A SOUTH GERMAN BAROQUE FRUITWOOD STATUE OF A DRAPED MAIDEN

This statue is the subject of an anecdote which has amused the collector ever since. Despite being early June - or perhaps because it was - the weather was terrible at Cecil Beaton's magical Reddish House sale in 1980. The car park became a quagmire and the sale marquee became darker and darker. This fruitwood statue of a goddess with one arm upraised had originally been placed by Beaton in a niche in the Hall at Reddish; for the sale, she was moved into the back of the marquee. This proved to be calamitous, for in the gloom, the auctioneer, Anthony Coleridge, knocked down one of the first lots to the statue!