I do like an auction and despite the upheavals of recent months, I managed to find the time to be at two of them in the same week recently.

So, the first one was a not-to-far-away country auction where I have found upholstery projects relying on the fact that despite rumours to the contrary, brown furniture has not come back into fashion ver much.

If you are not an auction familiar, here are a few words of advice/warning.

You rarely go and get what you went for. 

I once went for a Georgian tip top table (two-a-penny at auctions in my experience) but came home with a four foot high carved horse’s head for the garden – only because, dear reader, there were no tip top tables  and the auctioneer egged me on for one last horse bid.  (He threw in a vintage croupier’s rake – every house, it seems, needs one.)

As you can he now has a fine ivy mane.

Anyway, if you are still with me, I went to an auction again looking for an upholstery project to kill time before I got a couple of commissions in.

I came away with an elm coffee table, as you do.

In my defence, the brown furniture went for ridiculous prices that day. A boring mahogany stool which should have sold for say £20 went for a hammer price of £85. The auction porter and I agreed that was somewhat surprising.

And it wasn’t just that stool. All sorts of stuff went for well above the usual prices. I wondered given it was one internet bidder buying quite a bit of stuff whether it was someone furnishing a period film set.

But then I had another auction to watch.

A bit of background:

The people who bought our house had said they ‘loved the look’ and would like to buy some of the larger pieces of furniture provided we supplied a list of items and authenticated prices. (Yes they were not the kind of people to pop in for a cup of tea and a chat about what we might leave.)

Luckily, we had a neighbour who was an auctioneer.

So, we provided a list and it included our handmade arts and crafts dresser, an antique linen press, a satinwood wardrobe and an old large pine cabinet handed down from my BB’s mother.

They said no to all of them apart from the corner cabinet.

So, off they went to be former neighbour’s auction house and then I listened live to the action as you can these days.

I got a text from my neighbour (between gavel banging sessions) who said (rather surprisingly) that a prince of Qatar had bought some Scottish mile and was interested in our lots. (Or maybe he had one of many underlings watching them…..)

The internet in our cottage went down at the crucial moment so I didn’t hear the bidding, but suffice it to say that the dresser I had bought for £10 a decade ago, went for £1,100 and was on its way with all our other furniture to a Scottish mansion. ( A good home, said my auctioneer neighbour.)

Meanwhile, as they say, I had been watching the other lots.

And a samovar came up but went for more than £300 which was above my price range.

( A what? and why? I hear you ask.)

So, let me explain.

Just in case you don’t know: 

A samovar (Russian: самовар, lit. ’self-brewer’) is a metal container traditionally used to heat and boil water. Although originating in Russia, the samovar is well known outside of the country and has spread through Russian culture to other parts of Eastern Europe, as well as West and Central and South Asia. Wikipedia

As for why, well.

Our new home has a conservatory and though i am not a fan, it was the only place the Best Beloved could have a downstairs study.

Knowing that one of the downsides of a conservatory is that they are to warm in the summer, which he can live with, and too cold in the winter, which he cannot, he decided that he would be adding furs and a samovar to the more usual study furniture.

So, my auctioneer neighbour and I were texting back and forth and I mentioned the samovar and he said that two more were coming up later as a joint lot and as he wasn’t on the rostrum, did I want him to bid for me from the room.

Now, being an auction aficionado and knowing what a nice man he is, of course I said yes.

Of course, his colleague knew he was bidding for a friend. I never heard a hammer come down quite so quickly. Mind you they are very quick at those auctions so I may have imagined any slight favouritism.

I know they wouldn’t have raced into the many hundreds, but still felt that £45 was a bargain.

Yes they will be somewhat incongruous in a 1980s house on an estate but everyone needs a bit of incongruity now and then.

Whether the BB will ever get me to agree to his lighting them, is entirely another matter.