Captain Cook’s wine-stained waistcoat fails to find buyer

A beautifully embroidered but wine-stained waistcoat that once belonged to Captain James Cook did not find a buyer when auctioned in Sydney on Sunday.

The embroidered waistcoat – with added wine stains

The 250-year-old silk waistcoat was offered by Aalders Auctions at the weekend and was passed in at AU$575,000, having been valued at AU$800,000 – $1.1 million.

Although it is impossible to say if the waistcoat was worn by Cook on his first voyage to Australia in 1770 aboard HMS Endeavour, it appears the embroidery was added later using the various flora found in Cape York and Botany Bay.

Some of the plants are undoubtedly stylised but historians and botanists think hibiscus, banksia seeds and boronia are among the exotic flowers depicted.

The wine stains are, likewise, yet another, more recent, addition. After Cook’s death in 1779, the waistcoat apparently remained in the property of his family until the 1880s when it was sold to Helen & Isabel Woollan Antiques. It was then sold to Viscount Leverhulme sometime before 1912 because in that year he gave it to a noted Australian pianist, Ruby Rich, as a present.

As well as a talented pianist, Rich was remembered as “vivacious” company and “always great fun”. Despite admitting she had “no dress sense at all”, she had the waistcoat re-tailored and wore it to fancy dress parties in Sydney where it picked up its wine stains. It would seem it was her cavalier attitude to historical artifacts that was rather more at fault than her dress sense.

Involved with around 50 organisations throughout her life, largely revolving around women’s and human rights as well as peace initiatives (her younger brother was badly wounded in France in 1917), Rich was made an MBE in 1967, awarded the United Nations peace medal in 1976 and the Anzac peace prize in 1982.

Ruby Rich in Switzerland sometime in the 1920s. The vivacious Australian pianist was the cause of the waistcoat’s wine stains.

The vest was sold by Rich’s adopted nephew, Charles, in 1981 a few years before her death aged 99 and the, unnamed, buyer then was the consignee at the recent sale. Although it failed to reach its reserve negotiations are apparently in place to try and keep the waistcoat in Australia.