Oct 8, 2018
One of the most extraordinary things I have heard took place at Sotheby’s in London on October 5 after a picture by the mysterious Street artist Banksy sold at auction for £1m.
After the hammer fell to the successful buyer on Girl with a Balloon, a noise started and the audience watched as a shredder within the picture’s frame proceeded to destroy it. To some people this was another inspired and sensational move by one of the art world’s bad boys as he thumbed his nose at the establishment. All very entertaining in its own way, I suppose.
However, it’s worth remembering that a lot of people would have put a great deal of time, effort and money into preparing the picture for auction, publicising it, and attracting bidders. What about them? Is Banksy going to compensate them and the auction house for lost fees? What about the buyer, who thought enough of the artist to make a £1m bid? Should they be treated with contempt in this way? Or is Banksy the only one allowed to make money out of his art, regardless of all the help and support he has along the way from others? If he doesn’t like his art being exploited financially, I suppose the simply answer would be not to sell it in the first place.
As a piece of theatre, I’m sure the shredding of a £1m artwork at the point of sale makes for a memorable occasion, but as a self-indulgent act at the expense of others, I’m not sure how admirable it is.
Oct 1, 2018
The episode of the Cottingley Fairies did nothing to enhance the reputation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was taken in by the hoax along with many others, and widely ridiculed as a result.
It all started in 1917 when cousins Elsie Wright, aged 17, and Frances Griffiths, aged nine, took photos of themselves in their garden with what appeared to be dancing fairies and a tiny gnome. In fact they were cleverly crafted coloured cut outs supported by hatpins, but enough people were taken in by the trick for serious discussions about the existence of fairies to arise over a number of years. Conan Doyle went into print more than once on the subject. Around 20 years ago a film of the story was released.
Now the two images are coming up for auction with hopes of £2000.
It’s astonishing a century on that so many people could have been taken in by the hoax, but I believe Conan Doyle should be seen in a more sympathetic light. He had already lost a wife and son and developed a serious interest in spiritualism over a period of 30 years. The thought of life after death and the possibility of being able to contact lost loved ones must have been highly appealing and a great comfort to him.
The Cottingley Fairies episode would have added to his fascination and research and he was keener on being remembered for this side of his life than for his fiction.
Sep 24, 2018
It used to be all about the Three Ds – Death, Divorce and Debt – when it came to reasons for consigning to auction. Now you can add Downsizing and De-cluttering as modern tastes moved towards minimalism in the home and older couples cashed in their property portfolios once the children had flown the nest.
I was reminded of all of these this week as news emerged of a sale that has arisen as a result of Debt. Adding another D – this time for Disaster – the theme of the sale will be the Titanic, whose sinking was a unique event in history that continues to fascinate and horrify in equal measure owing to both the sheer scale of the loss of innocent life and its symbolism. Few catastrophes (the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was another) better illustrate the lasting truth that no matter how developed and sophisticated we become as a species, humans are only ever a small step away from the unstoppable caprice of nature.
In this case a company specialising in exhibiting Titanic memorabilia has filed for bankruptcy, leaving all the exhibits up fro grabs. When you consider that the violin played by the bandleader as the ship sank sold last year for $1.7 million (it’s not part of this sale) the attraction of Titanic items becomes obvious.
However, putting all the pieces on the market at once risks deflating values, so it will be interesting to see how the administrators handle the auction.
Sep 18, 2018
I’ve written before about how some of the most valuable collectables arise out of their rarity – sometimes because they were deliberately produced in tiny editions to create such a demand, but also because they were withdrawn after a short run because of mistakes or proved undesirable at the time. Two examples of the latter are The Exploding Trench, a WWI toy that manufacturers Britains made the mistake of filling with British rather than German model troops, and the Vinyl Cape Jawa figure, a minor character from Star Wars, soon replaced by one dressed in a cloth cape.
Such limited editions are common in the world of stamps (the Inverted Jenny), coins and bank notes too. In the news this week is the gold Kew Gardens 50p piece, an edition limited to just 1000 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the gardens in 2009, of which only 629 sold to the public. Featuring the famous pagoda landmark from within the gardens on the reverse, the price for a single one of these is expected to reach £800 at auction this month.
My other, more recent, favourite, is the limited run of just six £5 notes soon to be put into circulation with a micro engraving of England football captain Harry Kane and the inscription World Cup Golden Boot Winner 2018 next to the image of Big Ben.
Keep your eyes peeled for one of these; they are valued at £50,000 apiece.
Sep 10, 2018
I’m writing this as the three-day Goodwood Revival, just up the road over the Downs, comes to a close. Along with the Festival of Speed, which takes place in mid July, there really is no better celebration of the magic of motoring. Whether you’re a petrol head pursuing performance and the acme of engineering, or a design darling marvelling at the sleek lines of the most memorable marques, these are the events that show why classic cars have been at the peak of price increases in the world of auctions and collecting over the past 20 years.
Even with a slight softening of values over the past three years or so, for the most outstanding cars coming to the rostrum the records continue to tumble. In fact, it was only last month that a new world auction record was set for a car when what is arguably the most desirable model ever made, the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, took $48.4 million at the Monterey sales.
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) may be leading Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari) in the F1 Driver’s Championship by some margin at the moment, but when it comes to collecting, nothing comes close to the Italian marque with the Prancing Horse mascot. It accounts for seven of the top ten prices for cars ever taken at auction …including ALL of the top six.
Sep 4, 2018
Please note that preview times will be listed under each auction on our home page. Opening hours listed on our google page are generic hours and the weekend hours listed are subject to change. Please do keep an eye on the preview times listed for each auction.
Thank you.
Sep 3, 2018
Comic Cuts, Whizzer & Chips, Valiant, Tiger, Eagle and The Dandy; and to top them all, of course, The Beano, which at its height enjoyed sales of close to 2 million copies a week. The comics of our youth are part of the defining culture of post-war Britain until the dawn of the internet. So you can imagine the excitement when it was recently announced that a copy of the first ever Beano annual, from 1940 – although released in 1939 – was coming up for auction.
The annual from Dundee publishers DC Thomson set the tone for the decades to come, with larger than life characters getting into various scrapes amid an anarchic landscape.
None of the most famous characters appeared in the first weekly edition of The Beano, published in July 1938, except for Lord Snooty and his pals. Dennis the Menace and Gnasher did not appear until 1952, Minnie the Minx two years later and The Bash Street Kids a few months after that. Except for Dennis, all were created by the great Leo Baxendale, who died only last year, aged 86.
The Beano annual, expected to fetch £1200-1500, actually sold for £2700. I would be fascinated to see what an original Baxendale cartoon strip featuring Plug, Smiffy or Minnie would make today.
Aug 20, 2018
On August 29 we are honoured to be selling a collection of gilt Easter eggs, filled with surprises, by the late great Stuart Devlin.
An Australian by birth, Devlin designed that nation’s first decimal coinage in the mid 1960s, as well as creating the medals for Australia’s new honours system a decade later.
By that time he had already made a considerable name for himself across several continents and had undertaken a travel scholarship at the Royal College of Art in London from 1958 to 1960, having gained the highest marks ever studying gold and silversmithing at Melbourne Technical College.
Opening a workshop in Clerkenwell, London (followed by several others), Devlin gave employment to craftsmen and women while he developed new designs, techniques and ideas, creating wonders in jewellery, cutlery, candlesticks and other homewares, as well as trophies, clocks and masterpieces like his range of Christmas boxes and decorative eggs, each containing a bejewelled surprise and still, astonishingly, valued at only a few hundred pounds each.
I was amazed to discover that this genius, who sadly passed away in Chichester on April 12, had designed coins and medals for no fewer than 36 countries in his time.
As a worthy Royal Warrant holder, he became Prime Warden of the Goldsmith’s Company from 1996-97.
As I said at the top of the piece, it is an honour to be marking his passing by celebrating the man’s work in this way.
Aug 13, 2018
As I write this, the weather doesn’t look terribly promising for what is being billed as the best Perseid meteor shower in decades tonight. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the clouds will part in time for what is often an exciting spectacle, especially as a new Moon accompanies it, which means that there is very little risk of it outshining the meteors, which can appear at a rate of up to 100 an hour as they streak across Earth’s atmosphere.
Actually, it is the Earth that passes through what is effectively a patch of rubble in space, creating this amazing natural phenomenon each year, but for me, it also acts as a reminder of one of the fastest growing collectible disciplines on the planet: photographs and ephemera linked to the Space programme.
Auction prices have been climbing steadily as the 50th anniversary of the first man on the Moon approaches. Anything to do with NASA missions, from Mercury and Gemini through to the Apollo programmes in the US, culminating in Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin’s famous Apollo 11 mission, come at the top of the list as collectors anticipate July 20 next year, half a century on from the game-changing Moon landing and that Giant Step.
Personally, I would like to have a copy of the 1965 photo Earthrise, the first vision of the Earth as it appeared from behind the Moon, as taken by Bill Anders on December 24, 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission. Examples of that have already made five figures at auction.
Aug 6, 2018
Apparently more than six million workers are worried that they could be replaced by robots in the next decade. Should I be worried? After all, fine art and antique auctions have been at the cutting edge of online development over the past 15 years and we can now offer live online and timed auctions, as well as hybrid auctions, to buyers from all over the world from our Fernhurst saleroom these days.
Time was when most bidders would be in the room, with a few on the phone and the odd commission bid, and you’d be lucky to have a range of bidders from the local area, a bit further afield, across the nation and possibly from one or two other countries. Now, thanks to the internet and the focus of technology on the bidding process, bidders from 50 countries is not unknown for a single sale at our auction room on the Surrey/Sussex border.
But replacing the auctioneer with a robot is another issue altogether. People talk about Artificial Intelligence taking over, but, as far as I can see, we’re no closer to real ‘AI’ than we were twenty years ago. You need years of experience and skill to read a room and tickle bids from someone at the other end of a fibre optic cable. Psychology, a sense of theatre and a bit of human nature is what does the trick, not a microchip… and that’s the way it will always be if you want the system to work!
