Single Owner Collections

Dr Ann Carswell

Dr Ann Carswell (1940-2019) was resident in Edinburgh from the late 1960s, originally from America, educated at Cornell and Harvard.  Dr Carswell worked at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh as a child psychologist.  During her time in Edinburgh she was a passionate visitor to local auction houses, collecting principally dolls, tribal art and textiles.  After her death in 2019, we were delighted to hold a sale of her collection, including two important early American maps, which after an exciting bidding war ultimately sold, one returning to America, specifically Williamsburg, the other destined for a London dealer.

John Mitchell cartographer, A map of the British and French Dominions in North America...Published by the author, Febry 13th 1755.  Believed to be the First Edition, Third State, engraved wall map on eight sheets, backed on fine linen sold for £121,600* with a second map in her collection, Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, cartographers, A Map of the Inhabited Part of Virginia, Containing the whole Province of Maryland with Part of Pennsilvania, New Jersey and North Carolina.  Drawn by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson in 1751.  Believed to be the rare First Edition, First State, selling for a hammer price of £66,000.

Kinross House

We were delighted to work in conjunction with Christies on the sale of the contents of Kinross House. Considered Scotland's finest neoclassical Palladian mansion, Kinross House and gardens, designed by Sir William Bruce with building commencing in the 1680s, had been in the Montgomery family for over 200 years.  The sale featured a range of objects, silverware, militaria, textiles and furnishings including some of the special and personal objects that only survive in houses with long family ownership.  Cataloguing was done on site with the sale taking place in our Edinburgh saleroom in December 2010.  One of the highlights of the sale was a Classical figure in profile relief carved white marble panel, found buried in the garden, which sold for £12,100*.

An Edinburgh New Town collection: Oriental, European and British Ceramics

This sale included the remarkable contents of an extremely small two room property in Edinburgh's New Town.  What began as a regular house call became, on arrival, clearly a treasure hunt.  The property had been empty for some time and had fallen into considerable disrepair, in addition there was no power so valuers wearing head torches spent, often exciting, days scrambling over stacked furniture and piles of old saleroom catalogues, sorting through the contents of the property, crammed full of ceramics, ceramics, ceramics... this is exactly the sort of job that gets an auctioneer's heart pounding.  The sale took place on 1st October 2022, with residual contents extending over the next several sales.   Highlights included a late 19thc Meissen porcelain allegorical group also a pair of Chinese porcelain vases of hexagonal form, pierced with quatrefoil panels and decorated in iron red and black with calligraphy, seals and objects, iron red seal mark of Guangxu type to base, which sold for £4,200*

A Scottish Borders military family

A long established military and landed family with strong connections to the Napoleonic wars, we were delighted to hold a sale of house contents, the sale included a particularly rare pair of George III oyster buckets and a fine pair of peat buckets of similar date selling for 9,570*.  The sale also included a rare early 19thc Naval medal The Naval General Service Medal, 1793-1840, clasp COPENHAGEN engraved in upright capitals "C.C. ASKEW. MIDSHIPMAN", in EF condition, attracting keen bidding, ultimately selling for £5,700*.  A superb Field Officer's Army Gold Medal and Waterloo pair to Colonel Sir Henry Askew, 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards was sold by private treaty.

An Edinburgh character

Another so called 'dirty job', just the kind to get our hearts racing, was a property in Edinburgh's New Town, the former home of a well known Edinburgh florist and bon viveur.  The flat had a Sunset Boulevard feel with clear signs of a stylish decorator's eye in the large columns carefully placed to create a soft grandeur, the mirrored panels on the walls softly reflecting the furnishings within and the garden filled with urns and statuary lost in time.  The word soft seems to fit well when describing this property, even the air felt soft, ghostly.   Perhaps energy faltered or funds, in any case, the property was left with whispers of Norma Desmond, to sleep before we entered it in 2026 to assess the contents.

The contents filled two sales, one an Antique & Decorator's sale, with highlights including, Peter McLaren (Scottish, b. 1964), Girl with a Fan, signed verso and inscribed "Edinburgh College of Art / 1st Year"  selling for £3440* (lot 625 7th March 2026), the other our first Garden sale, an online only auction entitled The Classical Garden.  Online only sales are particularly useful for specifically themed collections, they are just as time consuming to catalogue and photograph but the sale takes place over a week or so online, with no 'room' bidding.  Online only sales can produce amazing results, the pressure building as the clock ticks... this was the ideal format for the contents of the property's garden.