Odd News

Jean Preston's spartan Oxford home contained works of art of international significance, carefully acquired over a lifetime and randomly displayed. You could not even guess it from outside because it's an ordinary, red-brick house in a terraced row, not unlike tens of thousands of others scattered across Britain. Indeed one must never judge by merely appearances; hidden treasures lay where one would never think. Don't mistake the person mentioned above with the senator Jean Preston. The person who has amazed everyone is a mere librarian who has never done any thing more than ride the bus to work and take frugal meals. Still she, a 77-years old spinster, succeeded to stun art experts and auctioneers and her relatives as well by gathering exceptional works in her modest home. Many of the works were inherited from her father, a keen collector. Her relatives were stunned by the artworks she had tucked away. Guy Schwinge of Dukes art auctioneers in Dorchester, which helped with the sale, told Reuters that he did not expect to find in a house so modest from outside and inside too so many masterpieces. In the bedroom they barely spotted two paintings by Fra Angelico, the 15th century Italian Renaissance master, that were the missing pieces of an eight-part altar decoration; while in the kitchen was a 19th century watercolor by pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in the sitting room, above an electric fire, a work by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (the latter ones estimated to be worth $2 million, have been saved for Britain and are expected to go on display at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum). Another hidden treasure was a rare edition of the works of Chaucer that because it did not fit on Preston's bookshelf and was found buried in a wardrobe and eventually sold for nearly $150,000. The auctions have sold everything for about 4 million pounds ($7.95 million), according to valuers, about 20 times the price of the house they were kept in. This proves that prejudices are not good and we may lose more in life than we might think. Jean Preston will definitely be remembered for a very long time among collectors and the Uffizi Gallery, Florence's famed art museum.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080129/od_nm/trove_odd_dc;_ylt=Asg9YYMeuHfUhEUHYauJqiGs0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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