UNITED KINGDOM: AUCTION IN LONDON SELLS ITEMS INCLUDING PAGE FROM GEORGE WASHINGTON'S SPEECH AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF BEATRIX POTTER

Record ID: 337538

  • Title: UNITED KINGDOM: AUCTION IN LONDON SELLS ITEMS INCLUDING PAGE FROM GEORGE WASHINGTON'S SPEECH AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF BEATRIX POTTER
  • Date: 13th June 1996
  • Summary: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM (JUNE 13, 1996) (RTV - ACCESS ALL) 1. CRANE OF EXTERIOR PHILLIPS AUCTION HOUSE/ SCU PHILLIPS SIGN (2 SHOTS) 0.11 2. GV PEOPLE MILLING AROUND AUCTION HOUSE INTERIORS (2 SHOTS) 0.24 3. SV BIDDERS WAITING 0.35 4. CU GEORGE WASHINGTON MANUSCRIPT TO BE AUCTIONED (4 SHOTS) 1.22 5. SV AUCTION
  • Embargoed: 28th June 1996 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
  • City:
  • Country: United Kingdom
  • Reuters ID: LVA5YRCQ0QJQCN2T9YKMU2X3GAPD
  • Story Text: INTRO: London auctioneers were stunned on Thursday when two items went under the hammer for much more than expected - both went to anonymous American buyers -------------------------------------------------------------------- Huge interest focused on the auction of a recently discovered hand-written leaf from George Washington's intended inauguration speech.

    The speech was not delivered, instead a shorter, less radical version was read by the president when he was sworn in on April 30, 1789.

    The manuscript of the original speech consisted of 64 pages or 32 leaves. Most of it had been missing for years with pages turning up in various places with this, the 14th page to be found, being discovered beneath an English Suffolk home by a gardener.

    The leaf that went to auction in London on Thursday was a key part of the speech detailing Washington's thoughts about freedom, detailing his visions of a brave new world and the future greatness of America as a superpower.

    Bidding was intense with an anonymous private collector from America paying 199,500 pounds including commission for the historic piece of paper.

    An album with photographs of Beatrix Potter, author of charming children's stories about Peter Rabbit and Jeremy Fisher and other creatures, was auctioned at the same auction house on Thursday for 75,000 pounds plus 9,000 pounds commission (a total of 84,000 pounds - $128,800).

    The sale price of the leather-bound album containing nearly 200 photographs of Potter from childhood to old age was about 10 times more than estimated, auctioneers Phillips said.

    It was bought by a British dealer on behalf of an unnamed private collector in the United States. One of the photographs shows her holding a rabbit. "Peter Rabbit" is written in the margin in Potter's own handwriting.

    The photographs start with formal family pictures when she was seven. They end with pictures of her as an old woman in her late 70s. Born in 1866, Potter died in 1943.

    The album was sold by an unnamed man whose father had bought it at a country fair.

    Potter wrote her first book, Peter Rabbit, in 1900 and followed with books about frogs, hedgehogs, foxes and other animals based on observations of wildlife around her home in the Lake District, north-west England.

    Her diaries, written in a secret code, were translated and published in 1966. Her home is now a museum, particularly popular with American and Japanese tourists.


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