Auction PR Publicity Announcements News and Information
Auction PR Publicity Announcements News and Information

Robert Kime Property for Christie’s Auction

Christie’s South Kensington will present a sale featuring property from one of Britain’s highly respected interior decorators – Robert Kime, alongside Property from a Cotswold Manor House. The two diverse yet complementary collections offer a vast array of wonderful works of art from colourful Ottoman textiles, carpets and carvings to Ming porcelain and ancient English oak furniture. Including over 400 lots, with estimates from £300 to £40,000, the sale provides collectors and aspiring interior decorators the opportunity to add to, or even start their own collection.

Group of four decorative lamps 19th/20th Century. The largest: 26 in. (66 cm.) high, overall. Estimate: £1,500-2,000. Photo: Christie´s Images Ltd 2010

Robert Kime is one of Britain’s most esteemed interior decorators, with clients including HRH The Prince of Wales, John Taylor of Duran Duran and his wife Gela of fashion label Juicy Couture. His charming and diffident style has earned him a wide and enthusiastic following. Kime began trading in antiques whilst reading history at Oxford University and today his businesses encompass fabric production alongside his natural calling – interior decorating with hand-picked antiques.

The sale will feature a wealth of Islamic and Eastern influenced furniture and works of art, porcelain, pictures, photographs, carpets and antique textiles. These are offered alongside a selection of Robert Kime’s own range of elegant furniture and lighting. The entire collection is defined by Kime’s exceptional eye for pattern, design and rarity and includes a magnificent Ceylonese specimen wood and ivory inlaid carved ebony centre table (estimate: £15,000-25,000); a Mechelen polychrome decorated and gilt-ground double-sided screen decorated with the `Tree of Life’ (estimate: £25,000-40,000); a watercolour of El Luxor, On the Nile by celebrated artist Edward Lear (estimate: £4,000-6,000); a large embroidered Moghul floor spread, circa 1700 (estimate: £5,000-8,000); and an Ottoman mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell inlaid casket, late 18th/early 19th century (estimate: £2,000-3,000).

Robert Kime comments: “My lease on five agricultural barns is coming to an end so it has come as no surprise to find that, having moved the whole business to Marlborough to a smaller industrial site, I have a chronic storage problem. The collection of textiles, architectural fittings and furniture from all over middle eastern Europe, which I have assembled over forty years, now has to be re-housed. There are limited display areas in the three shops (42 & 43 Museum Street and 121 Kensington Church Street) hence the SOS to Christie’s”.

Property from a Cotswold Manor House
Nestled in the Cotswold hills, this charming Manor House hid a treasure trove of works of art ranging in date from the 17th to 20th centuries that has been lovingly collected by the present owners over the last 25 years. Juxtaposing antique and modern, property from this Cotswold Manor includes an oak refectory table originally from Leeds Castle, Kent (estimate: £12,000-18,000), a 17th century blue and white jar from the Ming dynasty (estimate: £4,000-6,000); as well as a collection of pictures which range from a late work by the dynamic hand of Roger Hilton, CBE (1911-1975), an exponent of abstract art in post-war Britain (Fishing Boats, 1965, estimate: £6,000-9,000), through to an 18th century equestrian portrait of a Jockey traditionally identified as wearing the Duke of Devonshire’s colours (estimate: £8,000-12,000) .

The sale offers a unique opportunity to indulge in the distinctive look of one of the UK’s foremost arbiters of taste, blended with the discerning style and haute elegance of a Cotswold country house ambience.

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