ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES: Sotheby's Birthday

▪ 1995

      At precisely 12 noon on March 11, 1994, Sotheby's, the world's leading art auction house, invited each staff member to raise a glass of champagne to toast the firm's 250th birthday. During the company's first two centuries in business, Sotheby's had reigned exclusively as the world's largest seller of books by auction, and it was not until the 1950s that the firm seriously expanded into the realm of fine art, postage stamps, musical instruments, vintage cars, scientific instruments, wine, rock-and-roll memorabilia, toys and dolls, comic-book art, and film posters.

      Sotheby's was established on March 11, 1744, when a London bookseller named Samuel Baker held his first book auction—a dispersal of "several Hundred scarce and valuable Books in all branches of Polite Literature" from the library of Sir John Stanley. He formed a partnership in 1767 with George Leigh, an experienced auctioneer. Upon Baker's death, his nephew John Sotheby and Leigh divided the estate. It was the Sotheby family, however, that played a leading role in the business for more than 80 years, a period that established the firm as the leading book auctioneer of the Western world. Sotheby's dispersed the libraries of Prince Talleyrand; the dukes of Devonshire, York, and Buckingham; and volumes amassed by Napoleon.

      When the last Sotheby died in 1861, John Wilkinson, a senior accountant, took the helm and promoted cataloger Edward Hodge to help him manage the rechristened Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge. In 1907 Hodge's son, Tom, sold partnership rights to a new group, and in 1917 the firm moved to its permanent location at 34-35 New Bond Street. By this time Sotheby's had begun to auction coins, medals, prints, and a few antiquities as well as paintings, furniture, and works of art.

      When Sotheby's began a spectacular international expansion during the 1950s, it usurped Christie's preeminent position as London's dominant art auctioneer since the 18th century. The move was masterminded by Peter Wilson, a brilliant connoisseur and businessman, who became Sotheby's chairman in 1958. In 1964 the concern took out a dangerously large loan to purchase the leading New York auctioneers, Parke-Bernet, an investment that proved hugely profitable. Wilson also oversaw the opening of Sotheby offices across Europe and began to organize sales in Geneva, Monaco, Florence, Amsterdam, and Hong Kong. The company's turnover increased from £1.7 million in 1955 to £241 million in 1980, when Wilson retired. Three troubled years followed before Sotheby's was acquired by U.S. industrialist A. Alfred Taubman. Under his guidance Sotheby's played a leading role in the art investment boom of the 1980s. The firm suffered a 50% reduction in turnover in 1991 but rebounded in 1994 with annual sales in excess of $1 billion. (GERALDINE NORMAN)

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