The way out of lockdown
25th February 2021
Woolley and Wallis have unveiled their revised sale calendar for 2021 following this week’s government pledge to try and reopen non-essential retail on 12th April.
The busy Spring and Summer schedule will start on 20th April with the Furniture, Works of Art and Clocks auction postponed from 13th January and continue the following week with the Silver and Jewellery sales postponed from the same month.
“With a little rejigging in places, we have effectively moved our calendar on by three months and combined some sale dates so that several of our departments will be having large two-day auctions,” explained Chairman, John Axford. “As in 2020 we will also continue to hold auctions throughout August until we have caught up with the backlog.”
When the third national lockdown was announced at the start of the year, Woolley and Wallis was one of several auction houses that decided to completely close its doors and put all auctions on ice until such times as restrictions were lifted. “This is not a decision we took lightly,” continued Axford. “The safety of our staff and clients is paramount and was our prime concern, and consultation with a large number of our vendors across all departments indicated that they would prefer for us to delay sales until such time as members of the public could view objects in person. Whilst we respect those firms who have managed to carry on with online auctions this just wasn’t the right thing for us to do in the circumstances.”
Having spent three months of the previous year without any auctions, staff at Woolley and Wallis are confident that the rescheduled sales will perform well when they are allowed to go ahead.
“Last summer not only saw high (and in some cases record) prices for a number of different objects, but also a huge hike in the number of new private bidders registering to take part in our auctions,” said Axford. “We are very lucky that we have some wonderful pieces and collections consigned to us that we know will perform well when we reopen in April. The only real frustration has been the delay in being able to bring them to market, but we can see that buyers remain hungry and I am confident that the market will continue with the buoyancy we witnessed after the first lockdown”.
Details of the revised sale calendar can be found by clicking here.
