The Dutch royal famly is auctioning items from the late Queen Juliana’s estate for charity
IF YOU happen to have one of those notorious golf balls branded with the Anglo Irish Bank logo, don’t throw it away in anger. And don’t burn the share certificates in disgust. Mementoes of the crash could become highly collectible.
Consider one of history’s other great financial disasters: the South Sea Bubble of 1720, when frenzied speculation in South American trade-related ventures led to a stock market crash and financial ruin for thousands of investors in London, Paris and Amsterdam.
A rare set of Dutch plates dating from the calamity is to be sold in Amsterdam next week. Each plate is decorated with a painting of a comedian and a bittersweet inscription satirising the stupendous fiscal folly. Almost three centuries later, the quotes sound remarkably contemporary and include: Pardie al mijn Actien kwijt!(Suddenly lost all my shares!) and, with typical Dutch bluntness, the pithy: Schyt Actien enwind-handel(Crap shares and swindle).
The plates have an estimate of €7,000-€9,000 and are among the items being sold in what really is the sale of the century so far. Sotheby’s auction of property from the estate of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands takes place over four days, starting on Monday, in Amsterdam.
The exceedingly popular late monarch reigned from 1948 until her abdication in 1980. The sale has been authorised by her daughters – the incumbent Queen Beatrix and Princesses Irene, Margriet and Christina. The royals are selling not just some of the family silver but also furniture, glass, porcelain, clocks, paintings and all manner of collectibles. The funds raised will go to charities – among them, the Red Cross.
The items have been gathered from Soestdijk – the palace lived in by Queen Juliana and her husband, Prince Bernhard, until they both died in 2004 – and various royal stores and attics. Not all of the pieces in the sale were collected by the couple; many were accumulated over the last 150 years by earlier Dutch royals including Kings Willem II and III, Queen Emma and Queen Wilhelmina.
Prospective bidding interest has been boosted by the fact that many of the works bear inventory marks and labels to show their origins in the seven royal palaces and royal residences throughout the Netherlands.
A door-stopping catalogue features a dizzying array of over 1,500 lots of astonishing diversity, from a silver chestnut vase, made in Amsterdam in 1819, (€2,500-€3,500) to a majestic Italian porcelain dinner service by Doccia Ginori (€40,000-€60,000).
Sybarites will find all the trappings essential to a regal lifestyle – including silver asparagus tongs and grape scissors, ornate cigar-cutters, a gold Cartier cigarette case and a Persian, silver-mounted wood rose-water sprinkler. And, for the ultimate in aristocratic decadence, how about a Scottish silver-mounted ram’s horn snuff mull (€2,000-€3,000) or Prince Bernhard’s gold-mounted leather- and-wood whip (€500-€1,000)? It’s a truly cracking sale.
* Property from the estate of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, Rai Theatre, Europaplein, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. March 14-17, 2011
