Christie's to sell furniture collection

Auction house Christie's will be selling a major collection of Chinese furniture during Asian Art Week in March, with highlighted pieces of furniture expected to fetch at least $1 million each.

The collection - The Marie Theresa L. Virata Collection of Asian Art: A Family Legacy - will be offered on March 16 at Christie's in New York. Artwork in the collection has been a joint-collecting effort of more than three generations from the Virata family of the Philippines.

Virata was the wife of prominent economist Leonides Sarao Virata, who helped rebuild the Philippines after World War II as secretary of the Department of Commerce. Virata's children Luis and Giovanna, as well as her daughter-in-law Elizabeth also contributed to the collection.

Christie's billed the collection as the "most significant collection of Asian art" for its extensive provenance - the pieces' ownership histories - and the rarity of the furniture items: a pair of 17th century zitan "official's hat" armchairs are estimated to go for $600,000 to $800,000, and a rare zitan luohan bed from the 18th century has been estimated at $2 million to $3 million.

"The big draw for this collection is the extraordinary furniture collection," said Michelle Cheng, specialist of Chinese works of art at Christie's.

"I think one of the things that really stand out to me about this collection is the Viratas were - if you will - nerdy collectors. They weren't just interested in collecting the best examples of Chinese furniture they could find.

"They were also very interested in the collecting history - who collected Chinese furniture," she said. "They didn't want to just have a table, they wanted a table that Christian Humans (owned). They didn't want a pair of chairs, they wanted a pair of chairs that Gustav Ecke owned. They were very invested in who these individuals were, the historical aspects of collecting Chinese art."

Ecke was a German art historian best known for his book Chinese Domestic Furniture published in 1944. Humann was a European aristocrat who worked as an investment banker in New York and whose own collection of artwork was sold to the famous collector Robert Ellsworth.

Roughly a dozen pieces from the collection went on tour in Hong Kong in November. Cheng said that the auction house received much interest from Chinese collectors, who were attracted to both the prices and the rarity of the items.

Christie's expects the sale to perform very well, Cheng said.

"The estimates are very attractively priced, which in our market seems to be that attractive pricing leads to greater interest and more aggressive bidding in the sale room. We have several pieces that you can't find, or several examples that are the best examples of their type," she said.

"So I think if you are someone who is a serious collector of Chinese furniture and you're looking to acquire something at a very high level, this is a collection you would have your eye on," she added.

amyhe@chinadailyusa.com