Forgetting the power of print
As more auction houses opt for online catalogues over paper ones, yet another element of the old auction world is being lost to technological ‘progress’, laments Roger Field
“Catalogues are both academic textbooks and all-important tools to understand the market”
MY OWN long-haired lifestyle coach tells me I’m turning grumpier, ever quicker to complain about some new technological atrocity that claims to make life easier yet conspires to do the opposite. My latest gripe is the fast-disappearing hardcopy auction catalogue. I bow to no man in my admiration for online catalogues with their smorgasbord of available goodies delivered instantly, and constantly, to my laptop. Not long ago I would have either had to receive a catalogue in the post, visit that auction house or remained ignorant about what was for sale. Now I go online. Then, hopefully, I buy, push the P&P button and receive a huge estimate for the cost of delivery – but this is usually a lot less than the cost of hours in the car, plus diesel, to pick up my winnings. It’s a brilliant, convenient, new world. So, why lament the demise of the ‘old school’ hardcopy catalogue?
First, I only really want catalogues to keep from my favourite auctions: stuff I write about and also buy. These I collect: big, well-researched tomes that arrive in the post with a thud. To the serious collector (and dealer) – arms and armour, in my case – they are important resources. Holts, which does still publish such catalogues, describes them on its website as ‘an invaluable source of reference’. Hear, hear, on many levels. Its guns are some of the best items of their type available on the British market at that moment. Each item is expertly described and illustrated in its catalogues, making them both academic textbooks and all-important tools to understand the market, where it has been price-wise and where it is perhaps going. For example, I can, as a buyer, spot something in a sale and think ‘I wonder?’, pull out some old catalogues and there it is (or isn’t) before it has been cleaned/altered. It’s all there in technicolour, including estimates and prices achieved, noted down by me, pedant that I am. Put another way, go into most serious dealers’ shops and they will have loads of catalogues stashed away as part of their knowledge bank. And this is where I part company with modern technology. Last autumn, on being told that yet another large auctioneer had so severely cut back on copies that I was off the mailing list (they do, I grant, cost a great deal to produce), my in-house chum airily told me to download the PDF and use that instead. Yes, I will look at his auctions online, as I now have no choice. But no, I am not clogging up my computer with old PDFS. Nor am I going to go cross-eyed trawling through said old PDFS, or the internet, if I want to look for something that I once found by quickly flicking through a catalogue sitting on the bookshelf in my study. Whether all this will make a jot of difference to their auction results, I know not. That said, one friend who does still publish and sends me hard copies says his specialist clients demand them. What I am certain of, though, is that yet another elegant, informative element of the old auction world is being throttled by advances in technology.
A head start
I directly attribute a purchase I made on 6 December to Olympia Auctions’ hard-copy Arms, Armour & Militaria catalogue. There wasn’t anything I really wanted or what I wanted I could not afford. Except the more I looked at the catalogue, the more I liked a ‘North Indian
mail and lamellar [sections of steel joined by mail] helmet, 17th/18th century, probably Rajasthan’, estimate £400-£600, from a good collection, albeit in need of a clean. Now, I rarely buy Indian stuff; however, I have (glacially slowly: it’s super-expensive kit) been building a 15th-/16th-century Turkish armour, as worn by the guys attacking the chaps who wore Ulrich, my 16th-century South German armour (almost complete now). And, as North India was Muslim ruled (the Mughals), some of their armour has a ‘Turkish’ look, like this helmet. “Don’t,” said Expert Nick. And he was, of course, right. To a purist it is as crass as pairing grey Armani trousers with a grey Huntsman jacket. However, as I was (a) bored and (b) aware that a ‘proper’ Turkish helmet would cost north of £30,000, come the day I was finger on the buzzer. It was mine for a paltry £350. “Good buy,” opined Nick. Hmm... change of tone there. And it is.
As they are so easy to access in its catalogue, here are a couple more to delight you from Olympia. For lovers of old military guns, a ‘rare 0.66-calibre flintlock volunteer carbine with enclosed lock by
Henry Nock, circa 1800, complete with its bayonet’ – which is almost the size of a proper sword. Its fine condition, the quality of the gunmaker and its rarity explained its £3,000-£4,000 estimate. It volleyed forth at a worthy £3,800. Or, at the same estimate, the ‘rare American 40-bore Jennings-pattern percussion gun, circa 1830’. It might look amazing but, as I can testify when I put it into my shoulder, it is the polar opposite in technical quality to the Nock. With its skimpy stock and action, it was difficult to aim. It has an experimental brass breech-loader, with a twist-on, twist-off action that has so much ‘play’ in it that you’d risk blowing your face off every time you fired it. Why so rare? One wag remarked that had you survived firing it back in 1830, you’d have chucked it. Hence, doubtless, not one for a purist, as it only fetched £2,600, but great fun. I’d have loved it on my wall.
On 15 November Antony Cribb (another arms-and-armour house with proper catalogues) made me smile in a way that will, I fear, soon have me ‘cancelled’. Not necessarily so in Victorian times as a superb silver gilt, ruby-eyed, lion’s head-hilted, presentation sword proved. It was given by ‘the Officers, Non-commissioned Officers and Privates’ (I can just imagine the whingeing when their pay was docked) to one Colonel Eamer, who survived a court martial on 10 charges of bullying and abusive behaviour brought by five junior officers. The result? As described on the chape of the scabbard, they were ‘in Consequence Displaced from the Regt by the express command of the Sovereign’, while Col Eamer was ‘cautioned to be more guarded in his future language to Officers of his Regiment’. Clearly a man for instilling iron discipline among more sensitive employees. It fetched a neartop-estimate £4,600.
Silence please
Auctioneers do love to come up with grand-sounding names for their sales. On 13-14 February Bonhams held a ‘Connoisseur’s Library Sale’. No library I have ever entered – although I may have had a more sheltered academic upbringing than I had realised – has ever boasted ‘a pair of unusual First World War-type leather saddles later mounted as bar stools’. Sort
of, pull on your chaps and cowboy boots, grab a bottle of bourbon and whip out a copy of Aristotle? Or maybe not. Anyway, if you cannot bear to be out of the saddle these were the stools for you: a snip at a bottom-estimate £500. Or, if the books are proving too boring, you could steal a sneaky snifter from either a wonderfully crafted ‘Victorian silver stirrup cup, finely cast as a labrador’ or a similarly made wolfhound. Both were estimated at £3,000-£5,000 and, while they might not be typical library fare, they fetched £5,000 and £5,500 respectively.
Finally, with spring hopefully well sprung as you read this (with luck I’ll be chomping masses of early, home-grown asparagus by now), something for the hard-grafting gardener in your life: ‘a novelty silver “wheelbarrow” salt with “shovel” spoon; with the [late] Queen’s Platinum Jubilee commemorative mark. Realistically modelled with wood-grain panelled sides, moving front wheel, gilt interior, with a salt spoon modelled as a shovel, with gilt blade, weight 5.8oz’. Modern, and yet a really pretty thing; something that, had I had the sense to buy it, would have been happily snaffled by my own longhaired gardener. Much of the silver passing through most auction rooms sells at just a bit over the silver scrap price: roughly (it moves) £20 an ounce, even for old, Georgian – lovely but ordinary – flatware (spoons and forks) and suchlike. Assuming some/much of it is being melted down, I wonder if we aren’t going to wake up one morning and discover that much of our lovely old silver is now gone. What then for old silver prices? No such problem for this wheelbarrow. The scrap value might have been about £120 but the hammer hit at a bottom-estimate £550.
Finally, a missed opportunity at Hannams Auctioneers on 27 February: a vintage Kent & Curwen half mannequin, with arms, which sold for a measly £35. Am I taking up tailoring? No way. This would have been perfect for mounting a half armour. Drat.