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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 the Earl and Countess of Verulam, Christie's Oriental ceramics director, Sir John Figgess, asked his host "if there was a cloakroom [bathroom] handy." There were two cloakrooms, allowed Verulam: "You take this one and I'll take that one." In the John that Sir John took, he found a mid-14th century underglaze copper red-and-white wine jar. The Ming jar sold—at Christie's, naturally—for $204,250.
As audiences have changed, so have the mechanics of auctioneering. Twenty years ago, salesrooms were decorous, dusty—and dull. They were frequented mostly by dealers or agents for anonymous collectors. Save for the hobbyist or scholar who might attend a sale of arms and armor or rare folios, amateurs seldom bid for anything; mostly they were scared away. One intimidating aspect of auctions has been the seriocomic notion that by a cough or casual gesture the unwitting onlooker may become a high-rolling bidder. Only half in jest, Louis Marion, who headed the old Parke-Bernet firm and was the father of SPB's President John Marion, once cautioned: "Women who use then— catalogues to salute late-coming friends do so at their peril." In practice, a buyer who wishes to remain anonymous prearranges his signals with the auctioneer. Thus a bid may be wigwagged by a nod, a wink, a patted handkerchief, a crooked finger, an arched eyebrow. Says one Manhattan auctioneer of a prominent patron: "When he turns his back on me with a cigar in his mouth and walks away, that means he's bidding."
It has been only in the past decade or so that the big sales have been covered by the press as Events; the sums paid for art used to be buried in newspapers along with ship arrivals. Now, with the tremendous increases in fine arts prices and the expansion of public interest, big auctions have become flash bulb and video-tape fiestas. To a large extent the transformation has been wrought by Sotheby's, the world's largest, canniest and most aggressive house. In the late '50s Sotheby's introduced such techniques as international telephone hookups, bidding by closed-circuit TV, the gala evening sale crammed with formally clad celebrities, assiduous ballyhoo and greatly increased sale schedules. More recently, Sotheby's pushed its mass-marketing strategy even further by signing an agreement with Tokyo's Seibu Department Stores Ltd., which brings the Western fine arts auction market into retail stores and enables Japanese buyers to place bids for, say, an over-the-counter Constable. When Wilson retires as Sotheby's chairman in February, he will be succeeded by his cousin, the Earl of Westmorland, who is an equally innovative businessman. "I am sure," says Westmorland, "the auction game is going to grow more and more popular."