Flagstone record at Gaze's

Above: Carved sandstone grave relief of a skull, 17th/18thC, £277

Above: 20sqyds of coursed York flags sold for a record £2,905

Above: 70ins Victorian marble bath, top lot at £5,040

Above: Lenin sells for £1065

Diss, Norfolk UK - 'THERE was light drizzle all day,' Carl Willows said, referring to the architectural salvage sale of T W Gaze on 18 August 2007, 'but stock market jitters seemed to be having a discernible impact, even though garden benches which had been struggling at other Gaze sales this year went very well, one lot of York stone flagstones sold for £145 which broke our auction flagstone record, and a Victorian marble bath used by young Japanese ladies doubled its estimate to become the sale's top lot at £5,400 inc premiums and vat selling to the UK trade with a US underbidder.'

At a time when Christie's has shunted its buyer's premium to 25 per cent, and many provincial UK auction houses have pushed theirs up to 15 per cent, Gaze has this year held its buyer's premium at 10 per cent. It's seller's premium is 10 per cent on lots up to £500, and 5 per cent above that.

The next Gaze sale is the Rural and Domestic Bygones on Saturday 8th September at which Mr Willows says, 'There will be the usual old mix . . . and this time some nice handcarts consigned by Mr. Peter Watson of Cox's Yard in Gloucestershire.'


Full results

Barcelona beachside nightclub

KUBIK, the Berlin nightclub franchise, has built a trendy new nightclub bar designed by Jan Kampshoff and Marc Günnewig of arty ModulorBeat on the sea front in Barcelona from green internally illuminated polyethylene industrial chemical stillages (photo above). Inhabitat describe them as having a 'contemporary air of reclaimed material usage' but they are in fact made from new plastic.

Inhabitat story

Pakistan academic on greening buildings using architectural salvage

Lahore, Pakistan - AHMAD Rafay Alam, a high court advocate and expert on urban planning law, recommends that Pakistan should be looking at greening its buildings by, among other things, reusing architectural salvage rather than new materials.

Citing the US LEED and various European certification schemes, he says, "Greening buildings is not rocket science. It can be done by using rapidly renewable materials like bamboo. Where this is not possible, greening looks to other avenues. Care must be taken to extract building materials from local manufacturers or to generate it on-site to reduce the energy costs embedded in their transportation. Architectural salvage may be resorted to and, wherever possible, carcinogen-free insulation should be used."

In the absence of sensible building energy footprint policies simply increasing the supply of power and materials would be as effective in providing for the energy needs of the city as it would be to try and lose weight by having your trousers taken out by a tailor rather than exercising.

Full story - The News, Sat 18 Aug 2007, Pakistan

Salvo ads in the Sunday Times

TIMES ONLINE, UK - SALLY Kinnes writes a two part highly recommended and informative comprehensive UK guide to all things reusable, how to dispose of and buy or be given them, in the Sunday Times July 29 and August 5, which very nicely also includes Salvo.co.uk, although she does say that our for sale ads cost £5 each, which is not correct.

It is correct to say that SalvoWEB users who register with hotmail, yahoo, gmail and other free email addresses are charged a one-off non-refundable £5 verification fee, but this is not charged to normal or business email address holders who can register free of charge.

Most ads on SalvoWEB are free, but we do charge for ads for new items and buttons. All ads for antique, reclaimed, salvaged and secondhand goods are free on salvo.co.uk and salvoweb.com and wantsandoffers.co.uk and salvomie.com but we do charge for ads for new replica and repro items. These cost 2p per item per day. Salvo Directory business entries cost 2p per day. Theft alerts cost 2p per day. DIY Web Sites cost £10 to set up and 2p per item per day.

If you are a journalist and need more help on our ad cost structure, which is basically free for private users, please call our London office on 020 8400 6222.

That doesn’t have to go on the dump ... part 1 by Sally Kinnes
Someone, somewhere can use that old rubbish ... part 2 by Sally Kinnes

Evan Blum's competitors - dumpsters, ignorance and stupidity

New York USA - ON a CBS interview Evan Blum of New York's Demolition Depot said that his biggest competitors are the dumpster, ignorance and stupidity. A tour around the depot follows showing a load of bathroom bits, including a Mott fireclay tub, a $40k fireplace owned by Rockefeller, and a lot of doors.

CBS video
CBS story
Demolition Depot

Gaze 18 Aug: Victorian pots and urns

Diss, Norfolk UK - THE forthcoming sale on Sat 18 August of architectural salvage and statuary at T W Gaze will include some unusual Compton Pots, 'elegant but in subdued way' said Carl Willows, some Doulton urns, Minton encaustic tiles, decent lead figures including a 1900's set of four seasons, a vaguely American under lifesize bronze lady with blooms, some good gates including Arts & Crafts Jekyll-style, and a load of oak and elm beams, some of them rescued by women from builders bonfires.

The auction catalogue will be out soon, but on Thursday at the latest.

T W Gaze & Sons

Radical reuse at Postopolis

New York USA - INHABITAT's mission is to make good design green, and this includes support for the reuse of shipping containers for housing, eg Zigloo Domestique by Keith Dewey in British Columbia, which featured a lot of polyurethane foam insulation.

Inhabitat co-organised a get-together of designblogradicals, called Postopolis, featuring some very interesting talks from radical designers including the UK's own Tom Dixon, in New York in May 2007, which are available as youtube videos.

Postopolis
Reuse and Inhabitat

Stolen Vulcan recovered, man arrested, inside job

Corvallis, Oregon USA - Corvallis police recovered a statue stolen in June from Delta Chi fraternity at Oregon State University and arrested a suspect in the theft on Tuesday.

The 3-foot-tall bronze statue of the Roman god Vulcan was stolen from Delta Chi the night of June 10, and has been estimated to be worth as much as $100,000.

Corvallis police received a phone call Tuesday, after a newspaper article announced the fraternity's insurance company was offering a $5,000 reward for the statue's safe return, or for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of the thief.

According to police, the person who called was someone who had knowledge of who had taken the statue and where it was being kept. Acting on information from the phone tip, detectives went to a private residence in the 400 block of Northwest 10th Street, and recovered the statue, which was hidden in the basement.

Corvallis Gazette

NOTE: The model of the Vulcan statue above is believed to be based on the world's largest cast iron statue, of VULCAN, modelled by Giuseppe Moretti (1857—1935) and made as the entry of Birmingham, Alabama, for the 1904 St Louis world fair.