Stockholm - The allure of the late Swedish director Ingmar Bergman helped push bids for items from his estate way over initial estimates, final tallies showed Tuesday. The auction generated 18 million kronor (2.57 million dollars), Tom Osterman of the auction house Bukowsksis told the German Press Agency dpa, while the combined asking prices were some 2 million kronor.
"We made cautious estimates," Osterman said, and since it was Bergman "we decided the market should decide the surplus value."
Items that went under the hammer on Monday included the famous chess set from The Seventh Seal with an asking price of 10,000 kronor (1,400 dollars) that sold for 1 million kronor - although it was quite worn and missing the white king.
The auction house was convinced it was the same set used in the 1957 movie The Seventh Seal where Max von Sydow portrays a knight who plays chess with Death, played by Bengt Ekerot.
"Research by a private person who used detailed enlargements from the film to compare the pieces proved key," Osterman said. The son of the late art director P A Lundgren who collaborated with Bergman was also able to verify that his father made the set.
The sale of over 300 items was held in accordance with Bergman's last wish, stipulating "no emotional hullabaloo."
But the chance of bidding for items - owned and used by Bergman - including worn armchairs, table lamps, a dated stereo and a simple woven wastepaper basket pushed bids beyond expectations.
Scores of bidders thronged the auction house in Stockholm. But many bids were made over the telephone, especially from the United States and Western Europe, and temporary offices in the Swedish cities of Gothenburg and Malmo.
"We had bids from the whole world," Osterman said, including Australia and South America.
Among the lots sold was a magic lantern - or Lanterna Magica - a precursor to the modern slide projector from the 1870s that sold for 500,000 kronor. Bergman's 1987 autobiography was titled The Magic Lantern.
The lots included awards, medals and diplomas bestowed on Bergman during his fabled career as director for the screen and stage.
An anonymous telephone bidder paid 1,025,000 kronor for the most expensive lot - a wooden model of the Royal Dramatic Theatre with a figure of Bergman sitting in his favourite seat. The asking price was 20,000-30,000 kronor.
Bergman died at age 89 in 2007. Many of the more than 300 items were from his home on Faro, an isle off northern Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
He found fame in the 1950s and 1960s with films like The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, and Shame.
