The Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis achieved this at the end of last month when it sold three Victorian ‘castle-top’ card cases for more than £8500 each, thus breaking the previous top sum at auction, set by Dreweatts in February 2014.
W&W offered 48 ‘castle-top’ card cases overall in the sale titled The Arthur Holder Collection of Silver & Vertu (Part I).
Holder, who died in February this year aged 97, initially collected anything that took his fancy but somehow silver held a special fascination for him, particularly Georgian. Although he ran a Nottinghamshire estate agency, he even became a silversmith himself and continued silversmithing until he was 96.
In his later collecting years, Holder focused on the Victorian ‘castle-top’ calling card cases, truncheons, tipstaves, wine labels, fire insurance badges and watermen’s badges.
The card cases on offer at W&W had rare scenes which collectors seek but do not come up at auction very often. Some had not been available to buy at auction for many years.
Dublin Post Office
Top-seller at £9800 (estimate £1500-2000) among these cases was a 4in (10cm) long example with a raised scene on the front showing the General Post Office, Dublin, by Alfred Taylor, Birmingham 1860.
On the reverse is a cartouche engraved with a crest and Helen. It was bought in a Christie’s South Kensington Interiors sale in March 2013, for £3500. The crest is that used by a number of families including Arthur, O’Fallon, O’Donovan, Marlay and Stratton.
The Nathaniel Mills card case sold by Dreweatts in 2014, hallmarked for 1852, was also an Irish scene: the Dublin international industrial exhibition building of 1853.
A Mills case, Birmingham 1849, also appeared in this W&W sale. Estimated also at £1500-2000, it showed the third Eddystone Lighthouse to be built off the Cornish coast, which lasted from 1759 until it was replaced in 1877. It sold at £9200.
The ‘castle-top’ card case showing Eddystone Lighthouse which sold for £9200 at Woolley & Wallis.
The third case to take more than £8500 at W&W also achieved £9200 on the same estimate. It depicted Arundel Castle, by George Unite, Birmingham 1858, and the cartouche on the reverse was engraved SD, from her father, Quebec August 21, 1860.
W&W reported a full saleroom throughout the day, with “multiple phone lines booked and strong internet bidding”. The three cases were bought by private collectors and dealers buying on behalf of clients.
Auctioneer and head of department Rupert Slingsby said: “We were delighted to have the opportunity to sell this extensive private collection of such an avid collector. This sale has been an enormous boost to the silver market, and in particular the collectors’ field.”
Parts 2 and 3 of the Holder collection will be in January and April 2017.
The buyer's premium at Woolley & Wallis was 22%.
