Hotspur: Eighty Years of Antiques Dealing

Reference British History Antiques & Collectibles Business History Art & Culture Auctions & Appraisals Decorative Arts Regional Studies

Hotspur: Eighty Years of Antiques Dealing is the only authorised chronicle of Britain’s most famous provincial auction house, the Newcastle-based firm whose gavel has set records for Chippendale, Moorcroft and North-country folk art since 1938. Written by former Sotheby’s chairman Nicholas Goodison and Hotspur director Robin Kern, this limited-edition hardcover (numbered 1918/2000) distils eight decades of daybooks, price codes and dealer gossip into a single, lavishly illustrated reference that collectors, dealers and scholars now treat as the bible of regional furniture and decorative arts. Every major sale is here—from the £28 Queen Anne walnut chest that slipped through in 1941 to the £1.3 million Roman marble lion that stunned the saleroom in 2006—each entry cross-referenced to the original catalogue plates and the prices realised, making it instantly actionable for today’s market comparisons.

What separates this volume from the usual glossy antiques retrospectives is its insider voice. Goodison’s access to confidential ledgers and Kern’s lifetime on the rostrum let the authors reveal how condition reports were massaged, how provincial taste was steered by London dealers, and how the Hotspur “ring” of the 1970s was finally broken. The result is a narrative that reads like a social history of post-war Britain disguised as a trade story, packed with cameos of duchesses, docker-millionaires and the occasional smuggled corgi in the saleroom. Over 300 colour photographs—many of objects that have since disappeared into private collections—mean the book doubles as a visual archive impossible to replicate online.

For collectors, the true value lies in the data: every lot is indexed by category, maker, date and price, giving you an eighty-year price curve that underpins current valuations on everything from Georgian mahogany to 1960s Murano. The limited print-run of 2,000 numbered copies ensures bibliographic scarcity, while this particular copy—hand-numbered 1918, inscribed but otherwise pristine—offers the tactile satisfaction of a well-loved reference without the usual ex-library scars or smoke odour. Whether you are valuing a chest-on-chest, researching regional auction patterns or simply indulging in the romance of the rostrum, Hotspur is the single book that turns curiosity into competitive knowledge.

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