A Harry Styles-signed electric guitar sold for US$19,200 on Sunday in Los Angeles, hours before his surprise album of the year win at the Grammy Awards.
The 2022 black Fender Player Series Stratocaster electric guitar was inscribed by Styles with the words “Always love” beside a doodle of heart in a gold marker. Styles’ album Harry’s House defeated Beyoncé’s Renaissance and eight other nominees to win the album of the year at music’s most prestigious awards show on Sunday night.
The guitar was valued between US$2,000 and US$4,000, prior to the auction.
The instrument was among 50 items owned or signed by the music’s biggest stars that were auctioned by Julien’s Auctions over the weekend to raise funds for MusiCares, which supports the health and welfare of members of the music community.
The auction house, which was expecting to raise between US$200,000 and US$400,000 from this sale, said the sale realised more than US$500,000. Many items sold multiple times their pre-sale estimates.
“This year’s edition was one of our best and most successful auctions to date,” according to Martin Nolan, executive director of Julien’s Auctions.
The top-selling lot was a pair of white Nike Air Max sneakers owned, worn, and signed by Eminem, which sold for US$40,625, which was 20 times its presale estimate. The sneakers were sold to Margaritavillain, an anonymous rapper who’s often compared to Banksy of the contemporary art world. His fans raised money through a GoFundMe page to help him successfully bid and win the shoes, according to Julien’s.
An ensemble worn by J-Hope of South Korean boy band BTS, including a black utility-style jumpsuit, a buckle belt, a black cotton T-shirt, and a black ribbed bunny ear beanie, attracted 22 bids and sold for US$21,875, more than 10 times its original estimate of US$2,000.
Additionally, a 2020 Epiphone DR-100EB acoustic guitar signed by Taylor Swift fetched US$25,000, five times its original estimate. The guitar features custom graphics from Swift’s Grammy-nominated album evenmore.
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An original watercolour illustration for the cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 1997 — the first book in J.K. Rowling’s hit series—could sell for US$600,000 at a Sotheby’s auction this summer.
The illustration is headlining a June 26 sale in New York that will also feature big-ticket items from the collection of the late Dr. Rodney P. Swantko, a surgeon and collector from Indiana, including manuscripts by poet Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes books
The Harry Potter illustration, which introduced the young wizard character to the world, is expected to sell for between US$400,000 to US$600,000, which would make it the highest-priced item ever sold related to the Harry Potter world. This is the second time the illustration has been sold, however—it was on the auction block at Sotheby’s in London in 2001, where it achieved £85,750 (US$107,316).
The artist of the illustration, Thomas Taylor, was 23 years old at the time and a graduate student working at a children’s bookshop. According to Sotheby’s, Taylor took a “professional commission from an unknown author to visualise a unique wizarding world,” Sotheby’s said in a news release. He depicted Harry Potter boarding the train to Hogwarts on platform9 ¾ platform, and the illustration became the “universal image” of the Harry Potter series, Sotheby’s said.
“It is exciting to see the painting that marks the very start of my career, decades later and as bright as ever! It takes me back to the experience of reading Harry Potter for the first time—one of the first people in the world to do so—and the process of creating what is now an iconic image,” Taylor said in the release.
Meanwhile, to commemorate the 175th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s For Annie , 1849, Sotheby’s recently reunited the autographed manuscript of the poem with the author’s home, Poe Cottage, in the Bronx.
The cottage is where the author lived with his wife, Virginia, and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, from 1846 until he died in 1849. The manuscript, also from the Swantko collection, will remain at the home until it is offered at auction at Sotheby’s on June 26 with an estimate between US$400,000 and US$600,000.
Poe Cottage, preserved and overseen by the Bronx County Historical Society, is home to many of the author’s famous works, including Eureka , 1948, and Annabel Lee , 1927.
“To reunite the For Annie manuscript with the Poe Cottage nearly two centuries after it was first composed brought to life literary history for a truly special and unique occasion,” Richard Austin , Sotheby’s Global Head of Books & Manuscripts, said in a news release.
For Annie was one of Poe’s most important compositions, and was addressed to Nancy “Annie” L. Richmond, one of the several women Poe pursued after his wife Viriginia’s death from tuberculosis in 1847.
In a letter to Richmond herself, Poe proclaimed For Annie was his best work: “I think the lines For Annie much the best I have ever written.”
The poem was composed in 1849, only months before Poe’s death, Sotheby’s said in the piece, Poe highlights the romantic comfort he feels from a woman named Annie while simultaneously grappling with the darkness of death, with lines like “And the fever called ‘living’ is conquered at last.”
In the margins of the manuscript are the original handwritten instructions by Nathaniel P. Willis, co-editor of the New York Home Journal, where Poe published other poems such as The Raven and submitted For Annie on April 20, 1849.
Willis added Poe’s name in the top right and instructions about printing and presenting the poem on the side. The poem was also published in the Boston Weekly that same month.
Another piece of literary history included in the Swantko sale could surpass US$1 million. Conan Doyle’s autographed manuscript of the Sherlock Holmes tale The Sign of Four , 1889, is estimated to achieve between US$800,000 and US$1.2 million.
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