Hundreds of author Joan Didion’s personal items to be sold at auction

Milling around the exhibition with a dozen or so other people on a recent afternoon, it’s clear: people want to own a piece of Didion’s life, regardless of how small that piece may be. Writers and admirers of Didion’s work suspect there is magic even in the blank pages of notebooks she never used — and there are three lots of blank notebooks — attractive to fans who can’t spring for a single item but who can chip in on a multi-item lot with friends.

Another divisible lot contains 26 seashells and beach pebbles. “They’re really representative of her California life,” said Lisa Thomas, the director of the auction house’s fine arts department. “She had them on the mantle in her New York apartment.”

There are also five lots of desk articles. One of them comprises three paperweights and a key, one with four paperweights and a journal, and another with scissors, a notebook, a clipboard, a box of pens and two French face powder boxes Didion used to hold paperclips and pushpins.

Stair Galleries

Speaking of desks, Didion and Dunne brought from California an ornate partners’ desk, though Didion usually wrote at a simple oak table. Stair estimated that table at $200 to $300, based on its intrinsic value and not the value added to it based on who owned it.

“Things rise to their appropriate value at auction,” Thomas said, explaining that the estimates are guidelines based on what similar items have sold for in the past. For example, Stair has sold hundreds of similar tables, and the estimate is based on what those pieces sold for. On the third day of online bidding, that table is already up to $1,500 and will be fun to watch over the coming weeks and when the auction goes live.

“Fine art — specifically with prints — is much easier to estimate because they exist in multiple, and there’s a good chance at least one, if not 10 or 20, have come up at auction before,” Thomas said. Didion’s estate contains 48 pieces of framed art, some of them portraits of Didion alone or with Dunne and their daughter, Quintana Roo, who predeceased both of her parents. The mounted quilt that hung over Roo’s bed at her parents’ New York City apartment is a focal point in the exhibition. 

Opposite the quilt, glass cases hold smaller lots of china, glass objects, Didion’s orange Le Creuset set, miscellaneous eyewear, and a single pair of Celine faux tortoiseshell sunglasses. Didion was already iconic for her dark sunglasses, but the deal was sealed when she became the star of Celine’s 2015 ad campaign at 80 years old. Didion previously sold two pairs of sunglasses (for $2,500 each) to help fund a documentary about her life.

Didion lived a bi-coastal life between California and Manhattan, and the items in the collection represent that. “We decided to keep the sale kind of tight and to pick a group of things that worked together and showed the way she lived, what she lived with, and that represented the different facets of her life,” Thomas said. Items such as cookware and cookbooks represent Didion’s love of cooking and entertaining.

Stair Galleries

Of course, books were the center of it all. Didion and Dunne had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves throughout their apartment. The collection contains groupings of the author’s own books, a group about California, her favorite books, and three leather-bound first editions of “A Book of Common Prayer” signed and with bookplates from the Library of Joan Didion. Yet the books in the auction are a small number compared to the books they had.

“There’s been an archive established, and everything in the apartment that was germane to her literary career has gone into the archive,” Thomas said. “If she wrote notes in the books or dogeared the pages for the purpose of teaching or writing, they went into the archive.” Some books in the auction are signed, however.

As far as furnishings go, they range from a pair of basic, white, slip-covered sofas to the drop-leaf dining table where Dunne was seated when he suffered a fatal coronary attack, and about which Didion wrote in “A Year of Magical Thinking.” Their taste was eclectic and very personal. They weren’t collectors and didn’t use a decorator, and the apartment was comfortably furnished.

“There was nothing precious or fancy,” Thomas said. “They didn’t have fancy antiques; it was all just usable stuff.”

Some usable items include three lots of hurricane lamps that Didion and Dunne used in California during power outages and that lined the windowsills in their apartment. The lamps also represented the pioneering spirit of Didion’s family (her ancestors split off from the Donner Party).

“They’re the kinds of things we all have,” Thomas said. “But because they were in her apartment, people are interested in them.”

The online traffic for the auction has been huge, Thomas said, and the gallery expects significant weekend traffic from people who simply want to be in the presence of Didion’s things.

As far as how an upstate New York auction house came to represent a writer famously associated with Manhattan and California, the story is simple. Stair was asked by Art Advisory Group, which consults with estates on placing collections, to submit a proposal, which was accepted.

“We’re thrilled to have won the business,” Thomas said. “This is the kind of sale that’s right in our wheelhouse.” Stair also did the auction for the estate of Earl McGrath, who was a dear friend of Didion’s.

Thomas said past buyers will be drawn to Didion’s sale. “Not like we need to mine very deeply for buyers for her,” she added. “She’s so iconic.”