A cold reception for the contemporary

Summers Place Auction, October 21 2008

Summers Place Auction house hold two sales a year at their grounds in Billingshurst, Rupert van der Werff have opted to split the sale into two halves. A live auction for 150 higher-value items was followed by a sealed-bid sale of 323 lower-value pieces.

While the live auction almost matched May's selling rate (63 per cent achieved a hammer total of £842,100 compared to 71 per cent to a total of $1.33m earlier in the year) the same could not be said for the sealed bid auction where, only about 35 per cent sold, compared to 66 per cent in May. On the other hand, the sealed-bid material appears to have been of better quality in October for the sale's total at £320,071 achieved by the 326 lots offered in May.

The fortunes of the garden statuary market, are of course particularly affected by the housing market. Mr Rylands speculated that would-be bidders at the low end of the spectrum, probably with mortgages to worry about, would consider a decorative piece for their garden an unnecessary extravagance in the current climate.


Summers Place Auction