaume made £384,000 at I&H

VUILLAUME AND TOURTE COURTESY I&H. RUGERI AND OUCHARD COURTESY TARISIO

Tarisio sold this c.1715 Vincenzo Rugeri violin for £269,500

This gold-mounted cello bow attributed to F.X. Tourte went for £66,000 at I&H

This bow by Ouchard fils made £59,000 at Tarisio

Violas have been relatively slow to sell of late – at I&H and Tarisio only 8 of 19 violas offered sold, and the premium lots (a Fagnola and a Vuillaume) both went unsold. At Brompton’s a c.1900 viola with idiosyncratically aligned f-holes by Naples’ Giovanni Pistucci made £66,000. Top violas at the other houses were also relatively modern Italians: a 1970 Gio Batta Morassi for £36,000 at I&H and a 1923 Sgarabotto for £29,500 at Tarisio.

Pre-20th-century female violin makers are a rarity. Katarina Guarneri comes to mind, and in 18th-century London there was Elizabeth Hare, but it is always interesting to see the work of the Paris-born Jenny Bailly (1874–c.1960), one of the earliest prolific female makers. A very handsome violin on a ‘del Gesù’ model, made in 1919 by Bailly for the British Violin Makers Guild, sold above estimate at Tarisio for £4,200.

In the odds-and-ends department there were a number of beautiful late Victorian/Edwardian wooden cases offered in June, although they struggled to reach their reserves and one feels that some estimates on these were a bit high. Finally, at I&H, a violin scroll (volute & pegbox with later neck) probably by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi, rolled past a conservative estimate of £3,000 – reaching £10,800. One can only hope that there is a Landolfi without original scroll awaiting it somewhere.

All sale prices include buyer’s premium