Apologies for the break, I’ve been away and went in such a rush that I didn’t even have time to put the ‘out of office’ notice up here. There will be proper posting later this week, but I’ve just popped in briefly to point at this.
It’s a Barbara Jones mural from 1961, entitled Sociology and produced for the Turin International Labour Exhibition of that year; it’s rather large at over four metres by three, and it’s on sale at Christies next month.
Now attentive readers of this blog – and indeed attentive exhibition viewers – will remember this mural because it formed part of the British Murals and Decorative Painting Exhibition at Liss Fine Art last year, where it was for sale, should you have wanted it, for a ‘price on request’. Now it’s estimated at £3,000 – 5,000. Mr Crownfolio has sized up the house and concluded, reluctantly, that we have nowhere to put it, so it’s all yours to bid on.
Should you be a fan of Barbara Jones, though, it’s probably worth you looking at the whole sale, which goes under the title of Out of the Ordinary and is frankly a bit barking, in a rather wonderful way. Once you’ve picked your way past the giant taxidermied spider crab, the holograms and the giant cigar box in the shape of Harrods, you could bid on items ranging from Paul McCartney’s old front door from the 1950s to the 14th century heraldic arms of the Earl of Bohun, via all manner of memorabilia, oddities and, sometimes, tat. It’s as though the most idiosyncratic museum in the country, the V&A on acid, had decided to go to a boot sale.
Apart from the Barbara Jones, I can imagine a few of you also being tempted to try for this.
Which isn’t a rusty piece of 1980s something or other, but a piece of railing from the Festival of Britain. £1,500 – 1,800, since you ask.
It’s eccentric, but I can’t help thinking that the assorted miscellania is exactly the kind of company that Barbara Jones would have appreciated. And had she been curating a modern-day Black Eyes and Lemonade, she might have been able to find quite a lot of her material right here, from the slot machine to the signage.
And of course the illuminated peacock’s head.
