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EDITOR’S NOTES
Hey, Hot Stuff
I can’t leave the house. Not because my street is thronged with knife-wielding hoodies – but thanks for asking. No, I’m not agoraphobic and neither am I wearing an electronic tag. It’s simply that my front door won’t open. I blame this warm summer weather. The heat causes the ancient wooden panels to expand and, feeling rather full of itself, the door becomes exceedingly unhappy at the thought of moving. Imagine Naomi Campbell being told by the stewardess that First Class is too full and would she mind shifting down the plane to Economy, and you have some idea of how intransigent the thing is getting.
Paradoxically though, there are some things that shrink in hot weather – waistlines, for example. If you are planning your big summer break and want to get into some wonderful-looking swimming costume (your own or someone else’s), it helps to look a little bit trimmer than you have been during the winter months… That’s why, just prior to the holidays, millions of Britons decide that they will make do with only a brace of chins and that they will do their best to lose the love handles that make them look like inverted corporation wheelie bins. That’s another reason I don’t go out, by the way. If I stand too near the curb on a Tuesday the council bin men try to tip me into the back of the dustbin lorry.
And something else that shrinks during the summer months is the auction calendar.
Up until the end of June things are still ticking along nicely. The weather is warm but not over-friendly and auction sales are still as plentiful as dandelions on an uncut upland meadow.
But things begin to change when the boastful month of July comes calling, and by the Dog Days of August – a time when “the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies,” according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium – auctions become as scarce as snowflakes, especially in the big London rooms.
The reason that there are fewer summer sales is that the bigger auction houses believe (often quite rightly) that most of their best customers are on holiday.
It may also be that some of the grander salerooms have built their auction calendar around the London social season, and despite the fact that this moribund institution has little to offer the C21st, they still cling to the idea that The Quality leaves town when it gets too hot for comfort (“James, bring the carriage around to the West Wing… and Beulah, peel me a grape…”). That takes the seriously posh and the foolishly rich out of the equation.
So who does it leave? People like you and me, the ones who know that they can very often pick up some serious bargains when the summer comes. Venturing into an auction room is liable to take the chill off the Pimms, but one can put up with that occasionally, can’t one?
For while there are fewer sales to go to, when you do come across one you often find that the level of opposition is much lower than at other times of the year. Yes, you may meet up with hordes of holiday trippers (which is why any sale that falls on a Bank Holiday is worth avoiding), but few of these will be serious buyers. I have personally found that the hotter the day is, the lower the prices seem to be. When the mercury hits the eighties, most people find the lure of the beach or the back garden to be greater than that of the airless tin shed where the sale is taking place.
I went to a couple of wonderful sales last summer. At the first, I found a crock of plated cutlery that contained five Hester Bateman teaspoons in solid hallmarked silver (£22 the lot), while at the other I came across a rare etching by John Sell Cotman of The Spanish Student – a snip at £45. I don’t think I’d have got near either one if the usual crowd hadn’t been hiding from the sun or out of the country.
Now I must make it clear that when I talk about summer auctions I don’t mean country-house sales or ‘mug magnets’, as they should more properly be called. Country-house sales appeal to people who have never been to a real auction, and who have more money than sense – generally much more. If you don’t mind paying several times over the odds for your bits and pieces, then you will have a grand day out, but GAN readers know that real bargains are thin on the ground.
Occasionally, you read of the couple who picked up a rare Ruskin vase for a quid or a Reynolds portrait for sixpence because every other bidder was interested in the furniture, but such triumphs, although well publicised by the auctioneers (now there’s a funny thing) are very rare.
Besides, it often happens that (by a mysterious process that is not yet properly understood by the world of science) lots which are total strangers to the country house and the important people who lived there get included in the on-site sale. That old armchair (catalogued as Regency style) might well have been the Marquis of Granby’s pride and joy; but, equally, it might have been the pride and joy of the landlord of the Marquis of Granby in the High Street, just next to the betting shop and the Thai takeaway, where it was resting happily until a few days ago…
The truth is, you have a much better chance of coming across something exceptional and unrecognised in your local rooms than you ever will at a country-house sale, where everything is very well (and often nationally) publicised, pored over by experts and fought over by the rich but foolish. Remember that the antiques trade press and even the colour supplements regularly report on country-house sales that raise hundreds of thousands of pounds more than had been expected.
I’m always intrigued by this kind of publicity. I suppose it is designed to appeal to potential sellers, because, as a potential buyer, it makes me very nervous, and one would think that it is rather counter-productive. Why would I – why would anybody? – waste time with a sale where things regularly sell for many times their estimates?
Telling people how high the prices go is a strange way to bring in the buying public, but this is the summer after all, and so perhaps such eccentric advertising is the result of heatstroke. Don’t let it get to you. Keep a cool head, ignore the siren song of the beach, go to the sales that the others ignore – or simply back to your local rooms – and scoop up the summer bargains. I would join you… but I’m dashed if I can get this wretched door open.
Good luck!
Stuart Maclaren
Editor