Cliona Kilroy

We peek into the busy working life of Cliona Kilroy, director at The Canterbury Auction Galleries in Kent

I’m from Dublin and my mum and dad loved art; we always went to gallery exhibitions and they were prolific in their purchases. Later on, I studied History of Art and Italian at university, but I came out wondering what to do next. I didn’t want to go into academia so did some work experience with a family- run auction house. That inspired me to do a course in fine art and chattels valuation at Southampton Institute of Higher Education, qualifying in 1993.

I started work at The Canterbury Auction Galleries in 1994 as a general valuer, working on the monthly Saturday sales which sold everything from fridges to pictures to boxes of china – it was a great way to learn. Three months into the new job I was asked whether I’d like to get onto the rostrum! In those days the saleroom was full of people and sales were social occasions where you’d build a rapport with the buyers. Things have evolved since then and now we run two- or three- day Fine Art & Antiques sales every couple of months, selling up to 1,500 lots. Over the years there have been many highlights but auctioning a bronze ritual water vessel, known as the Tiger Ying, in 2018, stands out. The Tiger Ying was 2,000– 3,500 years old and had been stowed away in a Kent seaside house before being consigned to auction. It wasn’t the most beautiful of things but it was a very rare object – only six other Yings are known, five of them in museums – and it took 20 minutes to sell, with the hammer coming down at £410,000. I’m proud to say that the Tiger Ying is now in the National Museum of China in Beijing.

Another highlight was in 2021, handling the sale of the late Annie Marchant, a dealer in domestic and country antiques – everything from scrubbed pine scullery tables and dressers to Victorian jelly moulds, milk pails and bread boards. She was well- known in the trade and it was an honour to sell her collection. In this job, from one day to the next, you never know what you’re going to see or learn. The next sale at The Canterbury Auction Galleries is 1st–2nd April. thecanterburyauctiongalleries.com

LEFT L Part of the Annie Marchant collection c of domestic and country antiques, a a 19th-century Benham & Froud copper jelly mould, featuring the Prince of Wales feathers, sold for £533.