ivan street
Sally Bailey chats to the Ivan Street from auctioneers Alridges of Bath, and finds he ditched his dream of becoming a drummer, but ended up finding a real passion for antiques
When Ivan Street was a little boy, his evenings weren’t spent on the sitting room floor with a pile of Lego or playing with toy cars, they were spent in the auction room his father headed up at Jolly’s department store. While his dad worked, he’d wander around marvelling at the weird and wonderful things collected from exotic lands, the kind of things children might read about in encyclopaedias but never dream of seeing in real life. he never imagined he would follow in his late father John’s footsteps, devoting his working life to being managing director and auctioneer at Aldridges of Bath, the auction house his dad set up in 1975. “I had been exposed to the auction world from a really early age but it didn’t have any impact on me. It was just what dad did,” Ivan, now 57, remembers. “When I was seven, eight, nine years old he would do a full day’s work, come home and have his tea, and then go back to work to do some cataloguing and take me along. “It was my playground. There were animal trophies, mounted buffalo heads and tiger skins, amazing African shields and spears. And dad would say, ‘look at this exquisite music box’ but it didn’t really interest me then.” Ivan was 14 when his father opened Aldridges of Bath. Two years later he was gently cajoled into dropping his dream of becoming a full-time drummer and joining the auction house. he started at the bottom, sweeping floors and doing odd jobs until he worked his way up to become the clerk who prepared the customers’ bills as each item was sold. Although quite content in his job, he still had little interest in the items . . . until a china sale in 1979 became the catalyst for a life-long passion. “On one occasion there was a good deal of interest in three cups and saucers. A hush descended over the saleroom and it was like watching a tennis match; all the heads were turning to the left, then the right, then the left again, going back and forth between the bidders,” Ivan recalls. “The cups were Clarice Cliff. Back then I had never heard of her; her work wasn’t something the antique dealers would touch because it wasn’t old enough but the younger dealers liked it. “The cups were really nice ones, lovely jazzy designs and bright colours. You might have expected £25 each but they made something like £350. That was the turning point for me, it ignited a spark.” After the auction, Ivan asked the porter about the cups. Then he picked his father’s brains about the art deco period and squeezed information from local dealers. he borrowed books about deco designs, then art nouveau, then he started reading about Georgian items, and ceramics and pottery, 18th and 19th-century porcelain, paintings and clocks, and bit by bit his knowledge grew. “Once I’d got the bug I became like a sponge,” he says. “There are so many different facets to turn your attention to, you’ve got a lifetime’s work ahead of you to learn it all. “even now I’m still learning, I’m still being amazed and challenged, I’ll never know it all. After 40 years I still find things I have never heard of before. That’s the beauty of it. “I owe my dad everything. I should be thinking about retiring soon but I’ve got no intention of doing so. It’s been my life for all these years, I’m not going to shut the door and walk away. how could I?”