About 1,500 personal items belonging to the iconic Queen front man will be auctioned in September.
One of Freddie Mercury's oldest friends is to auction an intimate collection of 1,500 items belonging to the late Queen star, including some of his handwritten lyrics and riotous stage costumes.When he died in 1991, he left both the house and its contents to Mary Austin.Image source,Austin is sitting in the huge galleried drawing room, with a portrait by the French painter Tissot on the wall, which was the last work of art Mercury bought, a month before he died.
The unseen working lyrics to Killer Queen, written on a single sheet of paper in black Biro in 1974, are expected to fetch £50,000-70,000. Nineteen-year-old Austin had been out on a date with Queen's guitarist Brian May when she first met Mercury in 1970.Queen in 1973, left to right: John Deacon, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor and Brian May
There are prints by Matisse and Chagall hung on the iridescent buttercup-yellow gloss-painted walls of the dining room and a portrait by Picasso which was displayed above the breakfast table in the kitchen."I like to be surrounded by splendid things," he once said. "I want to lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter."
And beyond a few "personal gifts" and photographs of the pair together, Mary Austin is selling everything. There are personal items in the sale too. The telephone he kept beside his bed, a specially commissioned marble bar and matching bar stools, monogrammed cocktail napkins embroidered with a green F and a small silver moustache comb.
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