Sotheby’s takes the lead during Asia Week with $55 million total sales. The auction yielded excellent result for a wide range of objects including Chinese ceramics, jade, modern Indian paintings, and Himalayan bronze and stone statues. This week’s auction exceeded with the certainty the high end estimate of $47.6 million, and nearly doubling sales from its September 2015 results. A pair of stunning Chinese Classical chairs from The Reverend Richard Fabian Collection was sold for $1.2 million at auction last week.
Sotheby’s was delighted to present a single owner sale of classical Chinese hardwood furniture from the collection of The Reverend Richard Fabian. A founder and rector of St. Gregory’s of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco, Father Fabian also found time to pursue a burgeoning interest in Chinese art. He acquired his first piece of Chinese furniture, a pair of chairs, in 1974 from a small Connecticut antique shop, and the collection grew from there. The sale comprises 63 lots ranging in date from the late Ming to early Qing dynasty and in scale from a massive pair of Huanghuali cabinets to small portable scholar’s objects. Highlights include two very rare and important pairs of Huanghuali and Burlwood Fu-Character Yokeback Armchairs, a pair of superb Huanghuali Latticework Cabinets with book-matched panels and an exquisitely carved Huanghuali Bamboo-Style Horseshoe-back Armchair.