A fool and his money

Sitting-room treasure

Bernard Hollowood

Perhaps the most remarkable example of the transmogrification of junk into treasure was that of the cracked chamber pot. This piece of earthenware had been discarded by a family in Didley, Hants, with a lot of similar rubbish and given to the Frensleigh Women's Guild jumble sale. It was ignored by bargain hunters and kept reappearing for more than two years in jumble sales held throughout Hampshire, Dorset and Devon. Stallholders couldn't give it away.

Then, in 1969, the pot came under the scrutiny of a Mr Jasper McHugh of Crediton and McHugh's gimlet eye spotted something on the utensil that had hitherto been ignored. It was a tiny blue mark which to the expert was the unmistakable insignia of His Majesty King Charles I of England and whatever bits of the British Isles were at the time under the suzerainty of that blessed monarch.

McHugh bought the pot for a ha'penny, and a week later put it up for auction at Motherley's. It fetched £16,000, giving McHugh a nice little gross profit of £15,999 19s 111/2d.

Now treasures of this kind are

quite common and I suppose that you, like me, have often watched the BBC's Arthur Negus valuing objets trouves sent in by viewers.

"The next object," he says, "is a late-eighteenth-century Viennese clamphor, which as the name implies was sort of clamp for holding balls of camphor and was used in milady's wardrobe. It was made by Rambeau, the famous French cabinetmaker, who always used what we call cockroach feet — here y'are, y'know, beauties ain't they? As far as I know there's only one other clamphor in existence and that's in the Museum of Antiquities in Akron, America.

"It's in walnut, 'course, and fashioned with superb craftsmanship and if it wasn't slightly chipped on the underside of the bracket — there, see? — it would be priceless. In its present condition it would be worth at least £100."

Have you really had a good look round at home to see whether such treasure lies within your grasp? You'll already have thought of the attic. No, what I'm suggesting is that you take a new look at the furniture, fixtures, fittings and artefacts around you which you have always taken for granted.

That jug with the grotesque farmer's boy in bas relief. The thing your husband uses as a shaving mug. What is its history? Yes, it came from your paternal grandfather's house in Braintree. But where did grandpa acquire it? Is it old? Is it junk? Well, it costs nothing to glance at the backstamp and, you know, it could be the mark of a master potter of the past, Whieldon or an Astbury or even a Wedgwood.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand your trip to

the London actioneer's will prove abortive and costly, but hope _ springs eternal and your 'find' may be a winner.

We can't all spot beds that Queen Elizabeth I slept in, but we may well own something once possessed by one of the great men of this present century, by Churchill, Montgomery, Eisenhower, Einstein, Elgar or Jack Hobbs.

But I musn't be too encouraging. For £2.50 I bought an unopened bottle of Coco-Cola that had been offered to WSC at Alamein and rejected by the great man. The fellow who sold it to me was right there, just outside Monty's caravan when the incident occurred.

The man who claimed to have retrieved it and preserved it over the years was none other than the man in the 'Black Lion,' as decent a bloke (a redundant stockbroker) as one could wish to meet. I put a reserve price of £50 on the bottle when it first went to Motherley's, but I am thinking of reducing this to 25p when I next offer it to the public.

My share of my uncle Ebenezer's estate was said in 1949 to represent more than 90 per cent .of its total value, Yet it consisted only of a cricket bat. The fantastic value of the bat, I was told, lay in the fact that its flat side contained the inked signatures of the entire Australian touring team of 1948.

Three years later I needed a new car and the bat had to go, so I consulted a dealer who told me that the bat was one of thousands and quite valueless. But all was not lost. I decided to use the bat when I played for Megthorpe in the Lands and South Yorks International League and it worked like a charm. In six consecutive innings, before the bat finally disintegrated, I notched scores of 7, 3, 2, 0, II and 5 not out, giving me an average of 5.6. the highest I had ever recorded. A peculiarly satisfying aspect of rnY play was the frequency with which I scored whenever the part of the blade containing the signature 'Don Bradman' came into contact with the ball. Yes, there was a touch of magic about my batting that season.

At the moment I am prettY confident about an umbrella stand made out of an elephant's foot, a three-legged piano stool, probablY by Chippendale, a first edition of the Penguin paperback Aircraft

Recognition, two Toby jugs that could be early Spode if spode

signed himself with an 'H', and a milking-stool circa 1520, marked 'Made in Sri Lanka.'

Keep looking. There may be a fortune before your very eyes.