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Tuesday 29 September 2009

Come on Auctioneers!


I have a much respect for auction houses and count some of the staff as friends, but there are times when I am quite baffled by the seeming lack of knowledge of some who make quite a nice commission selling samplers. Surely they can afford to send their staff on a training course. This is an image from an auction catalogue. The sampler is described as English - but maybe if they looked at it the right way up they might see that it quite plainly is not.



Now isn't that better? We can see that it was made in 1781 and not 180-something, and from the depiction of arms and crests that it is North European but hard to tell whether Northern Dutch, Northern German, or South Denmark. (It is strange to contemplate that Altona, now a suburb of Hamburg, was once Danish).

2 comments:

  1. i love it that is so funny. umm makes you wonder what some people will buy without even knowing what it really is. it pays to look at things in a different light or angle!

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  2. Teehee! That reminds me of the day I was reading through a very well-known and widely distributed garden encylopedia. The photograph published for our native foxgloves was... you guessed it... upside down. :) A banner moment for them, for sure.

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