Antique Valuer To Visit Chch

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31502, 17 October 1967, Page 2

Antique Valuer To Visit Chch

After Mr A. Opie, who is one of the three valuers for the art and antique auctioneers, Sotheby’s of London, visited New Zealand late last year, the story of his successful finds was circulated among London antique agents.

This was sufficient inducement for another noted London valuer, Mr Norman Marks, of Norman Marks Antiques, to consider undertaking a similar journey. Later, when a Goldie painting fetched £350 at an auction of New Zealand prints in London, he was convinced that such a journey would be worth while.

He wiD arrive in Christchurch today and will spend five or six months in New Zealand.

Mr Marks is one of the London agents for the Christchurch firm of W. Holliday and Sons, which has been dealing in antiques for five generations. The firm’s new premises in Harewood Road will be the headquarters for his “skirmishes.”

Mr B. K. Holliday, who is in partnership with his grandfather, Mr W. J V. Holliday, said Mr Marks would be looking for silver, paintings, porcelain and furniture.

Any worthwhile pieces in any of these categories would

be valued for export, if the owners wished to part with them. Mr Holliday said that this would help to boost overseas funds.

Antiques on the world market have to be pre-1830 but in New Zealand anything more than 100 years old is considered antique. This did not mean that everything old was valuable, said Mr Holliday. But many people had had treasures in the family for generations with no idea of their authenticity or their value and they would appreciate an expert opinion. This was particularly true of porcelain and silver. An old Worcester plate with a chip or a crack might be worth £lO to £l2 but be regarded as useless and worthless by its owner. Mr Holli-

day said that when he called on a client recently to look at a collection of “rubbish” he discovered valuables worth $5OO.

Furniture finds would probably be less likely, as the cost of exporting it to England would be prohibitive. But in New Zealand’s early days a tremendous amount of furniture was imported and the possibility of a valuable find could not be discounted.

Interest in antiques in New Zealand was expanding every year and most of the adherents to the “antique cult” were women, said Mr Holliday. “We need to educate people about what we have in this country and what they should look for before it is too late,” said Mr Holliday. “There is tremendous scope for the collector in New Zealand because even the good shops will sell items below the world price in order to attract a public.” Mr Marks would be prepared to speak to interested groups or to lecture on such topics as furnishing the house in antique style, said Mr Holliday. Most of his time will be spent in the South Island, where he will visit shops and private collectors. The North Island was better served by antique dealers, said Mr Holliday. Mr Marks’s most memorable finds in recent years were two paintings from the Royal collection, both by the Flemish painter Pieter Breughel, who lived from about 1520 to 1569.