An Unconventional Collector
19 Feb, 2009
Woolley and
Wallis has played host to over a hundred friends and colleagues of
the late Lord Parmoor, an antiquarian bookseller whose effects go
on sale on 24th February. The private view and lunchtime
reception on the 19th February brought together many of
Lord Parmoor's contemporaries, as well as a large number of the
auction house's clients.
Over two hours
they viewed the eclectic mix of 17th century and
Modernist furniture, with Middle Eastern carpets and a substantial
collection of 1920s and 1930s posters, which contains something to
interest everybody. As his friend and colleague from Bernard
Quaritch Books, Richard Linenthal says in his introduction to the
sale catalogue, "It would be difficult to find a single lot in this
sale which is boring or conventional". It is a statement which
would also ring true of the life of Milo Cripps, the fourth Lord
Parmoor, whose lust for life and eccentric behaviour brought him a
wide circle of friends.
Stories of his
eccentricity begin at a young age, when he was evacuated to Toronto
during the Second World War. His classmate at Upper Canada College
Prep School, John Julius Norwich, speaks fondly of the young Milo
in his recent memoirs and describes how "while the young toughs
around him talked ice hockey, he set himself up as an ardent
champion of ring-a-ring-a-roses, and somehow got them all to join
in".
Lord Parmoor
became involved in bookselling in 1971 when his company, Cripps
Warburg, acquired Bernard Quaritch. Milo's love
of language, sharp eye for a sensible risk and a good deal, belief
in good business discipline, and eye for quality and style suited
both himself and his new company. He redecorated
the shop, changed the catalogue prices from pounds to dollars,
urged the staff to get onto airplanes, introduced computers at an
early stage, proofread catalogues, and fascinated the customers,
usually with rigorous intellectual questioning, sometimes
hysterical rage, and always paternal support. He
presided over a series of triumphs - the sale of a Gutenberg Bible,
the purchase of the Gospels of Henry the Lion for the German
government, the de Belder botanical library, and the sale of the
original manuscript of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons which he himself
offered to Raisa Gorbachev.
He was a man of diverse taste, who sometimes delighted in
buying items which may have astounded some of his more traditional
friends. Private commissions of pieces of furniture by Matthew Burt
and Sir Alan Peters sit alongside a very fine and large Gordon
Russell walnut table (Estimate £25,000-35,000) and two inlaid
tables by Carlo Bugatti. His extensive collection of posters will
appeal to fans of Art Deco, as will a birds eye maple cocktail
cabinet and various items of bedroom furniture from that era. For
the more traditional collector, there are several lots from the
17th century, including an Austrian fruitwood rent table
and a massive Spanish oil painting in its original frame of the
"Expulsion from the Garden of Eden" by Juan Antonio de Frias y
Escalante.