Two Upcoming London Auctions to Watch

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The London antiquities market is infamous throughout the world, and happening right under the noses of the British public, policy makers and archaeologists. There are two London auctions coming up over the next few days worth watching. Over in Bonhams on Wednesday (October 6th) they are going to be selling some old vases and stuff - including one pot Giacomo Medici apparently kept in his bed (photo) but beyond that nothing is known about where it came from. According to the Art Newspaper the Italian authorities have asked for it to be withdrawn from sale, but since Italy has been unable to comply with the request of the auction house to provide documentation such as a video of it being dug up, they have refused to cancel its sale. I hope the Italians later present the documentation after the sale and prosecute the incautious buyer. That would set the cat among the no-questions-asked pigeons.

By the way, Mark Durney comments "Unfortunately, when objects such as these appear for auction, there is little that the original owners can do besides hope that the auction house will withdraw the lots due to the potential detrimental effects that the sale may have on its public image and reputation". Well, of course in the case of dug up archaeological artefacts the point is that there are no "original owners" to report a theft to the Art Loss Register. In a sense however we are all owners of the objects and the archaeological record they were ripped from so that people like Bonham's client can sell them to people like Bonhams' other clients with nobody seeking any answer to the question of where the object came from and how, when and where it "surfaced" on the market. It is this procedure that should be affecting the public image and reputation of this auction house, and any others that engage in similar procedures. So later on today some happy buyer will be taking a Medici pot to his or her own bed with narry a thought or worry about its origins.

That of course bolstered by the "provenance" offered by Bonhams:

Provenance: European private collection, formed between the 1960s and early 1990s. Acquired by the present owner in 1993. Accompanied by an Art Loss Register certificate. Literature: For similar pelikai by the Eretria Painter, cf. J.D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd edition, Oxford, 1963, p.1250, nos.29&31. Attributed to the Eretria Painter by Michael Padgett in 1993.

The fact that the anonymous collector now wanting to get rid of this monstrosity started collecting classical geegaws in the "1960s" really is irrelevant. From whom he bought it in 1993 however is. The fact that it has an "Art Loss register" certificate to say nobody had previously reported it as stolen is irrelevant, the fact that it appears in documentation elsewhere is. Bonhams has said the legitimacy of the stated 'provenance' can only be questioned if verifiable documentation can be produced showing when and where it was dug up. So, Princeton classicist Michael Padgett was handling this item when it was sold by its previous owner in 1993 - why? (Bearing in mind the other case I discuss below it would be interesting to know his fee.) What was/is this academic's connection with the antiquities trade? Will Princeton be making a bid on Wednesday on an object the sale of which a member of their staff has previously legitimised?

Then tomorrow (October 7th) Christies is auctioning a whole bunch of mostly small and pretty geegaws of antiquity, most of them without much of a collecting history according to their catalogue. Among the objects on sale (lot 176) however is a metal detected and heavily reconstructed helmet said to have been found in northern England and by virtue of Britain's pathetically inadequate antiquity protection laws a few days later was on offer on the London market. Here the PAS got involved with legitimising this sale by confirming the provenance and authenticity - free of charge.

There are here too questions about its provenance (it is said to have come from a field the finder returned to time after time from his 77km-distant home over a period of seven years despite the fact that he had found "nothing" in that field, it has corrosion products quite unlike any other metal detected objects in the PAS database from the same region). Despite this, Christie's does not question the stated provenance, and certainly is not requiring the production of any verifiable documentation showing when and where it was dug up. After all the PAS has legitimised it for them. It's even got hold of the PAS database number before the object was ON the public database. There's "partnership" for you. All at the expense of the public budget. Whoopee.

Meanwhile members of the British public are desperately trying to raise the money to outbid the competitors and keep the object in the region where it was said by the seller to have been found. Here is the webpage of the Tullie House appeal ("The Crosby Garrett Roman Helmet could be lost overseas if we fail to raise £300,000 - £400,000!!"). Sadly, a day ago - so two days before the auction when they should be packing all the cash in a suitcase and buying a train ticket to London - according to the Facebook page, they had raised only £41,500 (and if the public can raise 50 000 quid some benefactor says he will add another 50 000). Although from one point of view that is a substantial show of public support, on the other it is still far from the £200 000 - 300 000 of the Christies' estimate of what this object will go for (which seems rather a low estimate to me anyway). I'd bet that the 42 k raised actually is probably about the cost of the restoration Christie's "generously" funded for the sellers in order to get a better price.

Much as I am against putting money into the pocket of this kind of Treasure hunter, and as much as as I personally have doubts about the circumstances of discovery of this piece, and as much as I think it would be a salutary lesson for the object to go abroad, ideally the other side of the world, I am still urging anybody reading this to consider pledging the Tullie House Museum some cash to help them place a bid for this item. I wonder, for example, how many US coin collectors out there so eager to praise the laissez faire "British System" and "PAS" which allow so many artefacts to leak from the archaeological record onto the no-questions-asked market have chipped in to show their appreciation. Although it will make no difference, I'll also venture that it would be nice to see all those "responsible antiquity collectors" (ha ha) out there boycotting bidding on this item so that the relevant museum can acquire it at as little cost to the public purse as possible (and as little profit to the sellers as possible), rather than repeating the farce we have seen with other sales where something is bought by a foreign buyer who jolly well knows the object will not leave the UK, but in the meantime by one means or another cynically and scandalously bumps up the price.


Anyway all you collectors and enthusiasts of history out there please consider pledging you support financially (time is running out now). Then afterwards [those of you who are not metal detectorists] express your objection to the stupidity of the existing laws that allow the UK's archaeological record to be mined for saleable and collectable objects, trashing their context and having a voluntary Scheme paid for out of the public purse which is in partnership with collectors and sellers of decontextualised bits of the archaeological heritage. Do it now.

Having urged you to donate, I feel justified in pinching the wonderful reconstruction painting by Peter Lorimer (Archaeological illustration & heritage graphics) from the Appeal's facebook page. To me, this says it all. This is not about an isolated prettified and nicely mounted object to be put in somebody's display case, it is about something that was used in a specific context and that cannot be created by antiquitist imagination on the basis of decontextualised geegaws, but good solid research, based on the source material. As one commentator remarked about this image: "Hollywood, please note - no stirrups". The artist has given this a lot of thought - including omitting the stupid idea of the streamers dangling down in front of the rider's face. Let me add that the description of the object that is currently in the public domain is wholly inadequate and leaves a vast number of questions unanswerered - despite the object being above ground and (in theory at least) "available for study" since may this year. Let us see how much it goes for and where the (no doubt) anonymous buyer wants to take it.

Let us also keep an eye on subsequent investigations of the stated findspot - the field that produced nothing else for the unemployed searcher from Peterlee over a period of seen years searching. I bet there's something else there if the PAS/local archaeological unit look carefully enough and don't restrict their search for a "context" to digging a hole little bigger than the desk on which I write this.