Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the lot that shocked us all?
AN antique mirror provided the shock of a spectacular September auction at the Old Wool Mart when it sold for £5,200 - twenty six times presale expectations.
It was in the Irish style, which is to say the mirror plate was surrounded by faceted glass beading. It dated from the 18th century, a time when the most valuable use of a mirror was not to help people look at themselves but to reflect light in candleilluminated rooms.
Predicting how a saleroom will react to such an antiquity is tricky. They have fans but equally there would be many people who would give the mirror, with its worn but original three hundred year old silvered glass, scarcely a glance. Examples have been known to sell at auction for just a few hundred pounds.
It quickly became apparent this was not going to happen in this case: The night before the auction the presale bidding had already reached £3,450 and interest was coming in from all over the place. In the end it came down to a scrap between the successful buyer, a member of the London trade joining the auction on the Internet, and the underbidder, a member of the Irish trade on the telephone. Interestingly neither of them had actually been able to view the mirror; they both made their decisions on the strength of photographs and descriptions.
Funnily enough a telephone Irish bidder was involved in another of the auction’s noteworthy results, that achieved by an acoustic guitar made in 1949 by the famous C.F. Martin & Co. of Pennsylvania, one of the world’s oldest guitar manufacturers and the maker of choice for the likes of Hank Williams, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney and many other famous musicians. In that instance, the Irishman, a collector and a player, made the successful £4,300 bid.
The instruments in the sale also included a Gibson Les Paul, one of the iconic electric guitars favoured by many of the world’s greatest rock
and roll stars. That went for £1,300.
The live webcasting of auctions on the Internet has had a massive impact on the saleroom. The number of people registering to bid in this auction was more than ten times the number of people actually present in the saleroom and these people bidding from afar are almost invariably involved in the fiercest battles and the most unexpected results. You might not for example expect ‘Illustrations of the Geology of Sussex’ to set pulses racing in North Lincolnshire, even if it is the 1827 edition ‘containing 20 plates and descriptions of the fossils of Tilgate Forest’. We thought £150 - £200. It made £2,400, knocked down to a buyer in Cheltenham.
Mind you our Gloucestershire and Irish friends felt like locals compared with some of the bidding that came from Germany, France, Spain, Russia, China, Chile, Canada and Australia and New Zealand.
It was the best auction of the year so far and puts us in upbeat postpandemic mood as we head for the next antiques sale on November 16th and the Annual Christmas Auction of Gold, Silver and Jewellery on December 7th. Entries are now being welcomed for both of those events.