The Antiques Business

Tue, Nov 29th 2016 at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm


John Dixon, of Georgian Antiques, Edinburgh, gave a highly entertaining talk to Kilrymont St. Andrews Rotary Club members and guests. John has been in the antiques business for nearly 40 years and his firm now has huge premises in Leith and the company is one of Scotland's leading dealers in antiquities. John brought along a number of antiques including oil paintings, clocks, small pieces of furniture and items of golfing memorabilia. He gave fascinating details on the provenance of the objects. One, a feathery golf ball from around 1870, had a value of around £4500. He had an oil painting of Beatle John Lennon's first wife which he had found cut up into four pieces and used to keep in place the frame of a mirror. He then had the picture restored and mounted. The evening ended with a valuation quiz with John selecting 12 items to be valued and dated. This proved to being highly amusing, with the budding Antiques Roadshow "experts" in the audience often well out with their estimates. The decorative egg was not a Faberge worth thousands but a copy from Woolworths valued at about £20. The wooden golf club dismissed by some was in fact a rare hickory-shafted long-nosed club from about 1840s with a value around £7500. David Sandford introduced John and Ranald Barrie proposed thanks.

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