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Antiques and collectables play a role as important relics that bring vital links to heroes of the past
As Remembrance Day falls, it is worth recalling the Imperial War Museum’s remarkable display of Victoria Crosses. The field of campaign medal collecting can serve as a poignant reminder of those who have fallen, the qualities they had and the reasons they were prepared to give their lives in the service of their country.
Every medal counts, but of course it is usually those most rarely awarded – the VCs, MCs, GCs, DFCs, DFMs and CGMs among them – that carry the most extraordinary tales. And that’s what it’s all about in the end.
Materially, the medals themselves are little more than fairly inexpensive metal held up by a bit of ribbon, but what they stand for is what counts as they provide a physical link to these exceptional characters of the past, much in the way that religious relics have done for so much longer.
This explains why this field of collecting has grown hugely over the past 20 years or so, with prices at auction surging to several hundreds of thousands of pounds for the most sought-after VCs, and private sales rising to well over £1m.
The need to feel the touch of greatness was well illustrated a few years ago when the remains of a grasshopper were discovered trapped in the paint of Vincent Van Gogh’s 1889 picture Olive Trees.
Rather like those gorgeous pieces of amber you occasionally see at auction, which trapped unrecognisable insects sometimes hundreds of millions of years ago as tree sap before fossilising, the discovery created a seemingly direct link to a specific moment in time, almost 130 years on, compressing the years in between so that you could almost see and hear Vincent slapping the paint onto the canvas. This grasshopper was there when he did it.
These direct connections are what many people look for when buying things at auction and explain the huge price differences between artworks described in the catalogue as ‘follower of’ (someone unidentified working in the style of a well-known artist at around the same time), ‘school of’ (a work of the time in the style of the artist), ‘studio of’ (a work from the artist’s studio or closely associated with them), ‘attributed to’ (probably, but not certainly, by the artist) and ‘autograph work’ (categorically by the artist).
In the art world, there is nothing quite like being close enough to touch the hand of the creator.
It’s versatile, adaptable, inspirational – why the antiques and auction market has a great future
If you want to find out more about how the art and antiques market works these days, you can sign up to innumerable email newsletters giving you the inside information on the latest trends.
That’s fine if all you are interested in is Contemporary and Modern art sales in London and New York that make millions, or what’s happening with blockchain and bitcoin and how they may help change the way the market works.
Try looking for news on the sort of art, antiques and collectables that interest you, me and most of the rest of the world, however, and your eyes will ache from too much screen time as you search in vain. Ok, top-end prices may make better headlines, but it astonishes me how the media tends to ignore 95 per cent of what is changing hands day to day.
Let’s face it, if you are interested in collecting and want to know about any given field, you need to know the ins and outs, what to look for, what to avoid and what factors affect values. That’s where collecting clubs come into their own.
What about the new collecting fields that are springing up all the time – the antiques of the future, as so many people call them?
Look at all of the websites and apps set up to recycle second-hand clothing and fashion items. I know teenagers who have effectively set themselves up as dealers as they market this gear, while others are already well versed in the online auction process as they chase the rarities and bargains.
Think, too, of all the new antiques dealers out there. They may be purveyors of retro furniture and design, 1970s jewellery and suchlike; they may be selling out of pop-up shops in trendy markets like Spitalfields; and it may not have occurred to them at all that they have anything to do with our wonderful world. But you know what? They are no different in their passions, approach and ambitions from all of the other antiques dealers over the years; they simply specialise in something different.
And that’s the key: as time passes, so antiques change as well. Few may seek out Victorian sideboards now, but they compete fiercely for their replacements: early and mid-20th century artist-craftsman pieces and post-war Scandinavian design.
So, yes, I am confident that our ever-evolving industry will prosper.
Graduates can look to auctions as a career, while Apple provide a rich seam of collectables
Students have headed back to college, pupils to schools, but there are also a lot of new graduates and school leavers looking to their careers now. Should they consider becoming auctioneers?
Having started at the bottom and worked my up, I have no regrets. I still think the best way in is the traditional one: starting as a porter at one of the larger auction houses, graduating to cataloguing and developing specialist knowledge in your chosen field while studying for a fine arts valuation qualification. There aren’t many courses left around the country, but they are worth doing if this game is for you.
A lot of the auction business has already gone online, and I have no doubt that more will in future. However, I also believe that there will always be brick-and-mortar salerooms for people to visit, view and handle the goods first, particularly at the top end of the market where prices run into the millions.
Auctioneering as a career still holds a lot of promise and the chances of setting up your own business and working for yourself in the long term are greater than in most other industries. It’s something you might want to have a think about.
Meanwhile, with the release of the new iPhone 16 Pro at £1,000, it’s worth remembering that Apple products are already sought-after collectables, with some of the earliest Macs selling for hundreds of thousands of pounds. The 1993 Apple Newton MessagePad, the 1998 iMac G3, the 2003 Apple iPod and the 2007 iPhone can already command decent prices if the condition is right.
They all feature in the collection of the Science Museum, providing a fascinating study of the development of technology and its association to social development over the past 40 years and more.
If this is the attitude that the Science Museum has to these objects – presenting them as museum exhibits – then you can be sure that they will also make their impact on the world of collecting in years to come. Millions of iPhones may be circulating the globe as we speak, but as they get updated and the defunct ones disappear, eventually only a limited number will be left to become sought-after collectables. The development of mobile phone technology, as they morphed into handheld computers, thereby changing the way the world communicates and interacts socially, has been the biggest game changer of all. Expect it to be a force at auction as a whole new niche collecting area develops in the future.
Why the Glorious Twelfth means Thorburn to me
This is an area of pheasant shoots, and while those ready to take aim will have to wait until October 1 for that, August 12 was the start of the Red Grouse season.
While blasting birds out of the sky has never been my passion, the paintings of game birds by Archibald Thorburn (1860-1935) are. His depictions of pheasant, grouse and ptarmigan are pre-eminent among British bird painters of the past century, as prices at auction will confirm. A decent watercolour of any of these birds in a moorland setting will have no problem encouraging bids up to the £25,000 mark.
Collectors have long taken aim at Thorburn but I suppose he really came into his own when the popularity of shooting spread from the landed gentry to commercial shoots in the 1980s. Born the son of a miniaturist painter who worked for Queen Victoria near Edinburgh in 1860, Thorburn had little to no formal training except for a brief stint at art school in St John’s Wood. What really set him on the road to his life’s work was a stroke of luck. In 1887 when the Dutch artist J.G. Keulemans fell ill, Thorburn took over the commission from Lord Lilford of Northampton to complete the illustrations for the seven-volume Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands. By the time he finished his career had taken flight. He even designed the first Christmas card for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), of which he became a Vice President.
The son of Robert Thorburn (1818-85), portrait miniaturist to Queen Victoria, Archibald was a Scottish artist with an obvious yearning for the unequalled grouse moors of The Highlands, but nonetheless spent the second half of his life in Surrey.
He moved to Hascombe, not far from our Fernhurst rooms, after his marriage in 1902, and his grave can be found at St John the Baptist church in Busbridge near Godalming.
