On the Move

LONDON—Regional British auction houses have been opening offices in London at an unprecedented rate. The most recent is Semley Auctioneers, whose new South Kensington branch serves as a “contact and collection point,” with sales continuing to take place in its Dorset headquarters, says the firm’s Simon Pearce. Semley’s move follows those made by the Surrey-based John Nicholsons, which has a valuation office in Chelsea, and Fellows & Sons, of Birmingham, now also in Mayfair. The largest of the regional houses, Edinburgh’s Lyon & Turnbull, opened a London office in Pall Mall in 2006. Its communications director, Philip Gregory, says the firm “has been making major inroads in the south.” As evidence, he cites the £850,000 ($1.7 million) raised in January by one of its first London auctions, part one of the Deloitte art collection, amassed over 30 years by the accounting firm. (Part two, in mid-April, earned £48,000; $94,500).

The motivation behind these expansions is not to try to compete with Sotheby’s and Christie’s. “We have no ambition to steal their market,” says Stephen Whittaker, the managing partner of Fellows & Sons, specialists in watches and silver. In fact,some of the smaller houses—plus Bonhams—handle objects that the two giants no longer deal with, such as toys and mechanical instruments. Whittaker sees having a London presence as merely “being available to private clients and sellers.”

But British boutique firms are growing, attracting buyers with their lower premiums and sellers with their lower reserves. Whereas Sotheby’s and Christie’s charge purchasers 25 percent on the first £10,000 ($19,900) of the sale price and 20 percent on the next £240,000 ($477,600), Lyon & Turnbull levies 20 percent on sums of any size, and Semley only 17.5 percent. As for reserves, Lyon & Turnbull’s are just £250 to £500 ($500–1,000), and those of other regional players are even lower, compared with thousands at the bigger firms.

Looking beyond the bottom line, clients may discover that the service is better at the smaller houses. As Gregory puts it, “Many sellers will find that they get more bang for the buck in terms of attention.”

"On the Move" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.