Auction Room Sunday 27 May 2012 on ABC1
ABC1 | AIRDATE: Sunday 27 May 2012 @ 6.00pm
This week on Auction Room (which has just been commissioned for a second series!) the entertaining Aussie spin on The Antiques Roadshow host William McInnes takes us back to Lawsons in Sydney, Australia’s oldest general auction house, with a 130-year history of selling everything. William is in search of sunken treasure, has a brush with antique firearms and meets a true patron of the arts.
Marlene Antico is a former gallery owner and art dealer, and she’s got a big heart. Several years ago, she created the Paddington Art Prize, targeting emerging landscape artists who are struggling to make a name and earn a living. The prize is $20,000, entirely funded by Marlene.
Each year she patiently puts the money together by taking some of her own possessions and works of art to Sydney’s various auction houses, then holds her breath until the hammer falls. In Sydney’s competitive art circles she is universally loved and respected and this time at Lawsons, she is selling a Robert Dickerson silk-screen print and a small piece of Lalique glass.
Meanwhile, retired master builder, antique collector and billiards nut Harry Terrett is downsizing and selling plenty of exquisite antiques, but the stand-out item is a one-off which caught his eye in a Brisbane bric-a-brac shop 35 years ago. It’s a hat stand used by Harry as a billiard cue stand.
The real attraction of the day is a large collection of salvaged sunken treasure, the property of adventurer and diver Captain Mike Hatcher. Most of the treasures are from the wreck of the Tek Sing, a Chinese trader recovered in 1999. It sank in 1822 off the coast of Java, taking 320,000 pieces of porcelain to the bottom. The bronze cannon from the early 1700s is to die for.
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