NEW YORK CITY — Christie’s presented a dedicated auction on October 27 of English furniture and decorative arts from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The sale comprised more than 200 lots of English furniture, porcelain and silver that were deaccessioned in anticipation of a complete refurbishment of the museum’s Annie Laurie Aitken and Heathcote Galleries, which display the museum’s British decorative arts collection. Proceeds of the sale will benefit future acquisitions of British decorative arts. Leading the sale, which totaled $4,308,125, was a George II mahogany armchair, circa 1745-50. The chair realized $437,000, soaring well beyond its presale estimate of $50/80,000.

The provenances of many objects in the sale represented some of the greatest collectors of English furniture and silver, such as the inveterate collector Judge Irwin Untermyer, whose gift to the Metropolitan Museum comprised 2,000 objects, many of which will remain on view in the refreshed galleries. Combined with the four extraordinary lots—also of Untermyer provenance—sold by the museum in a December 2014 sale, this brings the running total for museum’s property to $5,208,375. The firm’s next sale of English and European decorative arts deaccessioned from the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be the December 14-15 sale titled Living with Art.