Earlier in the month the property magnate and director of Burnley Football Club had read in his local paper about an auction in Chester that included an object of great importance to the people of Lancashire. Yes he would save Old Meg for his home town.
Old Meg is one of the great moments in the PenDelphin oeuvre. Predating the first of those 'loveable' rabbits by two years, it was made in 1953, the first year of production for the company that famously began in a garden shed in Pendle near Burnley with a working capital of £10. Jeannie Todd boiled rubber on the kitchen cooker to make moulds while Jean Walmsley Heap modelled the figures in clay. The two had met while working together at a building society in Burnley.
Jean Walmsley Heap, now in her 80s but still modelling and still available for signings at international collecting meets, believes this is one of perhaps only eight examples of the 4in (10cm) high wall plaque made in those embryonic days. The likeness was taken from her aunt who delighted in being modelled in finest PenDelphin 'stonecraft' - a composite material combining plaster of paris and stone dust.
PenDelphin guru Stella Ashbrooke, who organised the sale in association with Byrne's auctioneers, knows of only four others that have survived in private collections and this was the first to appear at auction.
An obvious candidate, then, to establish a new auction record for PenDelphin but it required someone of Mr Sullivan's vision to keep this latter-day Madonna of the Pinks from export overseas.
Speaking later from aboard the luxury liner, he picks up the story: "I joined in the bidding from the back of my chauffeur-driven car on the way down to Southampton. I'm not a collector of PenDelfin, but I knew there was a great deal of interest in the sale among Burnley folk."
Against minimal competition from a Canadian underbidder, he was able to secure it at its low estimate of £4000 (plus 15 per cent buyer's premium). "With the permission of the chairman and the other directors of the football club, I would like to offer the wall plaque to hang in the boardroom. It might bring us some luck next season."
The previous auction record for PenDelphin was set in the 1990s when Nantwich auctioneers Peter Wilson - Stella Ashbrooke's early employer - sold a pair of father and mother rabbit bookends from the early 1960s for £3600.
Roland Arkell
