Victor Mee holds Palace Collection sale

Ireland’s Victor Mee Auctions team will return to Kilmore’s Bishop’s Palace to host a second interiors sale later this month. The Palace Collection sale will be hosted online on October 28 and 29 and will once again see a range of rare interiors pieces go under the hammer.

Last year’s sale included lots from the Bishop’s Palace itself, whereas the upcoming Palace Collection sale will offer decorative interiors, garden, arts and literature lots.

The Bishop’s Palace is located 5.6km south west of Cavan town and was built between 1835 and 1837 in the Grecian Revival style. The house has been untouched and has become the ideal location, steeped in history and grandeur for Victor Mee Auctions’ iconic, high-brow interiors sales.

Commenting on the sale, Auctioneer Victor Mee, said: “We are extremely excited to present The Palace Collection sale for the second time, after its great success last year. The Bishop’s Palace is grand, luxurious and regal, and is the perfect backdrop for the array of historical interiors pieces that Bryan and I have carefully selected for the sale. As a team, we have dedicated many hours to hand-picking the lots, ensuring the pieces are unique and highly sought after. We are very much looking forward to seeing how each lot performs on the auction block during the two-day sale.”

One of the stand-out pieces is a 17th-century Northern Italian coffer on a stand. This piece is exceptionally special due to its historic origins and its provenance with the D’Ardia Caracciolo family. Don Ferdinando D’Ardia Caracciolo hailed from Italy and was known as the 2nd Prince of Cursi.

Coming from a long line of the aristocrats, the Caracciolo family of Naples, he moved to Ireland after marrying Mary Augusta Purcell-Fitzgerald. Once in Ireland the ‘royal’ couple took up residence in ‘The Island’, Waterford, now known as Waterford Castle, where this piece of antique furniture was sourced.

Elsewhere in the sale, is a stunning French giltwood and gesso side table. Originally purchased in Christie’s Auction House in the 1980s for €25,000, this elaborate table comes complete with a marble top above three drawers in frieze decorated with swags, and is raised on four reeded legs on a platform base with carved central urn. Estimated to sell for between €2,000 and €4,000, this radiantly finished side table makes a perfect selection for a striking, luxurious interior.

The Palace Collection sale will also showcase several furniture and literature pieces, combined in to one lot, descended through the family of John Millington Synge, a prominent poet and playwright and pillar of the Irish Literary Revival in the 1800s.

The first of two 18th-century furniture pieces includes an octagonal wine cooler with brass banding and internal label connecting it to Lissadell, County Sligo – the home of the Gore Booths. The second coffer to make an appearance within the sale is an exquisite Irish mahogany coffer, owned by the Synge family, who lived for many years within Glanmore Castle, County Wicklow. This coffer is a mahogany piece in a classic design that incorporates some of the most desirable Irish design features and is set to garner a lot of interest, said the auction house.

Also hailing from the same family estate is a collection of books by John M. Synge, retrieved directly from the Synge family home. The Aran Islands by John M. Synge, published in 1907, is a collection of four journal entries regarding the landscape and the people of the Aran Islands. In addition, this highly-desirable collection of literature is accompanied by drawings by Jack B. Yeats, brother of W.B Yeats. Synge was a dear friend of world-renowned poet and playwright W.B. Yeats, who very much encouraged his famous essays on the Aran Islands and his play ‘The Playboy of the Western World’.

Another literature offering is ‘Plays’ by J.M. Synge which contains the works of the celebrated playwright and was published in Dublin in 1924. This literary masterpiece is bound in blue cloth with a white spine and untrimmed paper. The John M. Synge collection is highly significant not just because of its age and relevance in Irish literary history, but because each book has come from the Synge family themselves. The full Synge collection is estimated to sell at auction for close to €4,000.

Two outstanding interiors lots derive from the 18th-century Georgian period. Estimated to sell for between €2,500 and €4,500 is a rare Georgian mahogany demi lune side table. This table is raised on square tapered legs and is exquisitely hand painted and inlaid with rosewood and satinwood.

Continuing in Georgian fashion is a mahogany side cabinet. This cabinet has doors inlaid with pink silk behind brass grilles, flanked by reeded columns. This exquisite antique piece was originally made for the Duke of Leinster, who resided in Leinster House, where it lived for many years.