New Zealander at heart of Sotheby’s

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34042, 5 January 1976, Page 15

New Zealander at heart of Sotheby’s

(From

ROBIN CHARTERIS,

London correspondent of "The Press")

There's nothing special about the room. It’s just a white-painted box with a lofty ceiling and a stained window that hardly mutes the incessant tattoo of London traffic. But the contents are something else. When the custodian of this room, among scores of like little cells in a rabbit-warren building, fondlv contemplates the floor-to-ruof decor, often he is gazing at as much as a million dollars. He is a Dunedin expatriate. Christopher de Hamel, and from his history-strewn desk he manages the medieval manuscript department of the famed art dealer. Sotheby’s. And in this gold-lined retreat. where the world tends to stop at 1500 A.D., Mr de Hamel considers that he has the ideal job — “a wonderful opportunity.” that provides the fulfilment of his ambitions. Aged 25 It is essentially a scholarly Job. an awesomely responsible job; yet this Otago University honours graduate is light years from being the bookexpert archetype, stooped by the burden, thick-spectacled.

and mostly away in the clouds. Christopher de Hamel is in-! tense, but positively present, a tall, slender powerhouse of energy who has leapt into prominence in his specialised profession at the young age of 25. From Otago he went to Ox-1 ford for three years postgraduate study in history, specialising in twelfth-century I manuscrips. Over this time he had been an avid visitor to Sotheby’s —even a customer, securing a manuscript for the Reed 1 collection in the Dunedin Public Library. When a senior vacancy ocI curred at Sotheby’s he was already well known and was 1 offered the post. That was. ■ eight months ago, and now ■ he is an authority who lives •by making multi-thousand > dollar decisions for Sotheby’s. In the trade > He doesn't go along with ■ overstatement about his position: “I am just in the book trade,” he says. ‘‘On the commercial side.” But, pressed, he admits that he might be the only person ! in the world employed full-' ' time exclusively investigating t medieval manuscrips for com- • mercial transaction. What, exactly, is a mediaeval manuscript?

The short answer is the ; written word before the in- ; vention of printing—the span of man’s blossoming literary creativity from, say 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D. The great volume of the manuscripts sought by collectors today comes from the monastic outpourings of the sixth to the twelfth centuries and from the hand of : the professional scribes of those times. Against his background of history, languages, and expanding experience of his esoteric world. Mr de Hamel agrees that fundamentally he is a “detective,” tracking the era, origins, and authenticity of the books that come his i way—or that he searches out. Mystery solved That most of the manuscripts are in Latin hardly gives pause to him; he reads it with comparative ease. And in an Austrian monastery’ recently he solved a book mystery by conversing with monks' in Latin when he failed to understand their German dialect. ' This was in spite of Mr de Hamel’s working knowledge of French and German. reading knowledge of Italian (“I must seriously get down to my' Italian”) and ability, given references and j consultations, to handle and 'catalogue works in Hebrew i and Greek. ! The essence of Mr de j Hamel’s professionalism is to, i identify the age, text, com-! pleteness, and precise origin I of manuscripts—and consequently their market value. Library gains ; He must be able to detect • ithe genuine from the fake, ’ even though a meticulous i duplicity might have been • perpetrated centuries ago. ; He is in the business of ’! keeping Sotheby’s in busirness—the auctioning of rare “iobjects for commission on ■ behalf of owners. When he : completes a catalogue for a : manuscript sale — hundreds ■ 'of items each backed by a ; dossier of origin, character, ; I pedigree, historical associations and. available for the > vendor, that essential of a likely’ transaction, an educated estimate of value—he

is laying his, and Sotheby’s reputation on the line. The inspiration for his fascination — and his career — started half his lifetime ago, when he was about 12, and became incurably enamoured of the medieval treasures in the Reed Collection in the Dunedin Public Library. As a teen-ager, he wrote a “modest booklet” on the collection’s two outstanding books of hours, and three years ago he catalogued the library’s complete medieval manuscript collection. Through its “protege” the library has already acquired a $950, thirteenth century Bible — and that is not likely to be its last acquisition on the recommendation of the man it now has at the very heart of this specialist world.