The 'Hammer' goes under the hammer – setting world record
gramophone.co.uk
May 18 2006
A violin by Antonio Stradivari broke all auction records when it sold to an anonymous buyer for $3,544,000 at Christie’s, New York.
The instrument, known as the ‘Hammer’, comes from Stradivari’s most coveted ‘Golden’ period. It exceeded the previous world record price for an instrument at auction – also held by Christie’s NY for its sale of the ‘Lady Tennant’ Stradivari in 2005 for $2.03m – by nearly 50 percent.
‘The sale was a resounding success with the winning combination of attribution, quality and condition,’ said Christie’s international specialist, Kerry Keane. ‘It firmly establishes the US, and New York in particular, as the centre of the fine musical instrument market.’
Although world record prices at auction are not uncommon events, the Christie’s New York result exceeded its estimate to a level that equals retail prices for such an instrument. Similar results in London’s spring sales suggest that players are starting to bypass private dealers to go straight to the auction saleroom, traditionally the territory of the dealer and the private collector.
The violin was played in pre-auction viewings by the American virtuoso Elizabeth Pitcairn (owner of the famous ‘Mendelssohn’ Stradivari), whose great-uncle was one of many American businessmen to have owned the instrument since its arrival in the United States in 1911. |
