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6-D Maine Antique Digest, April 2017
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FEATURE
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6-D
A Snowy Start to the New London Season
S
ki poster sales at Christie’s South
Kensington have traditionally been
one of the earlier, if rather isolated,
events of the new year auction calen-
dar in London, where sales—or at least
those held by Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and
Bonhams—tend to kick off rather later
in the year than is the case in New York
City. (Three lots from another early sea-
son event held by Sotheby’s, a January
19 sale called “Of Royal and Noble
Descent,” feature elsewhere in this
month’s selection.)
These early season poster sales at the
South Kensington saleroom do add a
welcome dash of colour to winter and
five litho posters from that lonely event,
held this year on January 11, are fea-
tured here.
Alex Walter Diggelmann, born in
Switzerland in 1902, was not just one of
his country’s more celebrated graphic
designers, he was an adept orienteer, a
balloonist, and a toxophilite—though
as a fellow countryman of William Tell,
you will not be surprised to learn that
he favoured the crossbow rather that the
longbow.
Sold for $33,410, Diggelmann’s
Gstaad poster (A), a condition-A-
example, dates from 1934 but when the
Winter Olympics resumed in St. Moritz
after World War II, he was made offi-
cial designer for the 1948 winter games,
creating the event poster and special
celebratory stamps.
Though it seems a little curious now-
adays, right up until 1952 Olympic
medals were also awarded for paintings,
sculpture, architecture, literature, and
music inspired by sport. In 1936 and
1948 Diggelmann’s artwork brought
him a total of three Olympic medals—
one gold, one silver, and one bronze.
Otto Baumberger, born in 1889, had
been one of the earlier Swiss artists
to work as a full-time poster designer,
creating more than 200 designs, and is
sometimes referred to as the “spiritual
father” of the Swiss poster. He pro-
duced some of the earlier examples of
tourism-focussed posters in the coun-
try, though the example seen here is
promoting a different sort of cold expe-
rience—the delights of Firn ice cream
(B), which was apparently a favourite
among the fashionable set of the 1920s.
A: Alex Diggelmann
B: Otto Baumberger
C: Emil Cardineaux
D: Carl Moos
E: Roger Broders
Graded as condition B+, the poster sold
for $3040.
Although he initially studied law
at university in his native Bern, Emil
Cardinaux left for Munich in 1898 to
pursue his artistic training and there
studied under the German Symbolist
painter Franz Stuck, whose other pupils
included Klee and Kandinsky. Cardi-
naux further broadened his artistic stud-
ies in Italy and France but he returned
regularly to his homeland and built a
studio overlooking the Bernese Alps.
Cardinaux’s poster designs, say
Christie’s, are notable for their style
and simplicity, though the Davos poster
of 1918 featured here (C) seems rather
more traditional. Graded condition B-,
it sold at $25,820.
Born in Munich in 1878, Carl Moos
moved to Zurich in 1916, creating strik-
ing posters advertising resorts ranging
from Davos to St. Moritz. In 1928, the
year in which the
St. Moritz Skirennen
poster seen here (D)—now considered
a classic Moos design—was produced,
his work promoting the country’s Win-
ter Olympics won him a silver medal.
This condition-B+/A- example was
sold at $22,780.
A Parisian, Roger Broders (1883-
1953) became one of the most prolific
poster designers of the 1930s, best known
for sun-soaked advertisements for French
resorts as well as others aimed at luring
the viewer farther afield to Italy and North
Africa—but his depictions of Swiss ski
resorts are no less celebrated. Dating to
1930,
Les Sports d’Hiver à St. Pierre de
Chartreuse
(E), graded B/B+, was sold for
$12,150.
The Charles Frodsham watch
of 1902, inscribed as a gift from
J.P. Morgan to William Gould
Harding, sold for $370,945.
Two views of the oval William
Anthony watch of circa 1800
that sold for $265,630.
Celebrating the English Watch—Time for Three More Cheers
T
homas Tompion’s watchmaking skills fea-
ture among the three timepieces I have
selected from the third sale that Sotheby’s
have now mounted to disperse a distinguished
collection of English watches. This is just as
well, really, as this part of that “Celebration of
the English Watch…” series of auctions, held
on December 15 last year, was subtitled “The
Genius of Thomas Tompion.”
Dating from the years 1708/09 and num-
bered 307, the gold, pair-cased, quarter repeat-
ing verge watch seen in the illustration at right
was sold for $234,380.
It was not, however, the most expensive
watch of the day. That honour went to the large
gold, open-face, minute repeating, split sec-
onds, keyless chronograph watch seen below.
A watch by Charles Frodsham of
London that dates from 1902, it is
one linked with the maker’s most
famous clients, the Morgan banking
family of New York. That associa-
tion began when Junius Morgan
became a business partner in the
English branch of the bank-
ing house George Peabody &
Co. in 1854, but the purchase and maintenance
of fine clocks and watches was continued and
taken to a new level by John Pierpont Morgan
(1837-1913).
In 1883 J.P.M. presented a complicated
watch to his personal valet, George William,
on the occasion of William’s marriage and that
watch was the forerunner of the series of fine
Frodsham watches ordered for presentation to
close friends or partners by the Morgans—a
tradition that continues to this day.
Made between 1897 and 1931, some 25 of
those Frodsham watches—state-of-the-art,
open-face tourbillons with minute repeating,
split second chronograph, minute register and
constant seconds—are known, either as extant
examples or from archive records. And ten of
them have made auction appearances.
They were at the time of manufacture one of
the most complicated and expensive English
production watches available, retailing at what
in the early decades of the last century would
have been the equivalent of around $800 to
$1200.In 2016 this latest example to come
to auction sold at $370,945.
The third watch in my selection is an
eight-day gold, enamel and split-pearl-
and diamond-set duplex watch that was
made around 1800 by William Anthony
of London.
Specialising in watches for the Chinese mar-
ket, Anthony is famous for such elaborately
decorated oval watches, the rarest of which
feature expanding hands that are articulated to
follow the oval line of the dial.
“The sumptuous yet tightly ordered deco-
ration to the case of the present watch,” say
Sotheby’s, “is complemented by the wonder-
ful clarity of the white enamel dial which is
divided into two equal sections, with hours and
minutes above subsidiary seconds.”
Continued from page 3-D
In that same Antiquorum of
Geneva sale was a further Wil-
liam Anthony watch that had
similar design elements to the
present watch, but that one was
numbered 1935, and the more
recent Sotheby’s example is
numbered 1931.
This watch is part of a small group of fewer
than ten similar watches by Anthony,
which seem originally to have been
made in pairs. In 2001 one matched
pair, numbered 1913 and 1914, was
sold (though as separate lots) as part
of the Sandberg collection.
On its own, the Sotheby’s watch
sold at $265,630.
The early 18th-century
Tompion watch sold for
$234,380.