Feb 2, 2025
[Anthony] Coleridge had one disadvantage as an auctioneer: he was short-sighted. During the Cecil Beaton sale in 1980, he was selling lot twenty, a small table of low value. His main bidder was a lady seated in the second row. Against her, as Coleridge relates, was 'someone standing in the gloom at the very back of the tent who appeared to be raising her arm aloft… when the bidding reached 5,200 guineas and I was beginning to think it a bit strange, one of my colleagues came up behind me and whispered, "you are taking bids from a carved wooden statue at the back of the tent."'
James Stourton, Rogues and Scholars: Boom and Bust in the London Art Market, 1945-2000.
