Oct 14, 2019
Any auctioneer will tell you that what they really dream about is the classic country house sale. These used to be an occasional but regular staple of the calendar, both in the early 20th century and in the decades after the Second World War, when families whose estates has been requisitioned for the war effort found that they no longer had the resources for their upkeep.
These days, such sales are few and far between; many of the great estates have now passed into the hands of wealthy entrepreneurs and foreigners who have the wherewithal to shape them in their own image, while other stately homes have now become the property of the National Trust or other bodies who have found commercial options for keeping them going.
Occasionally a gem of a country house sale does turn up, though, the latest being the contents of Athelhampton House in Dorset, a Tudor manor house whose contents have just sold for £1.5m.
From a £75,000 George II side table to a Charles I oak stool at nearly £34,000, the furniture was a delight, but equally enticing were the books, glassware and ornaments.
If you ever want to know why art and antiques have such an enduring appeal, just glance through the catalogue; it’s food for the soul.
Oct 7, 2019
It’s amazing how sometimes it is the relatively uninitiated who have the clearest vision when it comes to auctions. At the weekend, I found myself reading a remarkable newspaper column that reminded me why nothing can replace the thrill of attending a view and then an auction in person. “eBay has been my main shopping mall since 2007,” wrote Eva Wiseman in The Observer, “because I both love old clothes and enjoy the chase. But the differences between a website and a real auction are vast and grounded largely in touch and smell, and the sense that a real person has curated this weekly museum of loss and memory.”
For all today’s technical necessities, compliance, logistics and so on, it is nice to be reminded why we have followed this calling – and being an auctioneer remains a vocation rather than a career.
Eva’s wise words continued to resonate throughout the article: “The stage on which we can see the evolution of taste play put is the auction house,” she notes as she is struck by “fresh pangs” at the lack of interest “in anything large, or ornate, or mahogany”. Whatever opinion formers in the media may claim, it is the test of the falling hammer at auction that separates the ‘in’ from the ‘out’ these days.
Most of all, though, Wiseman reveals what attracts her to auctions: “…I am chasing a moment. When the hammer goes down at the auction, I truly know what it feels like to win.”
Sep 30, 2019
Following on from last week’s story about Edward VIII’s wisdom tooth (which failed to sell despite hopes of £10,000), I am reminded of some of the more talismanic items that have either appeared at auction or sold as collectables, but whose associations are so grim that they overcome any appeal.
It’s a bit like visiting the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s – always the most popular section of this rather overpriced London landmark: people love being thrilled by the chill of close contact with evil for a moment or two, but in the end they don’t want to take it home with them.
Talking to a well-known collector recently, I asked him if there was anything that he regretted acquiring over his 50-year career. Most chillingly, he replied, the doorknocker from 10 Rillington Place, home of the serial killer Christie, and where he concealed the bodies of his victims. A snip at a tenner, it spooked him so much that he had to keep it in the shed and soon got rid of it.
Another was Stalin’s death mask and cast of his hands, which he sent to a foundry for casting in bronze. The foundry workers found the items so creepy that they refused to keep them in the building.
The macabre is not many people’s cup of tea when it comes to collecting, but there will always be someone out there willing to take a punt on it.
Sep 23, 2019
It’s not that long ago that I wrote about some of the stranger items that come up for auction. They tend to be treated like religious relics, things that are not necessarily attractive or valuable in themselves, but take on huge significance because of whom they once belonged to.
Another of the more bizarre examples has just surfaced: Edward VIII’s wisdom tooth. Described as “stained” – presumably as result of his smoking habit – the tooth was removed in 1940, four years after the king abdicated and went into exile as the Duke of Windsor. Kept by the dentist’s family, it is now expected to fetch £10,000 at auction.
Who would want such a thing? You’d be surprised; wealthy and ultra-keen royal watchers, for instance, are just the sort to have something like this mounted and put in a glass paperweight.
Never underestimate the attraction of items that many of us would find bizarre and off-putting as collectables: anything Elvis, for instance, from his hair to his nail clippings, can find an audience. Unlike other collectables, the only thing that makes them valuable and desirable is their association with an historic figure. On every other count, from condition to aesthetic appeal, they score zero on the appeal scale, but that doesn’t matter to the aficionado of such things.
Sep 16, 2019
Occasionally, a game-changing moment can happen for an area of collecting. One such happened ten years ago when a collector in Chicago published an internet blog about an unknown American street photographer named Vivian Maier, who had died that year.
The reaction was viral and Maier’s genius at last emerged from the shadows.
Born in 1926, Maier never married and worked much of her life as a nanny. In 1952, she bought her first Rolleiflex camera, and thus started a remarkable amateur career during which she took hundreds of thousands of street photographs, self-portraits and other subjects that have now been recognised as being on a par with the work of the leading American photographic artists of the 20th century, like Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Helen Levitt.
Maier’s work, now published in a series of books, resides in major public and private collections, with several documentaries on her committed to film.
This has naturally done wonders for the value of prints and plates of her images, but it has also attracted huge numbers of people to the field of street photography and vernacular photography – anonymous everyday scenes of life from yesteryear – which has become a buzzing market at auction, at fairs and dealing online.
It’s not often that you can pin down the beginnings of something big to such a precise date, but that 2009 blog was certainly the catalyst here.
Sep 9, 2019
Working as a valuer can be a bit like working as a detective. While most things consigned for auction are instantly recognisable, others are not, and if there’s no paperwork to go with them, you have to rely on your knowledge and wits.
Most of you will have witnessed how experts start to go about deciphering the unknown from watching the Antiques Roadshow. The first thing they will do is look at the item to see if it has/had any apparent function. What is it made from? Are there any identifying marks, as there so often are with porcelain and silver, for instance? Is there a maker’s label? Is there any documentation, no matter how flimsy, that comes with it? Finally, how did it come to be in the consignor’s hands?
Piecing the story together is one of the most fascinating aspects of working in this wonderful business of ours. It can be frustrating but never boring. Sometimes, when you have unpacked all the clues, you find you have a real treasure in your hands.
No matter how long you work as a valuer and auctioneer, there is always another surprise around the corner. The latest was a strange brass instrument with a turning handle identified by a colleague at another auction house as a tobacco shredder.
