A pair of trademark glasses worn by TV character Dame Edna Everage realised £37,800 against a £1,500 top estimate at a sale of her creator’s collections.
Barry Humphries was born in Australia in 1934, but found fame in the Satire Boom of 1960s London.
Dame Edna was his most enduring creation.
The character was created in Australia in the 1950s. She started as a dowdy Melbourne housewife but became a vehicle to mock stars and stardom as she morphed into a glittery chatshow host with licence to say the outrageous. She was a regular on TV in the UK and Australia and Humphries took the character on tour regularly.
He was also a significant collector in the arts and a specialist in a number of areas.
His personal collection included notable works by Australian artists, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and more.
The signed title page of Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Ernest in an extremely limited early edition. Image courtesy of Christie’s.
The top item at the £4.6 million Christie’s sale was a painting by Charles Conder.
The English-born artist was a pioneer of Australian art. His work, Sand dunes, Ambleteuse, made £239,000.
A drawing by Sir Edward Burne-Jones realised just under £200,000 against an estimate of £30,000 to £50,000.
A first-edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest sold for £138,000. Other Wilde works also did well. A copy of The Picture of Dorian Grey doubled its low estimate of £25,000 to sell for over £50,000.
But it was the Dame Edna collection that surpassed all expectations.
Ten pairs of Edna’s specs were listed for sale, all with top estimates of £1,500. All of them made many times this amount, with the lowest priced realising £7,560.
The star item was a pair of yellow-lacquered spectacles made by Anglo American Eyewear and bearing Edna’s (sometimes affectionate) endearment “Possum” incised on one arm.
They made £37,800. The next most valuable pair of spectacles, by David Cox, achieved over £30,000.
