Thomas Kamm's Top Discoveries
Thomas Kamm is a Senior Representative of Germany and Austria based in our Munich office. Having worked in the art world for over 30 years, Thomas has a wealth of experience, particularly in the editorial field. His impressive network of German and European art collectors, curators, dealers, auctioneers, art consultants, and art historians is second to none. Here, Thomas recounts some of his most interesting discoveries at Bonhams.
I was invited to have coffee and cake with a client and his family to talk briefly about two cars he was considering selling. During the conversation, I noticed that the client, who was the owner of a large steel foundry, didn’t really have much to say about cars but seemed far more interested in art. At one point I asked him if he would occasionally make castings for artists. This broke the dam. One of his sons brought out a very interesting little steel sculpture from his former childhood bedroom. It so happened that the client had been contacted by the great Swiss artist, Max Bill, in 1994, the last year of his life. He needed the foundryman’s expertise to make sculptures out of steel. To cut a long story short, the small object from the son’s bedroom was the only model for the original, which had been standing in a corner of the old foundry hall for 25 years, measuring 300 x 300 x 300 cm! I will never forget the sight of this beautiful steel colossus, illuminated only by our iPhone torches. I arrived home very late that night, filled with joy.
For the auction, I first got another somewhat smaller (but just as exciting) work from the client’s collection: fläche im raum von einer Linie begrenzt – there is a lovely Bonhams video about the piece. It still holds the world record auction price for a steel sculpture by Max Bill. Whilst the two cars, each a sought-after classic in its own right, jointly fetched close to 7 times the hammer price for the sculpture, it was far more exhilarating for me to have ‘discovered’ the Max Bill…
found in Stuttgart and sold in London in November 2014 for £290,500 inc. premium
This is a story about patience and trust. In the summer of 2012, I was in Stuttgart with Bonhams Global Head of Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art, Asaph Hyman, for a series of valuation days. In the midday heat, we went to an appointment at an old villa in a prime location. The house had seen better days. The daughter of the collector, who was over a hundred years old herself, lived on the ground floor. The first floor was a student flat-share and the collector lived on the top floor with her Romanian housekeeper. The pair were having a late breakfast when we arrived. Asaph almost had a heart attack when he spotted two dozen Chinese vases completely unsecured on open IKEA shelves! While he was taking pictures and notes, I was talking to the collector who thought we were going to take her vases away. I made her the following suggestion: ‘We’ll wait another two, three or five years, and you call me when you want to part with the vases’.
Almost exactly two years later, the daughter called me from the hospital. Her mother had just passed away and had instructed her to ‘call the friendly bald man from Munich, he can have the vases picked up now…’
The Private Collection & Gallery of Alain Morvan Antiquitäten
A few years ago, I had the amazing opportunity to be involved with the sale of the private collection of Alain Morvan, a well-known antique dealer in Munich. At the start, things didn’t seem so promising. A long-established auction house from the Rhineland already had access to the silver and jewellery. Since the client was seriously ill, his officially appointed guardian was my main point of contact. I promised her during our first phone call, which took place in the middle of the night, that we would take all the objects without picking the best ones. Out of several thousand objects, we made a little more than 500 lots, including an extensive collection of corkscrews, various convolutions of glasses or portrait miniatures, paperweights, and the like. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an auction with nearly so many bronze and silver candlesticks (I think there were at least 100!) All in all, it was an extraordinary Gesamtkunstwerk.
The auction was a roaring success thanks to luck, a little persuasion on my part, unbelievable teamwork, and great enthusiasm from all involved (especially from Charlie, Harvey, and their team; thanks again!) We were featured on the front pages and in videos, and 180 guests attended the preview in our relatively tiny Munich office. The auction took place over a staggering nine hours with no break! This is the kind of project you dream of as a representative, and sometimes these dreams do come true…
Link - https://www.bonhams.com/stories/32648/