Is it the recession, have they improved, or is it me getting inured to their style, but our local auctioneers seem to have produced far fewer odd and amusing catalogue descriptions recently. But here is the best from their next sale. [My comments in italic.]
A watercolour of an officer retrieving his fallen helmet, with his horse, after Edouard Detaille.
[Why is he using his horse to pick it up? And why is he waiting for ED to do so first?]A blue lined leather box containing six silver buttons
[And the point is?]A pair of antique continental silver-gilt scissors, as a youth in short skirt standing on two hoops, his raised arms forming the blades
[I feel sure we should tell either Benny Hill or Frankie Howerd]A fine late Victorian cased set of fish eaters for twelve, with matching servers, with engraved plated blades to the knobbly ivory handles, Virginia walnut case.
[I know what fish knives are, but WTF are fish eaters? Presumably they devour the fish for you?]An old Elswick, Barton-on-Humber butcher’s bike.
Three army ammunition boxes and a belt of ammunition shells.
[It’s the belt that worries me!]A box containing 4 wool-kit rugs
A charming wooden model of an antique shop and contents – working chandelier, till, wall clock, grandfather clock, radio, camera, warming pan, sewing machine, etc.
[The model warming pan works? How?]A pair of Buffalo horns and three wild west prints and another.
A chemist’s scales, in brass on mahogany box fitted with a drawer, with weights, etc., a postal scales and five spring balances.
A pair of Continental porcelain groups of frolicking cherubs, a figure of a Golden Oriole, 3 other birds, and 2 vases with Sevres marks
A Victorian display of exotic birds on a mossy branch under glass dome on a mahogany base retaining trade label of Ashdown and Son
An art deco Shorter wall pocket, scale moulded
[WTF?]Two boxes of old wooden pegs, old cutlery, old buckets, a quantity of garden tools, and a box including a paraffin can, a satsuma vase, shoe lasts, an old iron, sewing implements in an old tobacco tin, etc.
[An interesting collection of old toot]
An art deco Shorter wall pocket, scale moulded[WTF?] This one was beyond me, too, so I ran and looked it up (as one's childhood educational preceptors used to advise). A wall pocket is a decorative receptacle for hanging on the wall and tidying stuff into, and this one was made by Shorter & Son and has a fishscale pattern. All so much less interesting than what one's imagination was bogglibg at…
…or even boggling.
A wall version of those funny shaped baskets which you can place on the bottom few steps to put everything in which needs to go upstairs. Or a wall mounted version of a desk tidy?
Thanks, both; that's about where I got to — well almost as I envisioned one of those fabric multi-pocket thingamabobs which you hang on the back of a door, and that just didn't make sense.
Ah, yes, like the embroidered elk hooves at work…