Random Treasure - Antiques, Auctions and Alchemy

Roger Stewart, MA 1972

Random Treasure - Antiques, Auctions and Alchemy is a book for everyone with even a passing interest in antiques.

Roger Stewart, an amateur antique collector and occasional dealer, looks back at six decades of enjoyment and financial gain from discovering lost and forgotten treasures in second-hand shops and local salerooms.

A jug made in a unique collaboration between the two founding fathers of the British studio pottery movement; a magnificent Chinese vase; a masterpiece of mediaeval sculpture from a royal workshop, bought for £400 in Edinburgh and sold for more than £200,000 in Paris; and many other extraordinary objects.

Random Treasure shows how to identify and authenticate antiques; how they rise and fall in value; whether provenance matters; what moral and ethical issues can arise when buying cheap and selling for big profits; and how much real-life auctions differ from what is shown in daytime TV shows.

There’s also a carefully-researched but light-hearted exploration of what special qualities are needed by enthusiasts to make their own spectacular finds. Does it require the connoisseur’s expertise or the alchemist’s magic, or can anyone do it with a little luck and a lot of hard work? And once bitten by the bug, how can collectors tell if their innocent hobby has slipped into all-consuming obsession and compulsion?

ISBN: 978 1912083 558