Dinner time warp
Oven-ready... a feast of kitchen curios from the queen of the cookhouse will be served up at auction later this month, writes John Vincent.
They called her “Breadboard Annie” when she first started collecting kitchen memorabilia in the late 1970s and selling at Bermondsey Market in London. The slightly irreverent nickname soon fell into disuse as Annie Marchant became one of Britain’s most respected dealers, her bottomless kitchen cupboard of stock crammed with every implement known to cooks dating back to Georgian times.
You name she had it: vintage pots, pans and bowls, carved chopping boards, moulds for jelly, chocolate and butter, elaborate egg beaters, timers, knife grinders, scales, peelers, graters, corkscrews, irons, sugar nips and tongs. There were stands, pastry cutters, spice jars, nurseryware, colanders, rolling pins, mortars and pestles... the list was almost endless. Add furniture, utensils, window displays and shop photographs from grocery stores, dairies and butchers, and you had the recipe for a fabulous hoard of vintage kitchenware.
When she died of pneumonia last year aged 68, she left her personal collection of more than 300 antiques to a museum, together with a substantial financial sum to ensure its safekeeping. The venue chosen was Kiplin Hall, near Richmond, built in the 1620s for George Calvert, Secretary of State to James I and founder of Maryland, in the US.
Now Annie’s vast remaining stock is expected to fetch well over £100,000 when offered in 624 lots over two days at Canterbury Auction Galleries on April 12 and 13.
Here are some examples: five turned and carved late Victorian breadboards and four bread knives, £120-£160; six Victorian copper jelly moulds, £150-£200; collection of Staffordshire childware pottery, 19th century, including pearlware and alphabets mugs, £200£300; cast-iron and oak “Kent’s Knife
Cleaner”, early 20th century, £60-£80; three wrought-iron rushlight holders (rushlights were made from the stems of rushes soaked in animal fat and then dried), with candle socket, late
18th century; four goffering irons (for making ruffles, frills and flounces in starched linen), 19th century; 20 antique corkscrews and bottle openers; and five vintage steel and brass sugar cutters – all £150-200 per lot.
Finally, a few words about Annie... after starting her career as a Saturday girl in a Canterbury boutique she moved to London and began specialising in kitchen and dairy antiques, exhibiting at antique fairs all over England, including Harrogate, before returning in the
80s to the family’s farmhouse home in Wenderton, Kent, ideal for showcasing her huge collection.
Annie’s kitchen became a Victorian time warp, with period furniture, no electric kettle, no microwave and no radio; just candlelight, the sound of a ticking clock – and up to 17 cats and a pointer dog for company.