About 200 people packed a rare auction which included antique cedar furniture and paintings by luminaries of the art world, including marine specialist Stephen Card and sculptor Desmond Fountain.

About 100 items went on the block last Thursday evening at the Elbow Beach Hotel, where the auction was held.

It was the first part of an estate sale of the collection of former The Royal Gazette editor, president of the Bermuda National Trust and chairman of the Bermuda National Gallery David White, who passed away at the end of last year.

Hammers Ltd were the auctioneers, and highlights included a still life rendering of The Royal Gazette newspaper issue of the day in 1958 when the Bermudiana Hotel burned down. Along with the newspaper, artist WH Harrington included letters to the general manager of the hotel and his wife on a breakfast tray, addressed to them at the Elbow Beach Hotel. With bidding beginning at $1,000, it eventually sold for $6,200.

Bermuda cedar also excited interest with an antique spindle base tea table selling for $4,700. Four antique Bermuda cedar side chairs, described by the auctioneer as “All in perfect condition” sold for $900 each, while a Bermuda cedar coffee table went for $1,300.

Well-known Bermudian artist Ethel Tucker’s watercolour entitled ‘The Bay’ sold for $1,500 in slow bidding, while other water colours, one called ‘Tin Can Alley’, and another called ‘Harbour Road’ simply signed ‘Tucker’ garnered just $400 and $350 respectively.

Sisters Ethel and Catherine Tucker sold their water colours along with art works by other painters at the turn of the century in their Barr’s Bay Park gallery ‘The Little Green Shop’.

Another water colour, this one by May Middleton, an art teacher at the Bermuda High School for Girls, who was a prolific painter of Bermuda botanicals and still life compositions during the first half of the 1900s, sold for $750, while a water colour of Admiralty House by Frank Wood, a shipping painter, sold for $2,200.

WF Snow was an American who travelled to Bermuda in 1930s, 40s and early 50s and operated a part-time studio at the base of Lighthouse Hill, Southampton. His depiction on oil on board of ‘Horseshoe Bay’ started at $1,000 and ultimately sold for $3,000.

In an impressionist style, ‘Floating Summer’ by contemporary Bermuda-based artist Jonah Jones, was bid up to $3,600.

An oil on board by Bermudian marine artist and former ocean-going sea captain Stephen Card, renowned internationally for the detail and technical standards of his paintings, saw quick bidding for the work entitled Olivebank off Star Point Lighthouse. It started at $3,000, and ultimately sold for $6,000.

Bronzes by sculptor Desmond Fountain excited interest with ‘Turkish Delight’ depicting a girl running, her towel flying in the wind, numbered ‘two’ in a limited edition of nine, selling for $4,600.

His ‘The Diver’ — also known as ‘Splash’ — of a figure, upside-down, in alignment and about to enter the water, garnered $9,400.

Also exciting interest was a 1946 le Rouge map of Bermuda and Jamaica which sold for $1,000. George-Louis le Rouge, trained as a military engineer and surveyor, was a Paris-based map publisher operating in the middle part of the 18th century.

And a rare 1923 first edition of Bermuda Houses by John Sanford Humphreys achieved $1,000.

The auction continues at Elbow Beach on Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13