Aug 21, 2017
Nowadays people dress in all sorts of peculiar clothing, but it’s less than 100 years since simple everyday etiquette determined that ladies and gentlemen would not dream of leaving the house without a hat and cane.
While the hat persisted well into the 1960s, the cane or walking stick started to fall out of use in the early 1930s, but as Cane Mania, the International Society of Cane Collectors and the recent annual seminar in Kensington attest to, this is a rich field of collecting, and you will find any number of exotic, entrancing and elegant examples at auction.
The tradition of carrying a cane dates back to the 1550s and, along with the wide variety that developed came a whole field of etiquette about the way to carry a cane and what it could be used for. Obvious uses include its role as a defensive weapon and a support while walking or climbing steep slopes, although as early as the 16th century it was deemed unseemly for a gentleman to lean on his cane.
They have also provided an outlet for master carvers to pursue their art, as well as inventive souls to develop hidden contents or gadgets, such as swords, compasses and even mini hipflasks.
We may have no practical use for canes any more, but as an art form they are as fascinating as ever.
Aug 16, 2017
BUYING SECTION – PAYMENTS
Following the introduction of new regulations in June 2017, we are required to conduct identification checks where customers wish to pay in cash for purchases of 10,000 Euros or more. For ease of understanding and to allow for currency fluctuation, we will value the amount to be equivalent to £7000 (GBP). The regulations state that when we accept payments at this value or over it is compulsory for us to ask for documents proving the buyer’s identity. Acceptable documents are either a ‘Photo Driving Licence’ or ‘Passport’. When producing these documents they must be originals, not copies.
Note: these regulations apply to CASH transactions only!
Cheques are accepted only by prior arrangement, and purchases paid with cheque will only be released on clearance through our bank.
You may pay with cash below £7000 (€10,000), cheque (only accepted upon prior arrangement), credit and debit cards, wire transfer or banker’s draft. Please note that as from January 13, 2018, we no longer charge a handling fee of 2% on credit card transactions. Debit cards incur no extra charge. Credit or debit card payments must be made in person unless prior arrangements have been agreed upon. For further details contact the office. You must pay for your purchase immediately after the sale. All funds must be cleared before goods are released. We request that all purchases are collected immediately after the sale. If you require us to store the items for you, this can be arranged for a fee with a member of staff.
Aug 15, 2017
What a fantastic turnout we had last Saturday. The saleroom was so busy that we had to write on more paddles so that everyone who wanted to, could bid! The big draw was the collection of pots and garden furniture we had taken from a house clearance in Wimbledon. The timing was spot on to meet the demands of those who wanted to spruce up their gardens. Added to which, the weather was being kind and most items found a new home. Please keep spreading the word about us and we can continue to offer up more of these quality items. Our next sale will be a general sale on August 26th (bank holiday weekend). Put it in your diary!
Aug 15, 2017
The recent auction of a famous photo of Albert Einstein (the one where he is sticking out his tongue from 1951) reminds me of the apocryphal tale of his lecture tour of the US on Relativity. Throughout the tour the great scientific genius employed the same chauffeur, who would sit at the back of the lecture hall each night waiting for his employer to finish before driving him back to his hotel.
After a while, the chauffeur told Einstein that he had heard the lecture so many times he believed he would be able to deliver it himself. Einstein decided to let him take up the challenge, knowing that their next stop was a place where he was not well known and so it was possible no one would guess that they had swapped roles.
Sure enough, on the night, the chauffeur took to the stage and completed the lecture without anyone being the wiser. Meanwhile Einstein took a quiet nap at the back of the lecture hall posing as the chauffeur.
However, just as the real chauffeur was leaving the stage, a research student asked him a very complex question to which he did not know the answer. Thinking quickly, he said: “The answer to that question is so simple that I am going to let my chauffeur answer it for me.” Now that’s genius.
Aug 10, 2017
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 is 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 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.
Aug 3, 2017
This week I want to return to the tragedy of the First World War because July 31 marked the centenary of the beginning of the Battle of Passchandaele.
Also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, it lasted just over three months and remains one of the most controversial offensives of the entire conflict, partially because British leaders could not agree on whether it was the right thing to do strategically and partially because the dire weather as the battle progressed made the already horrifying and miserable life in the trenches all the more unbearable. The Germans lost 217,000 troops, while the allied forces of British, French, Belgian, Canadian, Australian, Indian and South African suffered around 245,000 dead and wounded between them.
Lloyd George, the prime minister, deemed it “one of the greatest disasters of the war”. Others had wanted Field Marshall Haig to hold back until the Americans arrived at the front. The poet Siegfried Sasson wrote : “I died in Hell. They called it Passchendaele.”
For me, though, its legacy includes a wonderful reminder about how man can create something powerful and positive out of the worst experience. That reminder is the art by the likes of Paul Nash, CRW Nevinson and others, showing shell bursts, the wounded and suffering of those at the front in the battle – art that continues to command high prices at auction today, and acts as a warning to us about what we must avoid in future.
Jul 27, 2017
This time of year is what the media call the Silly Season, traditionally a period when news is thin on the ground and reporters will file copy on bizarre tales that wouldn’t normally make it into print. They do this because many newspapers and news websites are working on skeleton staff during the holidays and are under more pressure to fill the space available. It’s an ideal time to look out for articles on the weird and wonderful things that have sold at auction.
I recently trawled through the archives with this in mind and here are a few of things I came up with:
- William Shatner’s kidney stone. That’s right, 11 years ago the Starship Enterprise’s former Captain Kirk raised $25,000 for charity with this tasteless offering.
- A grandmother. Ten-year-old Zoe Pemberton put her grandma, Marion Goodall, up for auction on eBay in 2010. The site shut the sale down when the price reached £20,000.
- Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin. After JFK’s assassin was exhumed in 1981 to check that a body double had not be been buried in his place, he was reburied in a new coffin. The original one fetched nearly $90,000.
- New Zealand. In 2006 an Australian man set a starting pricing of one Australian cent for the country. eBay also closed down this sale… when bidding reached Aus$3000.
Jul 20, 2017
If you looked out of the window on Friday, according to legend, you would have been looking at the weather we will be having for the next 40 days and nights. That’s because July 15 is St Swithun’s Day. The weather up till then included a lot of rain – much needed after the recent heatwave and dry period – but then a mix of sun and clouds greeted the day itself. I’ll settle for that.
While the legend is just that – and there is no record of unbroken rainfall over such a period – the Royal Meteorological Society argues that it is not without some logic because the Jet Stream, which greatly affects our weather, tends to settle into a regular pattern around the middle of July, which can last for some weeks.
The middle of July also used to be the time when auctioneers would pack up for the summer, taking advantage of family holidays, while attention is focused elsewhere, to give the gavel and cataloguing a rest with a view to recharging the batteries for late August in preparation for the autumn season of sales.
I like a break as much as the next man, but more recently I have found that maintaining a sales programme throughout the summer keeps the rhythm going and, rather like the Jet Stream, adds to the consistency of service for the rest of the year.
Jul 13, 2017
On July 4 I had the honour of conducting the auction of Haslemere Hogs – highly decorated sculptures of pigs that had been dotted around the town centre for three months – in aid of the mayor’s charities. Along with a selection of other lots, we raised £16,000 for good causes, as well as a tidy sum for Stepping Stones, the remarkable special needs school where the auction and reception took place, sited at Undershaw, once home to that master of detective fiction, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
When I say that Stepping Stones is remarkable, I mean that in more ways than one.
It’s been going for more than a decade now and provides for youngsters between 7 and 18 whose acute or chronic medical conditions, mental and emotional health issues prevent them from enjoying the sort of day-to-day schooling the rest of us take for granted. Stepping Stones is a triumph in navigating a course midway between mainstream schooling and more commonly found special school curricula and, in doing so, maximises opportunity for its students both at the school and after they leave.
Its newly constricted modern building is a metaphor for this process of finding the successful middle way, sitting in the hollow beneath the Hindhead junction alongside and linked to the original house built by Conan Doyle. Somehow, the ultra modern design works with the traditional architecture – and the new build literally saved the old house in the process.
Jul 5, 2017
As I write this they will be rolling back the covers and counting out the strawberries for Wimbledon, which celebrates its 140th anniversary this year. All British hopes will be on Andy Murray once more, although his sore hip and recent variable form – as well as a rejuvenated Federer and Nadal – means that we face one of the widest open fields for the championships in years.
Every time I watch Wimbledon and see players sign autographs and hand out their towels post match, I wonder how much these treasured collectables might be worth in years to come at auction. To be honest, most are so common that it will take an age for them to command any sort of decent price, but occasionally a fan strikes lucky, as when 19-year-old Murray Whitelaw caught Andy Murray’s prize-winning racquet when he tossed it into the crowd after Team GB won the Davis Cup in December 2015. The initial valuation of the racquet at the time was £10,000 – and Murray (the fan) sealed its provenance with media coverage, including a photo of himself with the tennis star.
Whitelaw vowed that the racquet would never be for sale and that he intended to have it framed. Good for him. I should imagine that with Andy’s 2016 Wimbledon win, World number one status and various other trophies added since, that racquet would be worth a fair bit more by now.
