This initiative, launched last April, groups together different auction disciplines and departments such as furniture, silver, pictures and ceramics promoting them as a series of furnishing sales offering “affordable shopping for the style-conscious” with the aim of enticing new buyers across the Old Brompton Road threshold.
Apart from demistifying the auction process for novices, one of the attractions of buying in the salerooms that Christie’s hope to get across is the potential to offer the kind of individual one-off object not offered by high street retailers. “You can come to CSK and have a freedom of choice, something not everyone else can buy”, said senior specialist Nic McElhatton.
He feels the At Home idea is now begining to reap dividends in terms of attracting new customers. One feature of the inititiative is the Sunday viewing, when antique hunting as a leisure activity can be more readily indulged. Last month’s Sunday view saw 700 people walking through the doors between 1 and 4pm. Nic McElhatton wasn’t only pleased with visitor numbers, the buying statistics also gave him cause for cheer especially the number of new buyers for the January At Home. Of the 427 successful purchasers 44 were new to Christie’s. The private-to-trade ratio for these sales inevitably varies depending on the category of auction. For the At Home silver sale it was around two-thirds trade (at 35 buyers) to one third private (with 19 buyers), but for the picture element it was a much closer 55 per cent trade/45 per cent private split.
For the furniture there were 108 trade buuyers compared with 74 private, a much higher private input than for standard furniture sales, reckoned Mr McElhatton.
Of course, CSK are not the only auctioneers to be looking at how mid-range offerings can be made to appeal to a wider market, it is something that exercises the minds of most auction houses. Over at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12 per cent buyer’s premium) one of their solutions was to offer four auctions per year styled as Interior Decorator sales. As well as offering more decorative selections of furniture and objects, these were seen as the ideal vehicle in which to incorporate the smaller single-owner collections or properties that were not substanial enough to merit their own catalogues.
Now though, the auctioneers have revamped this initiative. Motivated in part by the need to hold more frequent sales of this type of material, they have upped the Interior Decorator offerings from four to ten sales per year, an increase they have achieved by combining them with more traditional English and Continental furnishing fare. These events will now be known as Furniture and Interior Decorator sales and will continue to incorporate the smaller single-owner consignments that were a feature of the quarterly events. The auctioneers aim to offer everything you need to furnish your house, from furniture and carpets to works of art, ceramics and silver but with a trademark infusion of quirkiness, a typical example being the French day bed pictured and discussed right which will feature in their next auction on February 17.
In the meantime, their first auction of 2004 under the new arrangement saw its final statistics given a considerable boost by the sale of a Ziegler carpet for £65,000 where just £6000-8000 had been predicted. The late 19th century carpet from Western Iran measured 17 x 9ft (5.2 x 2.7m).
Bonhams have held three general furniture and objects sales in their Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) rooms at the time of going to press. The first of these, on January 13, included an example of the huge popularity generated by that now most sought-after decorative object – the Black Forest bear. In this case, however, it was not a full height hall stand but a smaller sized family group ranging from a 13in (34cm) long specimen standing four square, to nine others either walking, standing or seated, the smallest of which was just 21/4in (6cm) in height. Conservatively estimated at £300-400, the group sold for £1700.
Strategies to attract new buyers to the middle market pay off
MUCH of the saleroom activity in London over the past month has been of a fairly low key nature – routine sales of furnishings and objects. However, routine needn’t mean unsuccessful. Sales held at this traditionally thinly served period of the auction year can yield strong results, as customers home in on what little is around in the Capital. In the middle of the month, from January 13-15, Christie’s South Kensington held the first of their At Home weeks for 2004.
