Sale-rooms
Teddies for Tories
Alistair McAlpine
The Christmas lights are up in Oxford Street. The Christmas shopping season has already started. What to give for Christmas and, of much greater importance, to whom?
Christie's have a sale of teddy bears on 6 December. They make wonderful presents. The bear on the catalogue's cover is bright blue — no doubt about it, a Tory bear. This bear (Lot 210) is very rare, indeed almost as rare as a citizen prepared to vote Conservative these days. Christie's claim that he is unique, made by Steiff and likely to fetch £20,000. Rather expensive for a present, so I looked for cheaper bears.
Lot 203 (estimate £1,500) is an early Steiff pale golden plush-covered teddy bear. He comes with his own cricket bat — ideal for Mr Major. For Mr McGregor there is Lot 209, another fine Steiff teddy bear with a train set; or perhaps he should be given to Kenneth Clarke, for the cata- logue description runs, 'it is interesting to see how this bear's characteristics are so very similar to Steiff's red bear'.
The contents of this sale are riveting. There are bears with manes of golden hair that look just like Michael Heseltine and one is the spitting image of John Selwyn Gummer, in bumfreezer jacket and school- boy's cap. Ted Heath is there — Lot 8, 'Big Ted', a large English golden plush-covered bear. The catalogue description points out that he comes complete with 'growler'.
There is even a bear that would make the most delightful of gifts for Nicholas Soames. Lot 209, 'Edward Harrod' (esti- mate £400), is a Canterbury bear wearing an original Harrod's doorman's hat. This would remind Mr Soames of the availabili- ty of Harrod's food hall, should he ever need reminding, which I very much doubt.
For my money, the bear I would give to any member of the current Cabinet would be Lot 202 (estimate £1,500), a rare Steiff revolving standing bear which rotates when pushed or pulled. The catalogue warns that this bear is 'split to back of left arm'.
Those who love toy trains will have a field day in Paris at Jean-Louis Picard's sale to be held at the Hotel Drouot on 3 December. This contains 241 lots of model trains, as well as several other lots of model aeroplanes, motor cars, lorries, motorcycles and fire engines. Lot K, near the end of the sale, is the only model garage offered, esti- mated at 1,500 French francs. This collection belonged to Henri M. Petiet, who by birth had little alternative but to be interested in railways. His grand- father was the first engineer in charge of operations on the French Northern Rail- way in 1846. His father was an engineer on the same railway. Monsieur Petiet, accord- ing to the tribute in the catalogue by Herve Dufresne, was a remarkable man. Sensing no doubt that the romantic age of the rail- ways was coming to an end, he broke with family tradition and became an art dealer. It is with the eye of his own profession and out of respect for that of his family that he made this collection.
I am not for one moment interested in railways other than their use as a conve- nient and leisurely mode of transport, but I would happily buy several lots from this sale just for the beauty of them. Any rail- way collector who cannot make the trip to Paris or, on getting there, finds the prices beyond his pocket, would do well to buy just the catalogue, for it is sure to become a great reference book of its genre.
For my own Christmas shopping I will go to Glasgow, where Christie's hold their sale of whisky on 24 November. Over 500 bot- tles of that delicious stuff are being offered in 446 lots. One of the rarest bottles in the sale is a mature Talisker, 42 years old and likely to fetch over £3,000. A bottle from the Bladnock distillery is estimated to fetch £2,500, a very rare Oban whisky, circa 1890, £1,000 and a bottle of Long John's Dew of Ben Nevis, circa 1900, £900.
The estimated prices in this sale, from the vendor's point of view, seem to com- pare very favourably with the sums that the great French clarets used to fetch. A bottle of the Macallan distilled in 1928 and bot- tled in 1983 is expected to fetch £2,200 rather more than a 1928 first growth claret. I have never tasted such a bottle of the Macallan and do not imagine that I ever will, but if their ten-year-old whisky is any- thing to go by, it must indeed be magnifi- cent. The highest price ever recorded for a bottle of whisky was for one of 60-year-old the Macallan. It fetched £6,375 in 1991.
Lots 277 to 290 are from the wreck of the SS Politician. What a strange name to give a ship. I suppose it was inevitable that its cargo would end up on the rocks.
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