In 1991, Webb’s sold the house and contents of the Edwardian mansion Florence Court. Fast forward thirty years and it was New Zealand modernism being celebrated rather than the Baroque Revival style of Florence Court. The Sang House, was designed by notable New Zealand architect Ron Sang as his own family residence in the early 1970s in the blue chip suburb of Remuera.
Foreshadowing the design of his more famous Brake House (1976) in Titirangi, the Sang House is full of the architect’s signature details of the period – clean lines, a flat roof, lots of internal timber and a strong connection between the interior and exterior surrounds as well as the oversize front door with a door handle made by artist Guy Ngan.
The house is no longer in the ownership of the Sang family and the current owners agreed to let the selling agents (who recently sold The Brake House for in excess of $4 million) partner with Webb’s to include ten lots of carefully considered art, market the house and then sell them both in an auction at Webb’s. Ron Sang was a notable art collector (A+O sold a chunk of his collection in 2015) and the lots consigned from various vendors reflected artists that Sang had in his own collection. All were on display in the house during the viewing and the marketing which included an excellent catalogue, some invite only events (which were heavily shared on social media) and the standard open homes which had queues down the street and over 400 people going through each day.
At the auction over 100 people turned out anticipating that the house sell for a record price as had been suggested by recent media reports. The art started very strongly with a sculpture by Sang’s friend and collaborator Guy Ngan (Lot 1 ) 21, (made from aluminium but in a typical form) realised $17,500 against a low estimate of $8,000. This was a price usually reserved for the artist’s bronze or timber works. An assemblage painting by Don Driver (Lot 3 ) found favour with its architectural subject of La Guardia airport in New York sitting well with the Sang house style, and it sold for $42,500 against a reserve of $30,000 and set a new record for the artist.
Ian Scott’s Black Light (lot 4) was from the collection of the home owner and had caught the eye of many, when multiple bidders competed on the work from $5,000 all the way to $12,000 to realise a fantastic profit as it was purchased at auction in 2018 for just $2,700. The highest price in the art section was set by Don Binney’s Te Henga (Lot 8 ) which was resold less than 9 months after it was transacted at Webb’s for $85,000. This work just nudged up the first sale price to make $87,5000 to a client in the room. In total the art section realised $361,000 (IBP) with eight of the ten lots sold under the hammer.
After the art, the auction moved straight onto the house sale which was also called by Webb’s auctioneer Charles Ninow but under a different set of terms and conditions pertaining to the sale and purchase of real estate. A wide estimate of $2 million to $6 million had been published in the catalogue so an opening bid of $2.3 million called from the floor seemed reasonable. Two couples in the room bid up to $3,050,000 but at that point the bidding stalled. After a 5-10 minute hiatus, the auctioneer returned and reopened the bidding with a vendor bid at $3,900,000 but without any further bids the house was passed in.
With a couple of interested parties, the staff were confident a sale would be transacted in the coming days and I hope that the buyer of the house also bought some of the art to go in it!
All prices shown are in $NZ, and are hammer pprices unless otherwise noted.
