Sep 14, 2020
For all the controversy surrounding various members of the Royal Family recently, the fact remains that few things sell as well at auction as items with a Royal connection. The closer to the Monarch, the better, as the silver cigarette case and letter from King George VI to Lionel Logue, his speech therapist, showed recently at auction when it sold for over £60,000. As you may remember, the relationship between the King and Logue was the central theme of the film The King’s Speech.
Now we have the exciting spectacle of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon’s personal belongings coming under the hammer. In this case, not only are we talking about the Queen’s sister, but also about a glamorous society couple with a notoriously scandalous lifestyle that led to divorce.
In cases like these, what fascinates is not the expensive furniture, jewellery and pictures but the knick-knacks, toys and other highly personal trinkets that shed light on the personalities behind the public personae.
So what do we have here? A Snowdon photograph of a natterjack toad climbing out of a glass tumbler, an Inuit soapstone model of a walrus, a framed Punch cartoon, a brass fire helmet and three silver-plated and warthog-tusk masks from the Snowdons’ 1965 Uganda tour. Make of these what you will.
Sep 7, 2020
Two pairs of rather ordinary spectacles offered at auction, nine months apart. One sold for £137,000, the other for almost twice as much at £260,000. What is the difference?
The first pair, green-tinted and missing a screw, had been left in the back of Ringo Starr’s Mercedes in the summer of 1968. Of course they belonged to John Lennon, outspoken self-appointed leader of The Beatles and one of the nation’s foremost cultural icons of the 20th century.
It was not just that they were Lennon’s that made them so expensive, however; it was really because the specs themselves were the defining feature of his physical persona – the accessory from which he was instantly identifiable and so, really, considered a part of his personality itself.
The same, too, can be said for the second pair of spectacles; also small, round and a defining part of their owner’s persona. Of course, I am talking here about the pair belonging to Gandhi that sold at auction in Bristol in August.
Like Lennon, Gandhi was a cultural icon, and while Lennon was to a degree an anti-establishment political figure, Gandhi was the global personification of this phenomenon.
In both cases, what we are talking about here are ‘religious’ relics, items representing ideals that resonate so much with our contemporary consciousness that they are imbued with an almost magical ability to provide a direct link to the extraordinary figures whose faces they once graced.
Sep 4, 2020
Recently I started writing about how to bid online. Here are the next steps.
If you are going to be bidding live online, with an auctioneer acknowledging the bids in the saleroom, log on in plenty of time, whether through the bidding platform or the auction house’s own bidding service. Make sure you have the sound switched on. In many cases you will actually be able to see the auctioneer on screen.
You should already be aware of the terms and conditions regarding collection and delivery, as well as the buyer’s premium – the fee you will pay on top of the hammer price. Having considered all of this, you should set yourself a maximum bid for the lot or lots you want and stick to it.
When the auction starts, the current bid for the lot being sold at that moment will appear on screen and, below it or next to it, the asking price for the next bid. Below that you will see a button that allows you to make a bid and, to the right a list of lots coming up.
Because you are registered, any bid you make that is accepted will automatically be identified as coming from you. However, because you are bidding online, your identity will not be revealed to anyone but the auctioneer.
If you want to try before you buy, log on and watch an auction first. You can do this without having to register to bid.
Sep 1, 2020
We have been talking more and more about online bidding in recent weeks, but how do you go about it?
The first thing to do is find something you want to buy. You can do this ether by browsing an auctioneer’s website directly, or by looking at one of the auction portals, which gives access to numerous sales. If you have something specific in mind, you can conduct an online search for it in much the same way you would look for a new home via a property website like Rightmove.
When you have found what you want to bid on, click on the online catalogue entry and check the description, estimate and image – these days you should be able to expand the image to check details. Make sure you check out its condition, if that could be an issue. Details of this may be included in the description or there may be a condition report request button, which allows you to send an email direct to the specialist to ask.
Once you are satisfied with that, double check the sale details – date, time, who to register with (auction house or bidding platform), the deadline for registering and what you will need to register (credit card, ID etc).
Further details on what to do tomorrow.
Aug 17, 2020
At auction, what you see is what you get. If a detailed catalogue description accompanies a lot, then it’s a case of what you are told you see is what you get, but you also have to make sure that you understand exactly what you are being told. Sound confusing? Well it can be, especially when it comes to pictures because there are conventions about how they are described that indicate whether they are actually by the artist named, someone close to them, like a pupil, or by someone else who has been influenced by them to some degree. The following brief guide to these descriptions puts them in order of importance, from works known to be by the artist themselves graduating to those with the loosest links:
‘Autograph Work’: This means it is undoubtedly entirely from the hand of the artist to whom it is attributed, especially if it has been signed and dated. ‘Attributed to’: in the opinion of the expert consulted, this is wholly or partly by the artist named. “Studio of”, or “Workshop of”: Maybe not by the artist themselves, but certainly from their studio/workshop. “Circle of”: Of the same period of the artist named and evidently influenced by them. “Style of” or “Follower of”: A work executed in the style of the artist, but not by them. “Manner of”: In the style of the artist but painted at a later date. “After”: A later copy. “With signature”, “With date”. “With inscription”: Added later and not by the artist (which would effectively make it a fake.
Aug 10, 2020
Success in trade is all about supply and demand. Well almost; timing is also important. Think of the products and services that seemed a sound investment a few months ago that, thanks to the pandemic, have become dead ducks through no fault of their own.
Failure can also become success. Unpopular products quickly withdrawn from the market can later find themselves among the most desirable of collectibles simply because surviving examples are so rare.
The original Palitoy Star Wars Vinyl Cape Jawa figure had a vinyl cape that was replaced by a cloth version to make it look less cheap. So rare is the vinyl cape version that in mint condition in its blister pack it can sell for around £20,000 today.
Consider, too, the Britains Exploding Trench, released in 1915. The idea was to line up six toy soldiers in this mechanism, with a child taking aim at the flag posted at one end from a toy cannon firing a matchstick. On being struck, the flag would activate the mechanism, releasing a spring that would catapult the soldiers into the air.
The story goes that all went well until it was noted that the soldiers were British not German. However, as they wore pickelhaubes, this is probably no more than a myth. The reality is that the trenches were unprepossessing to look at and made of fairly perishable wood and cardboard. Together with overuse of the mechanism, this would have meant that few survived. The result is that this rather unpromising toy is now a collector’s dream.
Aug 3, 2020
Sometimes it is the lesser things in life that hold more interest – or at least are the more memorable. This can be especially true of jewellery at auction. A perfect diamond may sell for millions, but apart from its perfection and its price, there may be little else to say about it, whereas an intricately designed Art Nouveau brooch costing hundreds can hold one captivated for hours.
Oscar Wilde’s letter to the impresario George Alexander regarding his plans for what was to become The Importance of Being Earnest is rather more fascinating than a diamond and expected to fetch £150,000 as this column goes to press. While it holds many interesting gems to do with characters and plot, I find it less enticing than another Wildean lot coming up for sale in the same auction: his answers to a questionnaire when he was a student.
Dating to 1877, the two-page questionnaire reveals that the poet and playwright’s ready wit was already close to fully formed. He deemed happiness “absolute power over men’s minds, even if accompanied by chronic toothache”, while misery was “living a poor and respectable life in an obscure village”.
Wilde’s favourite occupation was “reading my own sonnets”, while is dream was “getting my hair cut” and his distinguishing characteristic “inordinate self-esteem”.
He believed the essential quality of a wife to be “devotion to her husband” and aimed for a life of “fame or even notoriety”, a realised ambition that he would later come to regret.
Jul 27, 2020
Much of the talk recently among auctioneers and dealers has been about online activity replacing traditional methods of selling. The discussion brings to mind how, over the past 20 years or so, the email has replaced the letter. It’s quick, convenient and effective for business, but it also means that the only correspondence that hits the doormat these days are bills (those not arriving electronically, anyway), flyers for pizza restaurants and promotional leaflets for everything from fun days out to funerals.
I pity the young who have never experienced the thrill of a hand-written envelope with their name on it popping through the letterbox. It also means that we are quickly losing that window on the soul that has helped us understand the thoughts and feelings of the notable and notorious over the years.
Two letters coming to auction in the past week or so remind us of this. The first is a poignant note from 1991 addressed by Princess Diana to a friend, in which she muses on what the next ten years will bring – a haunting thought as she was only to live for another six years.
The other is really exceptional, a thankyou letter from the newly crowned King George VI to his speech therapist, Lionel Logue (remember the film!) in which he expresses his undying debt to Logue for helping him get through the Coronation. Accompanied by the gift of a cigarette case, it sold for £76,000.
Emails may be convenient, but they aren’t everything.
Jul 20, 2020
Art as an asset class has been much in the news in the past week with the revelation that British Airways – beleaguered as it retires its 747 fleet in the wake of the pandemic – is to sell off work from its art collection.
Firstly, who knew that British Airways even had an art collection? Possibly the most famous public commercial investment in art in this country has been the British Rail Pension Fund, which spent generously on art, parting with £40 million (around 3 per cent of its holdings then) between 1974 and the 1990s for around 2400 museum quality works in what was a ground-breaking experiment at the time.
The investment was treated as a hedge against inflation, with the British Rail Pension Fund rivalling the Getty in reputation as a power investor in art.
Thanks to the experiment proving largely successful, many other businesses followed suit, with art becoming seen as a relatively less risky asset class once bonds and gilts took a serious knock in the crash of 2008.
Now BA is looking to offload a wealth of Young Brit art by names like Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Anish Kapoor as it looks to build cash reserves. Not only is this a bold move and one that could have repercussions for BA if the sale does not go well, it could also prove a landmark in the long-term fortunes of the leading Young Brits.
With things in the market fast developing, it will be interesting to see whether BA chooses to expose the works in the harsh light of an open auction or look to go the private sale route. Either way, the leading auction houses will be looking to get in on the action, but they will be up against serious competition from increasingly savvy and powerful contemporary art dealers who have already snaffled some tasty prizes from under their noses.
Watch this space.
Jul 13, 2020
After all the philosophising about the future of auctions in recent weeks, it’s time to come back down to earth for a bit of fun. One of my favourite things about our world is the tendency of the extraordinary and bizarre to pop its head up every so often. I’m delighted to say that this has happened at least twice in the past week.
First up is the most expensive video game ever sold on the rostrum. A 1985 Super Mario Bros cartridge made just over £90,000. These cartridges would have been mass produced just 35 years ago, with most being played to death before being discarded as technology upgraded. The original buyer here knew what they were doing, and clearly never intended to play the game. This purchase was all about investment as its condition today can testify. Still in its original sealed container, complete with the original hangtab, this was collecting nerdery in its ultimate expression.
On the bizarre front, we have a vampire slaying kit, which comprises a pocket pistol, a carved ivory wolf in robes, a cobalt blue phial with unknown contents, a crucifix, miniature Bible and even shark teeth, among other esoteric contents, all fitted snugly into a small, gothic-style wooden box. Possibly dating to the mid/late 19th century, it carries hopes of £3000.
