Japanese & Chinese Arts

April 10, 2024 - ALL LOTS SOLD!

Our recent Cooper Collection auction was one of great significance, a culmination of a lifetime’s work dedicated to collecting exquisite and rare Japanese and Chinese Arts. 

We are delighted to share that it was extremely well received and highly successful.  Over 400 lots were sold to a myriad of delighted collectors and enthusiasts from all over the globe. 

See some of prices achieved in the pictures below.

Financial Review News Article 23/06/2022 published by Natasha Bobby

When colourful jeweller and gold dealer Peter Davis died in 2017, he left behind thousands of pieces of antique jewellery, coins, bullion, and wristwatches locked away in four safes nestled in the bowels of Melbourne’s famous Manchester Unity Building.

The art of furniture inlay involves the labour intensive, intricate technique of inserting glued veneers of usually expensive timbers and materials such as mother-of-pearl, ivory and metal to timber surfaces to create highly decorative and often symbolic designs, patterns and scenes. Examples of this exquisite artform which frequently grace our rooms hark from an era when the finished object  was greatly revered, far more valued than the labour that created it.   

We are pleased to offer some fine and diverse examples of this technique in our forthcoming auction and hope that you too enjoy and appreciate the workmanship, refinement and beauty of this remarkable near lost art.

The name David Upfill-Brown is probably unfamiliar to most, yet we have all seen his work.  The speaker's chair at Parliament House in Canberra is one of David's many public commissions both here and beyond our shores including furniture for the parliaments of PNG and other Pacific nations.

Born and raised in Southern Africa, David began his artistic life as a sculptor, honing the art of Shona sculpture in Zimbabwe and working with the peculiar regional soapstone known as serpentine. He developed a strong affinity and understanding of the stone with which he worked believing the best way to learn about material was to carve.  He applied the same mode of thinking as he transitioned from stone to wood carving.  

We are fortunate to have an extensive oriental section in our inaugural 2020 auction, ranging from antique to more contemporary offerings from various collectors and estates.  Humour, playfulness, serenity, reverence, mythology and belief are all beautifully presented in miniature in our current sale.  Through the hands of mostly unknown craftsmen, materials as diverse as malachite, coral, jade, turquoise, ivory, have all been fashioned into sculptural treasures.