Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Lempertz Tribal Art Auction Results

It's been quite a while since we wrote about the tribal art auction at the Lempertz Auction House and they took quite some time getting the results of the auction processed and up on the web. They're now available and so we wanted to do a quick rundown what turned out to be a rather lackluster auction. 

A total of 65 lots (of 189 lots or only 34%) sold on April 25, 2009 for a total of 275,950. Of the lots that we profiled in our last post -Lot 40, Lot 51, Lot 54, and Lot 60 - only Lot 54 actually sold, all others BIed or were Bought In by the house. Lot 54, the Fine Baule Mask pictured below, was estimated at 36,000 and actually sold for €37,000.
The highlight of the sold items was certainly Lot 183, "A Fine and Important Mangbetu Container" which was estimated to fetch between €40,000 and €60,000 and brought in €66,000 - one of the few pieces to exceed its high estimate. 
With the exception of these two pieces, there were few noteworthy pieces  that sold at the sale. All by the above two pieces were sold for prices €10,000 or below (with a low price of only €250).

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