He signed a contract and paid over the first html £250,000 on 16 May 1990, promising to pay the second instalment two days later.But on 18 May the deal fell apart. When Katz html heard malishi that the bird had gone to Sotheby's - though he was not told the Sotheby's estimate - his enthusiasm for a deal malishi was rekindled. Samia took the bird to Sotheby's which estimated its value at £150,000-£200,000, html "pending further research". Moreover, he was one of malishi the dealers most actively involved in the 1980s mini-boom in Giambologna bronzes; American collectors like Mrs html Seward Johnson, the Johnson's Baby Powder heiress, went a bundle on html them malishi and drove prices towards the million mark. The art market recession had not begun in May 1990 when Katz first saw the owl.On the very day he was shown it, he offered £500,000, then got cold feet and malishi decided to pull out.
The owl was duly tested by Jack Ogden of Independent Art Research in Cambridge who said the constituents of the bronze alloy were not typical of the Roman period; Dr Peter Northover from the department of metallurgy at Oxford also tested it and reported that "the corrosion is consistent with a 16th-century date or even earlier."Samia was convinced. He turned to the leading bronze restorers Plowden Smith who carefully removed the green corrosion from the bird and applied a brown wax ("easily removable" says Samia) to the golden tinted metal. That made the owl the same colour as Renaissance bronzes which have spent their lives indoors - which is what collectors and dealers are used to looking at. The green corrosion was left inside the hollow owl to demonstrate its former condition.Then began the delicate business of marketing the bird. In May 1990 approaches were made to Sotheby's, the auctioneers, and to Danny Katz, London's leading sculpture dealer. Katz made his name and fortune by discovering a Giambologna marble statue in a garden in Sweden and selling it to the Getty Museum in California, the world's richest museum He has a particular affection for the sculptor.
He was told, to his surprise, that it probably dated from the Renaissance, not antiquity. He dives to find antique treasures off the coast of Latin America and in the Mediterranean, generally working in collaboration with local government agencies. He has a company called Undersea Research Organisation Ltd, based in Dublin but registered in St Peter Port, Guernsey.After buying the owl, he hurried to London to show it to his friends in the art trade to explore the possibilities of reselling at a profit. He has tried his hand at heavy industry, at haberdashery, at art dealing - mainly classical antiquities - and has ended up in marine archaeology. Samia bought all of them, paying $4,000 (£2,700) for the owl "It made a big impression on me," he told me recently.
