[HNW] Neville Collection auction with embroideries

[Chris Laning]

Bonham's auction house is holding a big auction on December 9th of  
"The Howard Neville Collection of Early Works of Art and Textiles  
together with selected other properties." It's largely a collection of  
religious art ranging from the 15th to 19th centuries, and there are  
some utterly gorgeous embroideries in it, including an elaborate 17th  
century embroidered English coif (Lot 86) and a bunch of orphreys,  
bits of 15th century embroidered linen and silk et cetera. (I have no  
idea which Howard Neville this is; the catalog probably says.)

Also plenty of non-textiles, such as a 16th century Spanish iron  
strongbox, 16th century painted pottery whose technical  
classifications I don't understand (I'd say Majolica but I know that's  
wrong), lots of wood and ivory carvings and other goodies ;) There is,  
as one would expect, less stuff from the earlier centuries; on a fast  
pass through, most appears to be 17th and 18th.

http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/pubweb/publicSite.r?sContinent=EUR&screen=catalogue&iSaleNo=17771

This link will shortly appear on every local needleworkers' mailing  
list, I'm sure ;)

The photos are excellent, especially if you go to the Flash version  
and hit zoom. You can see details really well -- every embroidered  
piece I tried, I could literally count the threads and get an  
excellent look at the techniques. If you have screen-capture  
technology you could probably piece  together a fairly good overall  
image from those enlarged bits, though that's always a bit tedious.

There are links to purchase a catalog as well, though I have no idea  
how many pieces appear as photos in it, if any.

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O    Chris Laning <claning at igc.org> - Davis, California
+     http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com
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