Meet the Expert
James Rylands, co-owner of Summers Place Auctions
I was lucky enough to grow up in a house full of antiques and I bought my !rst antique at a school fete. I read History of Art at Reading University, where Neil MacGregor was my tutor and truly inspirational. Because I loved sculpture and works of art I joined Sotheby’s a"erwards and became a junior cataloguer in their Devon saleroom. We occupied a huge mansion in Torquay – it was a great start.
In 1986, Sotheby’s Sussex acquired Summers Place as its hub for selling garden sculpture and antiques and I was part of the team. Twenty-two years later, my business partner, Rupert van der Wer#, and I bought out the business and, along with our sta#, have over 200 years’ experience.
Summers Place has 15 acres of grounds in which to showcase pieces, around seven acres of which are landscaped gardens. There’s no saleroom like it in the world – the space allows us to display and sell huge pieces such as a chunk of the Berlin Wall or a Diplodocus dinosaur.
In the summer I’m in shirt and
shorts – I love not being stuck in an o$ce. We organise four sales of garden antiques and sculpture
a year, around 500 lots each, with 60 per cent of what we sell going to buyers abroad. Some favourite items have been an Edwardian seesaw, a pair of ‘Nasturtium’ pa%ern Coalbrookdale benches, and a 1960s Luton ice cream van. For researching garden antiques, I refer to my extensive library of 18th and 19th- century trade catalogues – there are a lot of fakes around so you need to be wary.