LONDON.- Stanley J. Seeger (1930–2011) was one of the most extraordinary collectors of his generation. Together with his partner of thirty-two years, Christopher Cone, they created and furnished a series of remarkable homes in England and around the world. The intelligence, curiosity, and sheer pleasure of their shared passions gave rise to a deeply personal collection that was driven as much by the pursuit of important pieces as by objects chosen simply because they brought them joy.

Over the course of this spring and summer, an eclectic group of treasured pieces from their legendary collection will be offered at Sotheby’s in London. A selection of jewels and precious objects, alongside a quirky array of hats and canes, will be presented as part of Sotheby’s online Noble & Private Collections sale, open for bidding from 28 May to 9 June. This will be followed by Shelf Life: Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper from the Library of Stanley J. Seeger & Christopher Cone, a dedicated online sale open for bidding from 23 June to 7 July. Some 280 lots will be presented across both sales, with a combined estimated value in the region of £1.2 million.*

Highlights include the most substantial Beethoven manuscript to be offered at auction in twenty years – until now unpublished and unavailable to modern Beethoven scholarship; an exceptional copy of the rare first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; first editions of Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol, and Middlemarch; Virginia Woolf’s copy of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd; original illustrations by Beatrix Potter and E. H. Shepard; Sir Alec Guinness’s annotated copy of Hamlet; an autograph manuscript of an aria from Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice; a short note by the minimalist composer John Cage; The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in a jewelled binding (the original first copy went down with the Titanic in 1912); an exquisite art deco binding for The Jungle Book, and Stanley’s mammoth Picasso art reference library (numbering some 1,000 volumes).

The Noble & Private Collections auction includes jewels spanning a millennium, with a focus on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; pieces demonstrating Fabergé’s glittering genius, and bejewelled animal forms by Cartier and Tiffany – punctuated by an extraordinary 13 carat emerald ring. This tantalising group of objects is complemented by a selection of dapper gentleman’s accessories, from tie pins, cufflinks and canes, to luggage by the most renowned makers and a portable suitcase desk by Louis Vuitton.

Christopher Cone was introduced to Stanley Seeger by the artist John Craxton in 1979 and immediately recognised a collector of a very rare kind. A man of wide ranging and protean taste, Stanley had a lifelong love of books – a passion possibly inherited from his father, himself a bibliophile. He believed in reading around a subject: when he collected works by Picasso, his library of books on the artist became both serious and extensive, assembled with the aim of achieving a profound understanding of the field. The same intellectual rigour underpinned his collecting of musical manuscripts. Having studied music at Princeton University, Stanley sought out original scores by composers including Beethoven, Berlioz, and Stravinsky.

In 2003, Stanley and Christopher acquired Greenway Manor in Devon. Central to the restoration of the house was the creation of a purpose-built library, meticulously planned by Stanley, which finally brought the collection together in one place. The library housed not only Stanley’s books, but also Christopher’s important collection of nineteenth-century literature. It became the most biographical of all the collections they formed – a space in which their shared interests could be explored and expressed. Illustrations, prints, and a large group of cartoons by the late Glen Baxter, acquired for their wit and humour, added a further personal note.

After leaving Greenway, the collection accompanied them to Yorkshire, where much of it has remained in storage until now. Yet even then, a library of sorts endured: a portable selection of treasures kept in one of Stanley’s old briefcases. As Christopher recalls: “There was something wonderful about having a portable library of masterpieces – our own secret library that we could dip into. A slice of man’s creative genius held in one attaché case, if you like.”

“It is now time to share the pleasure that we took from these works,” Christopher continues. “I hope that for those who acquire something from this sale, the experience becomes a happy memory, just as collecting was for Stanley and me – with all the wonder and fun of being able to handle and read such incredibly special books.”

In contrast to the library, their collection of Fabergé, jewels, and precious objects was deliberately light-hearted. Pieces were chosen for their ingenuity, quirkiness, and exceptional craftsmanship. “We didn’t wear them,” Christopher explains. “We enjoyed them for what they are – wonderful miniature works of art. These pieces were often gifts between us, it was all about the joy of giving, finding something interesting that would make the other laugh…”.

An array of hat boxes in the collection was found to conceal a variety of headwear from around the world in almost every material, including vintage and antique pith helmets, safari hats, military and sailors’ caps, and straw boaters.

Both auctions follow an extraordinary sequence of landmark Sotheby’s sales, beginning in 1993 in New York with the celebrated auction of eighty-eight Picassos, continuing through The Eye of the Collector (2001), 1000 Ways of Seeing: The Private Collection of the late Stanley J. Seeger (2014), and A Private View (2018). Characterised throughout by an unmistakably personal sensibility, the forthcoming sales stand as a moving commemoration of the life, curiosity, and joy Stanley Seeger and Christopher Cone shared together.