News-Antique.com - Nov 30,-0001 - Contact: Rhiannon Bevan-John 020.7752.3120 rbevan-john@christies.com
A GRAND COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES AT CHRISTIE’S
LONDON IN OCTOBER
Pictured:
A Graeco-Etruscan terracotta head of a youth, late 4th – 3rd century B.C.
(estimate: £60,000-90,000)
Important Antiquities from Capesthorne Hall, Cheshire
Tuesday, 18 October at approx. 11.30 am
Fine Antiquities
Tuesday, 18 October 2005 at 10.30 am and 2.30pm King Street – A single owner collection of Important Antiquities from Capesthorne Hall in Cheshire leads Christie’s King Street Antiquities’ sale on 18 October 2005. The accompanying Fine Antiquities sale will feature over 200 lots of Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Near Eastern artefacts, including a rare example of the earliest form of writing in the world discussing the beer making process. With estimates ranging from £500 to £250,000, the sales are estimated to fetch in excess of £1.5 million.
Important Antiquities from Capesthorne Hall, Cheshire
One of Britain’s great country houses, Capesthorne Hall, is the home of the Bromley- Davenport family and was first mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086. The extensive
Grand Tours in Europe of Edward ‘Ned’ Davies Davenport (1778-1847) and his younger brother, the Rev. Walter Davenport Bromley (1787-1862), filled Capesthorne with many of its treasures.
In opposition to his Tory father, Edward became a Whig M.P. and attracted a wide circle of liberal-loving and radical intellectuals. His curiosity took him to Elba to interview Napoleon and this tour of Italy led to the formation of his antiquities’ collection. Expected to fetch in excess of £400,000, the 11 lots of ancient sculptures and vases provide an insight into the English passion for the Classical world and the formation of Country House collections in
the 18th and early 19th centuries. Amongst the lots offered are 5 Greek vases, some of which are said to have come from Lucien Bonaparte’s excavations at Canino, near Vulci, including an Attic black-figure lidded amphora attributed to the Antimenes Painter, circa 525 B.C. (estimate: £80,000-120,000). Sculpture from the collection includes a Roman marble portrait bust of a lady, circa 81-96
A.D. (estimate: £70,000-90,000), and a fine life-size Graeco-Etruscan terracotta head of a youth, late 4th – 3rd century B.C. (estimate: £60,000-90,000).
The general Fine Antiquities sale is led by the more than 3,000 year old Egyptian granodiorite head of Sekhmet which means `the powerful’. Although this lioness deity was a
symbol of destruction, she was also a protecting goddess (estimate: £200,000-250,000). Formerly in a European private collection when it was acquired in Paris in the mid 1960s, the head probably came from one of the many seated statues of Sekhmet found in the Temple of Mut at Karnak, and dates to the reign of Amenhotep III (1386-1349 B.C.).
Also featured is the 5,000 year old `Stansfeld’ inscribed tablet (estimate: £60,000-90,000), a rare example of the earliest form of writing in the world which discusses the process of making beer using pictographic symbols. The clay tablet records the distribution of beer and the amount of barley and malt needed in its brewing. Easily identifiable are the jars with
