Art and antiques from the personal collection of Ken Bolan come for sale at Sworders in the autumn. The September 24th sale titled Ken Bolan: Nature Follows Form features 400 lots from the legendary dealer, including a rare miural by Dame Elisabeth Frink.
Bolan has bought and sold antiques and design objects for more than 50 years. He recalls as a boy pressing his nose against the window of his local antiques shop to marvel at its contents inside. When, having left school at 15, he followed a love affair from London to Berne, he opened his first shop in Switzerland in 1973. Soon he would have four stores and a thriving import business selling English antiques into Europe.
An international outlook became key to Bolan’s style and stock in the 1980s and 90s, when, trading from a 10,000 square foot brewery in Dorset, the ‘Talisman’ brand was born. Sculpture, garden statuary and Continental furniture became its signature look.
Looking back, he describes it thus: ‘Travelling always influenced my buying, because it was such an experience back then. You didn’t have the internet or mobile phones. The only way you could discover and learn was to just get out there. France was a great source for many years. Sweden was a fabulous discovery in the mid-80s. And I was quite brave. I was also going to places like India and China with absolutely no knowledge of what I was going to find.’
Vintage
Bolan was part of that pioneering generation of dealers from the 70s and 80s who primarily bought on instinct rather than with a reference book. Over the years, his ‘eye’ has refocused to follow opportunities and trends in the market. From the English country house look to the fashion for painted furniture and latterly the rise of vintage and post-war material, he has ‘always been aware of a change in the air’.
Many items in the September 24t sale come with anecdotes relating to more than fifty years of dealing. One piece that Bolan describes as ‘dear to my heart’ is an 18th-century polychrome painted Danish cupboard dated 1772. It last came up for auction in the late 80s or early 90s in Copenhagen when Bolan had just built an extension to the family home. ‘It was going to dominate the room so the whole family looked at it and we all decided that, yes, we liked it.’
Following a bidding battle, it cost a mighty £20,000 plus premium, but was soon on a truck to the West Country where it has been for close to forty years. ‘Sadly, it won’t fit in my current house – that’s why it’s now for sale,’ says Ken. It carries an estimate of £4,000-6,000.
The work of Guy Taplin (b.1939) has long been a favourite, and a veritable menagerie of the sculptor’s carved and painted birds is included in the sale. Numbering thirteen pieces, including three of the artist’s trademark swans and five curlews, this represents the largest group of sculptures by the artist offered at auction for some time. They expected to sell for sums between £600 and £4,000 each.
Mosaic
A remarkable mosaic panel by sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink (1930-1993) once adorned the swimming pool of Woolland House, her Dorset country estate. Ken first met ‘Lis’ when she visited his shop in Bath in 1986. ‘At that time, I had just begun buying Swedish painted furniture which she absolutely adored. Over the next few months, after discovering my old brewery in Gillingham, she bought numerous painted items from me, and we developed a close friendship.’
Following Frink’s death in 1993, Ken assisted her son, Lan, with the sale of the furnishings at Woolland, and later made the new owners an offer on the ‘The Monkey and the Dolphin’ mosaic (based on the Aesop fable), that Frink had designed c.1987. It was subsequently professionally removed, restored and mounted on a 4.34 x 3.09m aluminium corrugated framework, that would allow the mosaic to be laid back into a swimming pool or positioned upright as an artwork. It is thought to be the only mosaic Frink created and among the largest pieces she ever made. ‘It’s all original. All the work you see is her work. We haven’t had to rebuild it’ says Bollan. This important piece leads the sale with an estimate of £300,000-500,000.
Link to highlights:
ttps://www.sworder.co.uk/ken-bolan-nature-follows-form/
See also: Pauline Karpidas: The London Collection
