Outing to Sworders Auction Rooms

Members were invited to Sworders Auction Rooms in Stanstead Mountfitchet to view the items on display ahead of the Sale of 20th Century Decorative Art and Design.  This included the Horlicks’ Collection of Robert “Mouseman” Thompson Furniture.  It was a revelation to tour the display and see the huge variety of objects destined for the auctioneer’s hammer.  To our inexperienced eyes, some looked highly undesirable; the aluminium “Aeroplane” desk with its futuristic design did, indeed, fail to sell, yet the set of six green plastic chairs which some thought simply garish, managed to fetch £540. 

Sworders holds its home interior sales every fortnight.  The sale on 9th-10th October was particularly special because of the large collection of Mouseman furniture, yet it also contained other treasures, such as a Pablo Picasso plate, a throne chair by Carlo Bugati and the Fairyland lustre vase and cover shown.  This came from Wedgwood’s most distinctive range of the inter-war years and was the project of one designer, Daisy Makeig-Jones who decorated her creations with a playful world of pixies, elves, imps and will-o’-the-wisps.  The vase sold for £21,000. 

Those members who visited the Auction Rooms are privileged to have seen the most expensive item of Mouseman furniture – the beautiful oak dresser, sporting not one, but two mice, sold for £35,000 (estimate £6-8,000).  The entire Horlicks’ Collection raised just over a quarter of a million pounds.