It seems many hands made light work of sleeping!
IONCE tried to sleep in a room that was furnished with three antique clocks. Hopeless. I just had to stop them. Even the ticking made nodding off impossible. The chiming at the top of the hour was mayhem.
Hold the thought as I report that my team was recently brought in to empty a one-bedroomed local apartment on the instructions of the executors of a deceased estate.
The bedroom contained . . . I kid you not . . . over 150 clocks.
You could not move for clocks, big clocks, small clocks, wall clocks, antique clocks, modern clocks, French clocks, German clocks, you name it.
They covered the walls and the dressing table and the bedside tables and some side tables and the window ledge and the floor.
It is not unusual for collecting to go from passion to an obsession but I have never seen anything quite as amazing as this before. The mere size of the collection makes it memorable but the fact that all but one of the timepieces was in the apartment’s bedroom . . . and the collector must have slept amongst them all . . . is just extraordinary.
Discerning a theme in this vast hoard is difficult. The date spread ranges from the Victorian period through to modern times. There are quite a few antique clocks but equally there are lots of modern battery operated quartz clocks too. The collection rockets through just about every type of clock imaginable (wall, mantel, bracket, ship’s, carriage, alarm, novelty) with the exception of longcases. In so far as there is a theme it would seem to be ‘attractive and interesting’ clocks. Our man appears to have bought any clock
that took his fancy, pretty much regardless of age, type, mechanism or material. Whilst the collection must have cost a considerable amount of money to bring together it does not contain any single timepiece worth thousands. A late 19th century mahogany bracket clock with a German movement would make it into three figures quite comfortably, as would several nice French clocks dating from the turn of the 19th century. Some of the modern clocks might go for quite modest sums but the sheer size of this collection means that the final total is likely to be far from modest. Almost all will be revealed in the next few weeks as the collection is assessed, valued and despatched to various suitable auctions across the region. Sadly there is one question that seems likely to remain unanswered: How do you go to sleep with 150 clocks in the room?
Robert Horner is an independent local auctioneer and valuer based in northern Lincolnshire. He can be reached on 07970-126311 or at rjhbrodian@btinternet.comw