The Estate of Distinguished New York Interior Designer Achieves Top Dollar

Leslie Hindman Auctioneers’ sale of property from the Estate of William Nicholas Roos drew fervent bidding on Sunday, with only 30 lots going unsold out of nearly 400. A saleroom full of active bidders underscored the market’s enthusiasm for new property from prominent estates. The auction brought $660,142 in all.

“We were honored to handle such diverse objects from a person as interesting as Mr. Roos,” said President and Auctioneer Leslie Hindman. “It was doubly exciting to see so many aggressive bids coming from buyers in the room and on the phones, given the Internet’s role in our business today.”

Mr. Roos, an interior designer who lived in both New York City and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, traveled and acquired extensively from the 1960s until he passed away earlier this year. He counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Veronica Lake, Katharine Hepburn and Esther DuPont among his clients and friends. Mr. Roos’s collection included eighteenth and nineteenth century French furniture, fine silver, bronze sculpture, numerous antiquities and Asian works of art. Two Chinese famille rose bowls sold for $29,760 against an estimate of $1,000/1,500, and a Chinese famille verte brush pot with a carved jade finial sold for $14,640 against its estimate of $800/1,200. A Continental bust, carved of marble after an earlier antique, was expected to sell for $800/1,200 but brought $10,370. A pair of Louis XVI style sconces, cast after a model by Pierre-Philippe Thomire, sold for $8,540.

“William Roos clearly cherished his collection, and we are thrilled to have achieved such strong results,” Hindman said. “It is an appropriate tribute to a sophisticated and fascinating man.”