From the printed catalogue of Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 13 Wellington Street, Strand, London: "The Antiquities and Devotional Objects of the late Sir Edmund Barlin, Bart., of Barlin Hall, Wiltshire, sold by order of the Executors, the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Days of November, 1879." Heavy cream paper, gilt-tooled boards on the firm's reference copy. The page reproduced here is from the second day's session. Pencilled annotations are from the firm's clerk Mr. T. R. Linnett.
Wednesday, 19 November 1879. — Second Session, 1 p.m.
Lots 41–80 — Continental Devotional Plate, Reliquaries, and Small Personal Devotional Objects.
Lot 47. A SILVER-AND-NIELLO BIRD-FORM PENDANT, said to be early Byzantine, of small size (rather under one and one-half inches in length), the body in low-relief filigree, the niello-work crossing both wings and tail in a chevron pattern. A Greek inscription is incised upon the reverse (read by the cataloguer as Ω ΧΡΕ Ε, abbreviation for Christe eleison). The lower left wing exhibits some slight old damage — a small bend at the leading edge, scarcely a quarter of an inch but not concealable. Suspended from a fine silver chain of later workmanship (probably 17th-cent. Continental). From the Cabinet of Sir Edmund Barlin, who acquired it (per his catalogue notes) at Venice in 1853 from the dispersed effects of a noble Venetian house not therein named. See illustration, plate XII.
Pencil annotations, in Mr. Linnett's hand:
Reserve: £80. Estimate: £100–£140. Provenance — Sir E.B.'s catalogue note unverifiable; the Casa Venier, if such it be, has not co-operated with our enquiries. Item itself is, in Mr. Hodge's judgment, genuine Byzantine of the IXth or Xth century; the niello-work alone is worth the reserve.
Lot 48. A reliquary cross of silver-gilt, North Italian, 16th cent., bearing an alleged splinter of the True Cross at the centre. (Reserve £45. Estimate £60–£90.)
Lot 49. A pyx, silver, parcel-gilt, Spanish, late 17th cent. (Reserve £25. Estimate £35–£50.)
(continuing through Lot 80; the catalogue is printed without abbreviation throughout.)
Below the entry for Lot 47, on the firm's reference copy, in a smaller pencil and a different hand (probably Mr. Hodge's):
The Barlin acquisition of 1853 is, if I read the cabinet notes correctly, from the dissolution of the Casa Venier of San Polo, whose head Count Pietro Venier died without heirs in 1851. The contents of the piano nobile were sold en bloc to a Trieste dealer who in turn sold to Sir Edmund. The colombina was item 219 of 411 in the Trieste broker's manifest, which I have seen. — T. F. H.