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Star Quality A celebrity owner, it seems, sprinkles stardust on any antique. Could you be bewitched? By Margaret Gaskin
L Stardom for a snip at just $350, in a recent sale
IKE IT or not, we live in a celebrity culture. But then, it seems, we always have. Today’s desperate 24-hour news cycle may gobble up more celebrities – Zlisters exploiting their 15 minutes of fame in the absence of a genuine star actually doing something – but our propensity to ascribe magical qualities to famous people goes back many centuries. And I do mean magical. Two Yale psychologists have just published a study that indicates ‘magical thinking’ drives the urge to own things once owned or touched by a beloved – or
The original power couple, movie mogul Irving Thalberg married star Norma Shearer, who owned this dressing set, in 1927
10 April 2014 Antiquexplorer
www.antiquexplorer.com www.vintagexplorer.co.uk
10-12 APRIL 2014 Celebrity antiques:2014
All photos courtesy Bonhams (www.bonhams.com)
despised – figure. They found that the hammer price for objects belonging to Marilyn Monroe or President John F Kennedy reflected the likely degree of physical contact they’d had with the owner, with the reverse effect in the case of convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff. Which indicates, they say, ‘magical thinking’ – belief that someone’s essence can be transferred into an object they touched. They further found that the price people said they would pay if they were told a sweater owned by an idol had been sterilised since worn fell, and by far more than if they were told they could never sell the sweater again – which led to a drop of just 8.9 per cent in price. Unlike most antiques, then, the intrinsic magic in an object touched by fame matters more to buyers Continued on page 13
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The script went for $2,750 but the actual on-screen falcon went for more than $4 million in November, 2013 – its lead turned to gold by the alchemy of fame
Well provenanced Charles Dickens items: a miniature from life £1,800, a lock of hair from his younger days £3,120, a sheet of The Pickwick Papers $60,000 – and his travelling toothpick $9,150! www.antiquexplorer.com www.vintagexplorer.co.uk
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www.christies.com
See motorbike, think Steve McQueen – and this 1923 Indian Big Chief with Princess Sidecar was his, it sold last January for $126,00
Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions (www.dreweatts.com)
£13,750 was paid for this Shakespeare-adorned 18thcentury tea caddy made from a mulberry. planted by the Bard? Well, that’s the legend
Above: A poignant letter of farewell from Antarctica from doomed Polar explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott sold for £163,250. Left: Who can mistake that silhouette? This cocktail dress owned by Marilyn Monroe sold for $13,200 12 April 2014 Antiquexplorer
As bottoms go, they don't get more magical that Queen Elizabeth I’s bottom. Which is why this velvet saddlecloth once sat on by her in 1574 went for £190,000 at Dreweatts, Bristol www.antiquexplorer.com www.vintagexplorer.co.uk
10-12 APRIL 2014 Celebrity antiques:2014
Continued from page 11 than the resale value. Which sounds a little silly until you focus on the value you yourself would ascribe to something once owned by your own idol, be it sporting hero or literary lion. I myself have a blackened silver sixpence dated 1596 whose real appeal, if I’m honest, lies in the merest chance that it might have been used to purchase a good seat in Shakespeare’s Globe, and thereby ended up in the Bard’s loose change, to be touched by the fingers that touched that pen. You can’t buy a Shakespeare pen in any auction house, or anything else he definitively owned, because nothing survives. Although last year Christie’s garnered more than £13,000 for a tea caddy made from the mulberry tree Shakespeare is said to have planted in his Stratford-upon-Avon garden. The 18th-century vicar who owned Shakespeare’s house chopped the tree down because he was fed up with all the tourists who knocked on his door asking to see it – and an enterprising joiner snapped it up
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He didn't say much, but Chaplin is still a big noise. The proverbial autograph scrawled on a napkin went for $437 last January, and the great man’s hat and cane for $52,500 back in 2012
to carve into souvenirs. Many, many souvenirs. It has been said that the combined volume of all the ‘Shakespeare’s mulberry’ items in existence would furnish enough wood for a small thicket of trees. But perhaps sometimes, as Shakespeare says of one of his own magic tricks, “it is required you do awake your faith.” An even more blatant exploitation of magical thinking came from the man charged with melting down a life-sized equestrian statue of Charles I during the Commonwealth. He made a nice little income selling souvenirs cast from the bronze to both Roundheads and Cavaliers until, after the Restoration, he dug up the statue from where it had been buried all along! Ceremoniously re-erected, the King still sits today on the site of the old Charing Cross in Trafalgar Square – his triumph all the greater because it is also where the remaining regicides were executed in 1660. All of which highlights the importance – and occasional trickiness – of provenance when it comes to ‘magical’ items. Which is something that Lucy Carr, Bonham’s entertainment memorabilia expert in Los Angeles, knows all about. “Provenance is always an important factor in evaluating memorabilia,” she says. “Items that come directly from the star themselves, or from their estate, routinely achieve the highest
A card from a dinner at the Potsdam Conference signed by Churchill, Stalin and others went for $48,000 and Churchill's denture for £19,200! www.antiquexplorer.com www.vintagexplorer.co.uk
This gold bracelet watch belonging to iconic Hollywood star Ginger Rogers sold for $3,125
prices at auction as bidders feel assured as to their authenticity.” In her business, it is the authenticity, and proximity to the action and personalities that counts. “Film costumes and celebrity-owned memorabilia are the hottest categories in the entertainment memorabilia market today,” she says. But fame, we know, can be a fickle thing. It is just as well, in some cases, that resale value doesn’t matter that much to magical thinkers, because prices can decline with the popularity of the star concerned. Which means, as in other markets, investors in memorablia are inclined to stick with the safest ‘bankers’. Lucy finds that, “Stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood continue to be the biggest draw.” And who are the biggest names among the Hollywood icons? “Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, John Wayne and Chaplin are among the most popular.” Wayne might be more of an American taste, I suspect, but the appeal of the others is universal. And Lucy is clearly delighted to report that an iconic hat worn by Audrey Hepburn in a famous Cecil Beaton photograph is one of the many stardust-laden lots that will be on offer in her next auction. Unless indicated otherwise, all items shown in this article were sold over the past few years by Bonhams in London, New York or Los Angeles, prices include premium www.bonhams.com. Bonhams Los Angeles’ next auction of entertainment memorabilia takes place on 4th and 5th May. Bonhams London also has entertainment memorabilia auctions scheduled for June and December.
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