Antique prints for sale

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 16

Antique prints for sale

MORE THAN 2000 antique prints with a New Zealand connection will go on sale tomorrow in Auckland.

The prints have been collected over about 12 years by two Australian dealers, Louis Pauli and Spencer Scott Sandilands. Among them are historical views and prints of flora and fauna of early New Zealand. Many of the prints have come from portfolios the dealers bay? broken up for sale individually. Louis Pauli defends that practice' by saying the portfolios were damaged or had plates missing. He says prices at the sale organised by him and his partner, Mr Sandilands, will begin at $2O.

The price tags run up to between $5OOO and $6OOO for the top-priced print of “Notomis or Takahe” by John Gould, circa 1869.

Other items, which Mr Pauli believes might attract some of New Zealand's galleries and museums, include a set of lithographs from Wakefield’s “Adventure In New Zealand," the illustrations from the English editions of Captain Cook’s and D’Ur? vine’s voyages, plates from George French Angas’s “The New Zealanders Illustrated,” and Gully’s “New Zealand Scenery." Also on sale are a complete set of Illustrations from the second edition of Buller’s “A History of the Birds of New Zealand” and the New Zealand bird plates from Gould’s “Birds of Australia and the Adjacent Islands.” Included are a number of scenes of Christchurch and other New Zealand cities.

Mr Pauli said the prints had been brought to New Zealand for sale — not auction — because of their New Zealand association. Any that did not sell in the weeklong sale at the Hyatt Kingsgate Hotel would go back to Australia with the dealers for sale there.

“This Is quite a collection. It includes some things that have not been seen in New Zealand for a long time. Even if people do not want to buy they should come to look at their heritage," Mr Pauli said. The Melbourne dealers would be happy to value any prints or drawings that people might take into them while visiting the exhibition sale, he said.