Maori artefacts fetch top prices at Sotheby's auction

This club sold for $46,940, more than $30,000 above its expected price.

The auction of a collection of rare Maori artefacts, owned by a concentration camp survivor and former art adviser to Pablo Picasso's family, has sparked a bidding war.

A Maori staff, hand club and greenstone tiki fetched more than double their estimated price at Sotheby's in New York.

Jeff Hobbs, Oceanic art expert at Auckland auction house Webb's, said the items were popular with museums and private collectors, and the sale "shows just how strong the market is right now across the board for Oceanic and African art".

The items belonged to Jan Krugier, a Geneva-based art dealer and collector who died in 2008.

Krugier, who survived internment at the Nazis' Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, once reportedly turned down a US$100 million offer for Picasso's Liebespaar (The Couple).

His personal collection, which includes Old Master drawings from Rembrandt to Tintoretto, is often on loan to exhibitions and museums throughout the world.

Krugier's Maori artefacts formed part of the sale on May 16 of African, Oceanic and pre-Columbian art.

A Maori staff, collected in New Zealand between 1844 and 1847, sold for $21,664, more than double its estimated price.

A wahika, or Maori hand club, went for $46,940 - more than $30,000 above its expected sale price. Collectors also entered a bidding war for an 8.5cm hei tiki, or ornamental pendant. The tiki had an estimate of $9243 to $13,865 but the hammer came down at $30,330.

The Ministry of Culture and Heritage monitors auctions within New Zealand, but does not follow those held overseas.

It has no ability under legislation such as the Protected Objects Act 1975 to stop sales, or force repatriation of cultural heritage material sold at auction overseas.

Mr Hobbs said Te Papa paid close attention to auctions, and important objects will be "hoovered up and brought back".

"A lot of this stuff was traded by whalers or collectors back in the day, and it's quite sad that there is nothing we can do about preventing sales abroad," Mr Hobbs said.

Today (NZ time) another cache of taonga, including a whalebone hand club estimated to reach $39,000, a wooden club, hei tiki, and wooden treasure box, are set to go under the hammer at Sotheby's in Paris along with Polynesian, Melanesian and African pieces.

And tomorrow (NZ time) another hei tiki is expected to fetch more than $22,000 at Christie's in Paris. In 2008, a hei tiki fetched $165,290 at Sotheby's New York.

By the numbers
$21,664
Maori staff
$46,940
wahika (hand club)
$30,330
tiki

sothebys.com