JUST one week after Christie’s held their series of London sales from the cellars, storehouses and attics of Althorp, ancestral home of the Spencer family, Sotheby’s announced that they are to hold an autumn auction of attic treasures from Chatsworth, the Derbyshire home of the Dukes of Devonshire.
The works from Althorp comprised a £1.62m, 757-lot attic sale,
with a further £4m garnered from 78 lots of furnishings that were
formerly at Spencer House, the family's London house, plus a
further £12.6m from two Old Master paintings.
Sotheby's Chatsworth sale, which will take place on the premises
over three days from October 5-7, will disperse over 20,000 objects
in 1400 lots and is expected to fetch in the region of £2.5m.
Explaining the reasons for the sale, the Duke of Devonshire, who
is deputy chairman of Sotheby's, said: "When we moved into
Chatsworth several years ago, we found the attics filled with the
contents of other family homes from generations past. With
Sotheby's, we embarked on the lengthy process of selecting a group
of items for sale that would allow us to create much-needed space
in several rooms throughout the house."
As well as Chatsworth itself, those other family homes filling
the attic spaces included Chiswick House, Hardwick Hall, Lismore
Castle and the family's own London home, the now-demolished
Devonshire House, which was designed and built by William Kent in
the 1730s.
So along with the usual teacups, curtains and other surplus
day-to-day effects of any large household, the sale will offer some
substantial architectural fittings from a palatial London house by
one of the best-known English architects.
Prime amongst them is a white marble chimneypiece designed
c.1735 by Kent for the Devonshire House ballroom, which is
estimated at £200,000-300,000.
By Anne Crane
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