A large collection of animal trophies, including zebra, deer and rhinoceros heads will be sold in the course of a two-day sale at Mealy's in Castlecomer on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 24th and 25th. The collection of over 50 lots comes from a large stately home in Co Kildare, but to protect their owners' identity, the family crests and labels identifying who shot what and where have been removed. Mealy's have substituted some labels, naming at least the animals' country of origin. The trophies date from the early 1900s and some of them were stuffed and mounted by London taxidermist, Rowland Ward of Picadilly. The animal heads will appeal to anyone who has a pub or country-house hotel with walls to fill and customers to impress. Already there has been keen interest from English dealers.
Estimates range from £200 for a pair of small gazelle heads and horns to £2,500 for an early elk skull, with antlers spanning over seven feet. A zebra head has a top estimate of £250 and a large waterbuffalo head has a price of £350-£550. A pair of rhinoceros heads is estimated to fetch up to £1,200.
The sale has over 1,200 lots and there are several other interesting collections - watches and watch parts, swords and daggers including some Nazi solinger daggers, spears and hunting gear from many parts of the globe. Most of the curiosities will be sold on the first day, with the Wednesday devoted to furniture and over 100 lots of pictures. Notable items include a monumental William IV double-breakfront bookcase, which is over 19 feet long. It, too, came from the Kildare house, where it took up an entire wall of the library.
The centre section was, in fact, a concealed door to the next room. It will be auctioned at the end of the second day when it is expected to make up to £18,000. Among the picture lots, two early 19th century Irish views - The Bridge at Fermoy and View in Co Cork by J. Day - are likely to exceed their top estimate of £4,000.
Three days of viewing begin next Friday.
50 years of artist's work for sale in NI
Ross's auctioneers in Belfast are set to hold a studio sale of the work of Dennis Osborne, an English artist who settled in Lisburn in the late 1950s and whose work has been exhibited in Canada, the US and Northern Ireland.
Around 180 of his works, spanning 50 years and including several cubist paintings, will be auctioned on March 19th. There will be no reserves, according to Daniel Clarke of Ross's, and prices are expected to range from £200-£2,000. Osborne was born in Portsmouth and studied at Camberwell School of Art in the late 1940s. He and his Ulster-born wife, Jean Miekle, moved to Canada briefly before returning to live in Lisburn, where he taught art, painted and exhibited, most recently at the Royal Ulster Academy last year.
Comparisons have been made between Osborne and Northern artist Tom Carr. The sale includes a variety of works, from landscape to animal pictures and studies from life.
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