The thrill of the chase

Collectors who hunt new pieces must create space for them and others must downsize, which is why the past month saw two sales of distinguished possessions

- Huon Mallalieu

MY school Latin was so shaky that I was never allowed to try Greek, so commonplace words to a classicist may be new to me. Thus, the term 'pelta-backed' hall chair had me reaching for John Gloag's A Short Dictionary of Furniture and when, unusually, that failed, plunging into Google. There I learned that a pelta (πέλτη) was a shield with a semi-circular bite out of one side, which was carried by lightly armed javelin-throwers known as peltastae. Like the shields, pelta backs came in several shapes, but a crescent of some sort is implied.

It was sometimes very loosely interpreted, as with the pair of chairs that introduced me to the word (Fig 4). Their top rails were really more T-shaped than crescent. They were a lot in last month's Dreweatts Newbury sale from the accumulations of Phillip Lucas, a barrister, antique dealer and collector. He decided to be a lawyer when he was five and a dealer at 12; somehow, he has managed to be both, as well as restoring a house in Spitalfields and regularly filling and emptying it with furniture, pictures and works of art. Many things he sells from home, but, in 2020, there was a 300-lot sale at Dreweatts, and now 420 more. In an interview before the first sale, he said: 'I think I have a pronounced hunter-gatherer instinct. As well as enjoying these objects themselves, understanding and handling them, I love the excitement of the chase and a new discovery. A lot of it is the thrill of finding things. That is enough. It does not matter to me, if after a while, I sell them on.' The hall chairs were catalogued as in the manner of Gillows and dated to about 1780. They made a mid-estimate £1,512.