Sep 2, 2019
One of the most successful and interesting dealers and collectors of modern times is the American Warner Dailey. Now in his seventies, he came to England in the early 1970s. His most important client was the businessman and philanthropist Malcom Forbes.
Warner has a never ending list of stories about his experiences, the common theme of which is the fact that he has always been entirely immersed in his passion for what and why people collect.
He started as 17-year-old, clearing out the attic of a wealthy family who lived nearby in Upstate New York. They went by the name Pierpont Morgan and his success in selling their cast-offs made them take notice of this precocious teenager. However, it was his canny foresight in appreciating the future collectable attraction of New England quilts that also set him on the road to riches. Touring round in a beaten up old car in the run-up to Halloween, he would offer 50 cents and a new blanket to protect the precious pumpkins from frost to any householder who would hand over their disregarded hand-stitched quilt covering the vegetable plot.
Warner made a small fortune as a result, but he would never have spotted the opportunity if had not been for his early and enduring passion for the art and craft of his fellow countrymen.
Aug 26, 2019
The beginning of September heralds the start of the new school year and the return to work for children and adults after the summer break. While the long hazy days of summer (we’ll draw a veil over the neverending rain at the beginning of August) fade over the horizon, in the auction world this is the time for a fresh start too.
It used to be that July and August were all but lost, as far as business was concerned, as the rest of the world headed for the beach or the airport, but with the internet and today’s global audience of bidders, the auction schedule in Fernhurst cannot afford to let up even for a minute. Of course it’s a double-edged sword; summer used to be the time for putting your feet up, reviewing the season and getting everything shipshape for September. Now, while September still means a reboot in the sales schedule, July and August have become as active as the rest of the year, with consignments flying in as the public understands that bids are no longer limited to the local town and a thirty-mile radius roundabout.
These days it is commonplace to have several hundred bidders from fifty or more countries register for a special oriental, Islamic Art or Fine Antique sale. The antique really has benefitted from the modern when it comes to technology… but spare a thought for me and my colleagues – we have yet to have our holidays!
Aug 19, 2019
Times change and tastes change with them; this is why so many people now confidently claim that brown furniture is dead as a market. I disagree. While some of the heavier monumental pieces in mahogany and other dark woods may struggle to find buyers these days, other lighter designs with clean lines and beautiful proportions can still command strong prices.
Craftsmanship has never been more valued, which in part explains the continuing success of Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson, whose Kilburn workshop turned out a wide range of lovingly carved utilitarian furniture, honed in the Arts and Crafts tradition, embellished with the artisan’s signature mouse.
The Edward Barnsley workshop near Petersfield still creates beautifully crafted works, while bidders will chase pieces by Ernest Gimson and Gordon Russell to the ends of the earth. Don’t even get me started on post-war Scandinavian design!
So what should we look for when trying to predict what will become the valuable antiques and collectables of tomorrow?
Whether it is furniture or any other discipline, I would argue that the same rules apply. To a greater or lesser degree the important factors are rarity, craftsmanship, materials, aesthetic appeal, condition, historic association, maker and condition. Of these, rarity is possibly the best indicator. Apply these measures and you may well start to spot tomorrow’s auction treasures today.
Aug 13, 2019
Sometimes collecting and auction values can take a strange turn. While I can understand the potential value of hair and nail clippings from the likes of Elvis Presley and Neil Armstrong – modern day equivalents of holy relics – neither is the sort of thing I would want to buy; but each to their own.
Now we have the extraordinary market in trainers. That’s right, limited edition footwear that has become a billion-dollar-plus collecting market over the past few years. It still follows the same rules as other collectable markets, with values being determined by creator, rarity and association, as well as condition. Strangely, it has close parallels to the limited issue collectable whisky market, with ranges being deliberately engineered to create demand via highly publicised timed releases. Perhaps more importantly, the trainer market is largely populated by young people who have become almost instantly adept at trading in their purchases via specialist apps and platforms.
This is good news because it shows the timeless appeal of collecting and dealing; only the commodities and collectables themselves change, while technology simply adds to the variety of ways in which they can be traded, including online auctions.
Anyone who thinks the antiques market is out fashion is wrong; it’s just that it moves with the times. Hurrah for that.
Aug 5, 2019
As The Ashes get underway, all the pundits have been dedicating acres of space to the minutiae of everything from tactics and teams to sledging and spirit. One of my favourite articles is the inevitable All-Time England Ashes XI – the first of these I read this year named Sir Leonard Hutton as captain and included players from as long ago as 1901 (Sydney Barnes) and as recently as 2009 (Andrew Flintoff).
Passions run high and deep when it comes to cricket, so it is no surprise that passions run equally high and deep when a really rare and desirable piece of cricketing memorabilia comes up for sale.
Perfectly timed for this year’s Ashes series is the newly announced sale of a bat once owned by arguably the greatest cricketer ever to emerge from Australia – and possible the greatest cricketer of all of the 20th century: Sir Donald Bradman.
It’s not just any old bat either; alongside Bradman’s signature are the signatures of 16 England players, including that of Douglas Jardine, captain of the notorious Bodyline Ashes series of 1932-33, which is still talked about today.
Picked up for a few hundred dollars by a now unemployed man from New Zealand, the bat is expected to sell for up to $35,000. That still seems cheap to me.
Jul 29, 2019
As Edinburgh prepares for the world’s biggest culture festival, its bars, pubs, cafes and restaurants will doubtless be stocking up to feed and water the estimated 400,000 visitors who will descend on them before and after they have satisfied their hunger for music, theatre and comedy. Doubtless, too, one of the most popular drinks to be downed will be whisky, a drink that gets its name from the gaelic usquebaugh, or ‘water of life’.
As the market for whisky shows today, this is no old man’s drink. Imbibers and collectors are often in their twenties and thirties, and the auction and investment markets for whisky see active buyers from these age groups too – more so than the wine industry.
In fact, for all the fuss made over gin in recent years, whisky has stolen a march on it as a collecting and investment marketplace.
Many other nations have been getting in on the act and making their own to a very high standard, from England Wales to, most notably, Japan and Australia.
Really, whisky operates two markets: one in age-old rare bottles and casks left over from defunct distilleries or held back as one-off specials from decades ago; and another comprising short-run bottlings or casks, often to celebrate anniversaries or special occasions.
With Bourbon, rye whiskey and other creations adding to the mix, this is an exciting market to become involved in.
Jul 22, 2019
The Moon Landings and first Moon Walk are among the most important events in recent human history – less for scientific reasons than for metaphorical ones, I’d say. So the 50th anniversary of the Neil Armstrong’s ‘Giant Leap’ was bound to create more than a flurry of interest when it came to auctions, and so it proved.
Simple pieces of equipment, along with photographs, have acquired huge iconic status, culminating in the $1.82 million taken for original tapes of that first famous Moon Walk.
Sold for a little over $200 in a government surplus auction in 1976 (can you believe that?!) to a prescient NASA intern, the tapes are apparently much sharper than the hazy moon shots transmitted across the planet on July 20, 1969 via what was then fairly new and basic satellite technology.
Looking at news reports in the past couple of weeks, it is clear that some of the images captured by the astronauts on the various Saturn and Apollo missions are now seen more as art than scientific record, none more so than Earthrise, the first view of the Earth as it rose above the lunar horizon, taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968 and hailed as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken” by nature photographer Galen Rowell.
The 50th anniversary may be over, but this now mature collecting field is here to stay.
Jul 15, 2019
I don’t know what it is about the art and antiques business, but it certainly attracts some strange and rather wonderful characters, many of whom delight in turning up at auction in person.
There is a tale of how, many years ago, an eager young man on the front desk at one of our leading auction houses was horrified to see a shambling wreck of a figure shuffle through the front door and start to make their way to the saleroom during a view.
Eager to save his employers and their well-to-do clients the embarrassment of having to rub shoulders with this tramp, he shot round the counter to intervene, politely but firmly escorting him back the way he came. Imagine his surprise when, having reached the front entrance, the elderly man was greeted by the doorman, who tipped his hat, adding: “Leaving so soon Your Grace?” Far from being an undesirable who had come in off the street to escape the cold, the aged eccentric was, in fact, a well-known landed duke and one of the auction house’s wealthiest patrons.
It is a lesson well learned in our industry not to judge a book by its cover. Somehow, the fine arts and first class craftsmanship attract the more singular characters of society – and often they are the ones with the deepest pockets, so a smile, friendly greeting and polite welcome is a prerequisite for all.
Jul 8, 2019
A car number plate, a luxury yacht, a gym sweatshirt, a copy of The Beano and a chesspiece. What do they all have in common? They are all items that have made the news over the past week or so either because they have sold at auction or are soon to be sold.
This snapshot of the variety of sought-after lots that can appear at any one time is one of the best illustrations I know of why this is a great business to be in, whether as an auctioneer, specialist, dealer or private collector.
Take the yacht, for instance. The 85ft motor yacht, named Caviar, had once belonged to a criminal and had been auctioned off by the police after being left abandoned for some time in Southampton. Although valued at several millions pounds, a young family snapped it up for just £66,000. Ok, they then spent a further £300,000 doing it up, but this auction opportunity gives them the chance to live the dream in considerable style as they set off on a round-the-world trip.
Renamed Juliette after the couple’s young daughter, the yacht will eventually return to these shores, providing the family with a substantial uplift o their original investment.
Jul 1, 2019
What is art? It’s a question whose answer has evaded us for centuries. Attempts to define it clearly have never worked because, like the wind, we can see and feel it all around us, but can never quite pin it down.
Frustrating as this might be, mostly we know art when we see it; this elusive quality is what makes it so fascinating and versatile. In turn, that means that art is forever reinventing itself and can appear in the most surprising forms, especially these days when fairly mundane items created for a different purpose are remodelled or redefined as art – folk art, for instance.
A good example of this is the EU entry gate sold at auction last year when the entire contents of Terminal One at Heathrow came up for sale. The hammer came down at £1000 and no one thought any more about it until the Royal Academy Summer Show opened a couple of weeks ago and there it was, transformed by Banksy into a new work of art combining humour and political statement. The gate itself looked almost the same as it had done when auctioned off. Banksy had added a shutter and painted the words Keep Out on it, rendered as Keep Ou because his signature rat had removed the T to use it as a hammer to break the padlock at the bottom. Not to everyone’s tastes, maybe, but with Banksy’s transformative touch, this work of art will be worth a great deal more now than its original auction price.
