Kaminski Auctions finished up the year at its December 29″0 auction with a bang when a Nineteenth Century Chinese scholar’s hanging panel elicited bid jumping that took the piece to $345,000.

The panel was inlaid with intricately carved jade, agate, wood, ivory, lapis and coral, some of which was missing. Nonetheless, it was highly desirable and went to a London dealer buying for a Chinese collector. It was underbid by a mainland China museum and had come from the basement of a local dealer’s home.

A mid-Eighteenth Century North Shore Queen Anne walnut highboy, made in Ipswich or the Salem area of Massachusetts, sold for $41,400. It had been owned by the William Saville family of Gloucester until the mid-Twentieth Century, when it went to a Wenham, Mass., family. A letter of provenance accompanied the highboy, which was bought by Cape Ann collectors who plan to donate it to the Cape Ann Museum.

A full report on the auction will appear in a future issue.

⁆rances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo