Auctioned off, Pat’s astonishing collection
REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF KEPT HANDS TIGHTLY TO HIS SIDES AS HE ATTENDED A SALE OF OLD FURNITURE, ART AND ARTEFACTS AT THE GAME KEEPER’S LODGE AT COOLATTIN IN SHILLELAGH
IF YOU STAND in need of a 19th century copper swing handle coal helmet, dear reader, then you have just missed out on the opportunity of a life-time.
Bray auctioneer Joe Mullen knocked one down for a mere €320 (plus 24.6 per cent buyer’s fee) only last week.
It is most unlikely that another copper swing handle coal helmet will come on the market any time soon – certainly not one embossed with stylised foliage as this one was.
This eccentric souvenir of times and firesides long past was one of more than 500 items disposed of in a marathon session.
Joe mounted the podium and took his first offer, for a pair of Viennese wall plaques which attracted €100, a couple of minutes after 12 noon on Tuesday afternoon.
By the time he brought down his gavel on Lot 610 – a five-piece cast iron garden suite which fetched €1,950 – it was just shy of 4.30 in the afternoon. In between Lot 1 and Lot 610, he sold off a bewildering array of material from hulking stone lions to delicate pottery figurines.
The occasion was billed as the auction of antique furniture and fine art from the Game Keeper’s Lodge at Coolattin in Shillelagh.
The contents of the lodge were very far from being your average house clearance, for Game Keeper’s Lodge resident Pat Martin is not your average householder.
Those lucky enough to have had a browse around his home before the sale entered a world of artefacts, artistry and craftsmanship.
There was practically nothing on show here that might have come from Ikea or Cleary’s or Brown Thomas, nothing mass produced except perhaps for a model train or two.
During his time in Shillelagh, Pat surrounded himself largely with stuff that had to be at least a century old and frequently a great deal more venerable than that.
It came as something of a jolt to spot a spanking modern television in among all the old stuff. Its clean black lines were a complete contrast to the Regency rosewood and brass inlaid side cabinet on which it was standing.
The TV was not for sale, while the cabinet with its shaped pilasters and scroll legs (whatever they may be) became Lot 65, which later went for €1,600 to a telephone bidder.
The solid grey lodge, separated from the public road by smart black railing is a remnant of the former Fitzwilliam Estate with all its grandiose glory. Pre-auction visitors to the house quickly became aware that just about everything was up for sale as Pat Martin prepares to ‘down-size’ as he puts it.
A smaller home will mean no room for Lot 254, a pair of 19th century walnut bedside chests, or for Lot 533, a three-piece Chesterfield suite from around the year 1850.
The walls of a more compact resident will not stretch to displaying all the paintings and framed prints which Pat has accumulated.
The former proprietor of Old Charm in Bunclody and later of Woodview House auction house further downstream in the Slaney Valley has always been drawn to fine old things, and now he was letting them all go.
There was a lot number attached to each of the walking canes in the porch – one stick a silver bound and another with an ivory handle.
The very carpet underfoot was also ear- marked for sale, an oval Chinese rug with a floral pattern, destined as Lot 24 to go to a buyer willing to part with €220. The various pieces harked back to an age of Waterford crystal decanters and Georgian silver services.
No doubt the work of hauling the coal helmet – helmet being a swanky word for a scuttle or bucket – from bunker to hearth was doubtless left to the servants.
This was a world of tables in infinite variety. They had dining tables for dinner, card tables for cards and occasional tables for, yes, occasions.
And that is not to mention the supper tables, banded tables, games tables, pod tables, side tables, console tables, work tables and goodness knows what else tables.
Antique furniture spawns a vocabulary all its obscure own, replete with references to cabriole legs and gilt brass mounts, baize-lined interiors and ram head masks.
What the gentry and wellto-do, who could afford the willow patterned plates and or leather bound travelling cases, got up to in the privacy of their own bedrooms is anyone’s guess.
Lot 253 was a most extraordinary bed, described as a ‘mahogany half tester’, with a canopy fit for a pope at the pillow end and a massive slab of trop-