Sale-rooms
Happy days are here again soon
Alistair McAlpine
Christie's are set to hold their largest ever sale of toy soldiers on 24 June at their South Kensington sale-rooms. The sale of James M. Tompkins's and Major Harding's collections of over 12,000 figures is expect- ed to fetch more than £80,000. James M. Tompkins started collecting toy soldiers as a four-year-old boy. For those who wish to start collecting toy soldiers as adults, now is your chance. Soldiers from Eire's Free State army will cost you £150 each, Prus- sian cavalry £200, troops from the Balkan country of Montenegro, which has been in and out of existence while the Major was putting this collection together, £300, Argentinian horse grenadiers £200, detach- ments of the Egyptian Camel Corps £200, Turkish infantry £150 and Russian Cos- sacks £200.
There are civilian figures in the sale as well: the village idiot for £100, England's cricket team for £1,800. I suppose there is a greater demand for cricketers these days than for members of the armed forces or village idiots: just another example of how collectors set values. However, all these prices are many times the amount that four-year-old James M. Tompkins's parents or indeed his uncles and aunts paid for them. I don't know at what age the Major started his collection, but I have no doubt that it is showing a decent profit as well.
In the run-up to the summer recess not all is fun and games at Christie's: some very important lots are to be sold on 6 July. A major drawing by Michelangelo, 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt with the Infant Saint John the Baptist', arguably one of the most important drawings put up for auc- tion since the war, should fetch well over £3 million. In the same sale are two por- trait miniatures of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex by Hans Holbein the Younger and four Nicholas Hilliard portrait miniatures of noblemen as well as one by him of Mar- guerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre.
It seems that after a dearth of quality goods for the last three years at long last some really worth having are being offered. Perhaps this may be the very first evidence of a recovery in the art market, for not until there is a flood of very good objects offered for sale will prices again begin to escalate. Strangely, the art market suffers if there is a shortage of goods and benefits from a flood: prices increase each time a sale is made. For instance, the price fetched at auction by a painting becomes the basis of valuation for the next work offered by the same artist. If few are offered, prices remain static, whereas a steady flow spirals the price of that artist's work upwards.
The cycle is about ten years: it takes that long for those burnt in the hard days to get their courage back and to begin trading aggressively, for bankers to move on and youthful successors to decree it wise and indeed advantageous to lend money to dealers again. The boost in the market begins at the bottom: banks lend money to stallholders, stallholders buy from the lock- up shops, the lock-up shops from Kensing- ton and Chelsea, those shopkeepers shop in Bond Street and all of them attend the auctions. Happy days!
While we may have to wait for prices to get back to the heights of a few years ago, at least there is a sign that they may now be beginning to move; Christie's are selling on 23 June the first book printed in English and published by William Caxton. It is The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, printed in Bruges three years before Caxton set up his shop within the ,precincts of Westminster Abbey in 1476. It is expected to fetch £500,000. The same sale offers Biblia Ger- manica, the Hans Lufft 1560-1 Wittenberg edition of Martin Luther's complete trans- lation of the Bible into German, and Gio- vanni Battista Piranesi and Francesco Piranesi's collection of works — 22 vol- umes of engravings of Rome and Paris, estimate £150,000, truly one of the world's great books. Also offered is perhaps the greatest of botanical books, Flora Graeca. In ten volumes, it is one of the 40 copies issued of this remarkable work.
Since the autumn of 1990 it has been almost impossible to see where the art mar- ket was going. At first the fall seemed to be bottomless; then there seemed to be a bot- tom but that bottom was extremely patchy, full of holes for the unwary — the dealers who hailed recovery were those who had just sold stock. Now for the first time there are a quantity and variety of first-class goods on the market and in six weeks' time when they are all sold we will again have a benchmark by which to judge the market.
but it's pointless if you don't inhale.'
Previous page
