Word: toed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There is an instant chic, a feeling of sophistication, in visiting auction rooms; decorated with pricey art and antique furniture, they resemble a cockney's dream of ducal halls. Sotheby's main salesroom in London, hung with chandeliers and often lined with valuable paintings, resembles a grand ballroom...
An important auction combines the tension of an operatic first night with the ambience of a celebrity party. A top auctioneer has the talents of a croupier, a fight promoter and a matinee idol. As SPB President John Marion, who has wielded the gavel for 18 years, said to TIME...
Clearly, the main problem for the auction houses is not a lack of public interest but the shortage of salable material. To lure valuables into the marketplace, they run ads in local papers urging people to rummage through their attics. Sotheby's also runs so-called Heirloom Discovery Days...
The auction firms also assiduously cultivate known collectors in the hope that, alive or dead, they will some day assign their possessions to the market: auction executives are among the world's most diligent readers of obituary pages. William Doyle, the ebullient Boston-Irish owner of a seven-year...
English auction firms are particularly renowned for their well-connected staffers' ability to sniff out what they delicately call "aristocratic sales of necessity" (translation: the duke needs cash). Even the sophisticated rich often have unexpected treasures on their premises. Before sitting down to lunch at their country estate with...