From dodo bones to ladies and a unicorn

● Next month, Christie’s is to sell about 150 weird and wonderful objects that belonged to Oliver Hoare, a private but influential art dealer who died last year at the age of 73.

Hoare’s obituarists remembered him as a suave, handsome man to whom Diana, Princess of Wales, formed an attachment. In the art world, though, he was remembered for other things.

In the ’70s he started the Islamic art department at Christie’s and then in 1994, as a private dealer, he orchestrated the exchange of Willem de Kooning’s £14m (about R260m now) expressionist masterpiece, Woman III, owned by the Iranian government, for the Houghton Shahnameh, the holy grail of 16th-century Persian illustrated manuscripts, owned by a US millionaire, Arthur Houghton.

The sale contents will range from antiquities to dodo bones, erotic scrimshaw, old pieces of flint, musical instruments and modern surrealist art, hailing from many different centuries and cultures and priced from £300 upwards.

A 16th-century millefleurs tapestry of ladies with a unicorn similar to a series in the Metropolitan Museum of New York’s collection is one of the more valuable items, estimated at £120,000.

The sale will take place on October 25 and its contents will be on view from October 19-24.