Sally Stratton and Guy Savill, who worked together in the furniture department at Bonhams since the early 1990s, will hold their first auction as The Pedestal on October 18.
The venue is Moor Park Mansion, a Grade I listed Palladian house situated near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire and today part of the Moor Park Golf Club.
Stratton told ATG the new enterprise had grown quickly following their departure from Bonhams in April. “We were a strong team and didn’t want to break that. We knew we wanted to continue to work together and to continue working with antique furniture.
“We have had lots of support and goodwill from the trade and private clients and wanted to seize that momentum.”
Collector and former Hollywood studio lawyer Philip Solomans is also a director of the new firm.
Key Consignments
The first sale, with a consignment deadline of September 7, will feature around 150 lots of English and Continental furniture and works of art. Estimates range from £1800-2500 (for a George III gingerbread mould) to £60,000-80,000 for a George I walnut bureau bookcase in the manner of Coxed and Wooster.
The sale will be accompanied by a printed catalogue and will also be available to view online via thesaleroom.com. A follow-up event in this traditional guise is planned for March.
Online Brokerage
The second – and less conventional – phase planned for The Pedestal project is an online brokerage that will launch later in the autumn. The firm will accept items for sale on commission from consignors who wish to sell quickly or those seeking options outside the traditional auction environment. They will be offered online (and available to view on request) at a fixed price.
Furniture at Bonhams
These developments followed the departure of the core of Bonhams’ furniture department earlier this year as the firm responded to changing market conditions.
Monthly multi-discipline Home & Interiors auctions, repackaging traditional antiques in both Bonhams’ Knightsbridge and Edinburgh rooms, are headed by Mark Wilkinson, who joined Bonhams last year from Christie’s South Kensington.
The Oak Interior sales, held for the first time in London in February, continue with a second sale scheduled for September 28.
