Stradbally Hall to host auction of country house collections
The auction will take place in Stradbally Hall on 19-20 May
STRADBALLY Hall will play host to an auction of items taken from the great Irish country houses on 19-20 May, with a preview from the 16-18 May.
Hosted by the Durrow based, Sheppard’s Irish Auction House, the items up for auction are from the 15th century right up to the 19th century.
The items, which have been donated from private collections, include 17th century paintings, 18th and 19th century furniture, porcelain, clocks, and pieces obtained on the Grand Tour, a trip taken by upper-class European men from the 17th-to-early-19th century in which they travelled the continent with a family member or tutor.
There are also pieces from 18th century Italy, like micromosaic panels and a coffee table with a Pietra dura inlaid marble top, which is also filled with exotic stones like lapis lazuli, which is found primarily in Afghanistan.
“Lapis lazuli, just as a background, is the stone which is ground to make that deep purple that you see in in Renaissance portraits”, says Michael Sheppard of Sheppard’s Irish Auction House Also up for auction is a towering bookcase over 12 feet long, which came from Temple House, a luxury Georgian estate in County Sligo.
The items up for auction range in price from €100 to hundreds of thousands of euro.
Stradbally Hall was chosen as the site for the auction because it is a “fantastic building”, according to Michael.
“Everything that you put into it just comes alive. It's in context, as opposed to putting it into a more modern house where the scale is different. The scale of Stradbally Hall is enormous, and the pieces, the 17th and 18th and 19th century pieces just sit very comfortably here”, he continues.
Sheppard’s is a family business founded in the late 1940s by Christopher Sheppard, Michael’s father. Over the years it has become a leading, provincial auction houses.
Michael hopes the auction will make for an interesting day out: “I think for anybody, if they want to see something spectacular, the range of items and in context here it certainly is fantastic, and certainly it will be an incredibly enjoyable half a day or a day.” Later this year, Stradbally Hall will host events of a different kind, when the annual Steam Rally rolls into town, and the popular Electric Picnic Music Festival, which attracts the crème de la crème of music acts and music lovers from all over Europe.
