THE LAWRENCE JADE COLLECTION

Our Asian Art department is proud to be collaborating with the Oriental Ceramic Society and recently arranged a handling session of an important collection of Chinese jade carvings that we will be selling later in the year. This event at Burlington House in the Society of Antiquaries was timed to coincide with the Society’s annual Woolf Jade lecture. This is the one annual event which attracts the world’s leading jade scholars, academics, curators and collectors.

The collection we will be offering was formed by Murray Lawrence and his father Neville. It includes stunning Qing dynasty vessels, figures and seals mostly purchased from Spink & Son in the 1950s and includes items from the collections of Major-General Charles Gordon, Sir John Buchanan-Jardine, Hugh S Whitaker as well as Queen Marie of Yugoslavia.

Gandhi

In 1921 Mahatma Gandhi made the decision to change his clothing from the elaborate Gujarati attire to a simple dhoti and shawl. He decided that as he was to work for the poor people of India, to identify with them, he should not wear different clothes.

Following an invitation to afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace by George V, Gandhi insisted he would still ware his dhoti and shawl. Later, when asked if he was not wearing enough clothes to meet the King, Gandhi is reported to have remarked, “The King had enough on for both of us”.

Above:

A finely carved sandalwood figure of Mahatma Gandhi

Estimate £8,000–12,000

In January our African and Oceanic Art department became the first to run a timed online auction with their colourful offering of Adornment: The Romy Rey Collection. This latest in a series of sales of the eclectic and expansive collection of the artist, Romy Rey, surpassed expectations with a sell rate of 100% and a sale total of just over £115,000. While there are no current plans for departments to run regular timed sales, there are clearly some areas which benefit from this flexible and arguably more relaxed style of auction.

Natalie Milsted

Congratulations to our Managing Director, Natalie Milsted, who has just achieved the remarkable feat of becoming a Six Star Finisher by completing all six of the world’s major marathons, making her the 354th British woman to accomplish this. (For those of us who only run if someone is chasing us, those six are London, New York, Chicago, Boston, Berlin and Tokyo). The impressive tick-list has taken Natalie 10 years to achieve, (with delays caused by Covid travel disruptions), and has seen her clock up 157 miles in total – to say nothing of all the training she has put in. Unsurprisingly, the number of people to have achieved the Six Star status since it started in 2016 is small – standing at 8,143 at the end of last year.