More Work for the Great Centenary Charity Auction

INTRODUCTION

As well as my title piece I have some links and pictures (the latter connected with the title piece). Enjoy…

WORKING FOR THE GREAT CENTENARY CHARITY AUCTION

Todat I have been working on some stuff for the Great Centenary Charity Auctioin, the first running of which takes place on June 28th (another auction is planned for March). Most of today’s work was imaging small items, but there was also a poster to create, based on the fact that the Eastern Daily Press gave us almost a whole page in their Monday issue. There was an advert that we did not wish to display in our poster, so I occuipied that space with a picture of Lot 1 and some accompanying text…

Given the size of the newspaper in question this required two scans and then some clever editing to combine them. By the way the chap in red jacket next to the auctioneer is yours truly.

There were some very interesting items to image, including a decorative piece featuring a picture of the Obelisk of Hammurabi (King of Babylon circa 1,700 BCE, creator of a famous code of laws)…

Lot 556 (the 'Hammurabi' piece) in full — Lot 556 (the ‘Hammurabi’ piece) in full

An ultra-close up of the insription. — An ultra-close up of the inscription.

LINKS

Just a few links to share this time. The first of them is from Cosmos Up and concerns proof a link between black holes and galactic mergers.

My remaining links are both connected the same story, somneone who got a work experience placement at Job Centre and has produced a damning expose of the behaviour anbd attitudes of staff there:

1)Undercover at the jobcentre

2)The equivalent post on northstar.boards.net

A FEW CLOSING WORDS

I hope that you have all enjoyed this post and that you will be encouraged to share some or all of it.

Great Centenary Charity Auction

INTRODUCTION

As well as the title section I have some important links to share with you.

THE GREAT CENTENARY CHARITY AUCTION

The Great Centenary Charity Auction will be happening at Fakenham Racecourse on June 28th, with the first lot going under the hammer at noon. It looks like there will be something in the region of 700 lots in total at this auction, and another auction is intended for March next year. Official posts will be appearing on the greatcharity website, while the twitter and facebook pages also merit attention. I have been attending to the imaging of stuff for this auction and I have some splendid pictures to whet your appetite…

This lovely uniform (first three images) is lot 225

DSCN5837 DSCN5838

DSCN5857 DSCN5858 DSCN5865 DSCN5866 DSCN5867 DSCN5868 DSCN5890 DSCN5891 DSCN5892 DSCN5893 DSCN5894 DSCN5917 DSCN5918 DSCN5919 DSCN5924 DSCN5925 DSCN5926 DSCN5927 DSCN5954 DSCN5964 DSCN5965 DSCN5973 DSCN5974 DSCN5975 DSCN5976 DSCN6021 DSCN6031

It has been exhausting work doing all this imaging, but I am confident that the end result will be worth it.

LINKS

My last post, about the Hanse Festival was reblogged by mapsworldwide and here by way of reciprocation is a link to their own post about the same festival.

A mother and her children are facing homelessness because she understandably refuses to live in the same area as her violently abusive ex-partner and Barnet council indefensibly refuse to make her another offer. Read the full story courtesy of Sweets Way Resists and please take action.

A potentially good news story concerning Hale Library courtesy of Altrincham Today.

Finally, to end this post, a couple of curios from Cosmos Up:

1)A story about a new type of galaxy that should not exist.

2)The latest on antimatter.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and will share it.

A Pot-Pourri of a Post

Some good links to various interesting and important items, an important infographic in among them, a couple of classic recipes and some excellent images.

Before I get into my own stuff, I have some links to share…

LINKS

I start with a series of posts about the general election that has just happened:

First up, the ever reliable Mike Sivier of Vox Political. It was also Mr Sivier who provided the introduction to the my next post, written by David Hencke. Another frequent source of good material is John P Ointon who blogs as notesfromthenorth and who provided a fine response to the general election. My final piece of election related material, given that the Tories have an absolute majority in the house on 36% of the votes cast, is a petition calling for a change in the system of parliamentary representation courtesy of change.org, accompanied by a graphic showing what the the break down of MPs would be under PR…

My penultimate link is to the petition currently being run via 38 Degrees by the Save Southwark Woods campaign.

My last link is to a post from Autism Mom.

IMAGING AND OTHER STUFF

A combination of two busy and eventful days and a sleepless night in between (following the election) has meant that I have not posted recently. I revisited a classic recipe of mine this week, my own customised version of Madhur Jaffrey’s Lemony Chicken and Coriander, although rather than using thighs I used a half chicken cut into managable size pieces with the aid of ‘the world’s sharpest knife’. This recipe featured, along with another that I have not used in a very long time in my first ever blog post. Here are both recipes in a graphic…

Kitchen Specialities

The ‘PR’ graphic I put up earlier of course is based on actual votes and not on how people would have voted had PR been in force (e.g. I voted labour in the general election for a combination of reasons which would not have applied under PR – the question would have been whether to vote Green – as I did in the local elections – or for the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, TUSC). In view of the number of people who clearly did not vote the way they had told pollsters they would, here is photographic proof that I did precisely what I said I would…

DSCN4993

I have done some interesting imaging at work this week, finishing off the May stuff and imaging one piece of stock for the June sale that needed to be protected from damage…

These five images are of the medals that feature in lot 424A in our May auction. There were two pics, one taken with flash and one without, the latter of which was treated in three different ways and the former in two.

Flash No Flash - edited

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No Flash

These date from Thursday, now some stuff from yesterday…

The documents that accompany the medals pictured earlier.

The next six images are of lot 653 in the June sale (It was mighty hard to capture every detail of something so intricate as this, hence so many pics)

653a 653b 653c 653d 653e 768 768a 768b

ON SHARING

At the start of this post I shared various things from other sources, because they had made an impact on me. If you enjoyed this post I would be very grateful for you to share it, and I also encourage you to share individual items from within it if they particularly appeal to you. My final words, once rendered by the estimable Mr Bilbo Baggins as “thag you very buch” are embodied in the image with which this post concludes and apply to all who read it through to the end:

Yesterdays Auction: A Personal Account

Before getting to the main meat of post I have a few links to share with you.

LINKS

My first link is to a devastating expose of the bogus organisation Autism Speaks, courtesy of The Art of Autism.

My next link, for those of a scientific bent is to an interesting post on Faraday’s Candle.

My last two links are related, in that they refer to the necessity of making sure that on this day next week Downing Street is the scene of an eviction. First of all, a piece focussing on the NHS. Secondly, and accompanied by the picture that is at it’s heart comes this expose of just how vile the Tories are courtesy of Vox Political.

YESTERDAY’S AUCTION

I have already written about the presence of a display for the Great Centenary Charity Auction on their website. Here is a single picture to whet your appetite for that…

GCCA1

A combination of the necessity of being on a bus that was due to leave at 7:00AM and wanting have lots of time to make my preparations before setting off meant that I rose at a ludicrously early hour (suffice to say that even with summer approaching and the cricket season well under way I was up before the sun).

The presence of TV cameras filming Antiques Road Trip meant that I felt obliged to dress for the occasion, wearing a previously unworn shirt, a tie and a smart jacket that I knew would go with the shirt. I knew I would be on camera, because I was going to be on the rostrum next to the auctioneer when the road trip lots were going under the hammer. We were also providing training to a colleague, who did a couple of stints on the rostrum, immediately before the break to set up for the road trip stuff, and taking over after the road trip section had finished to do the final furlong (well we were at a racecourse!).

The two experts, Charlie Ross and James Braxton, both made a point of shaking hands with David and myself before leaving. It will be interesting when it finally goes out on air to see how it all looks.

After a quiet start, with the postcards doing nothing and the banknotes not all that much, things did pick up. I got one set of bookmarks, although not the ones I had really wanted.

The auction finished as expected just before 3:30PM, and then it was just a matter of clearing up. Finally, at 4:50PM the last van load was dealt with, giving me time for a pint at the Bull Inn, Bridge Street before catching the bus home.

I finally got back to my flat almost exactly 12 hours after setting out. A change of clothes, a quick call at my Aunts house to pick up the post and see if the plants needed any watering (they did not – it had evidently rained in King;s Lynn earlier in the day) and I was finally able to switch off.

Here are some pictures from the auction room before things got underway properly…

All the Antiques Road Trip Lots are visible in this shot.

Setting Up One Auction and Imaging for Another

This morning I helped with getting tomorrow’s auction set up at Fakenham Racecourse, and took the opportunity of photographing this display of uniforms, which will be part of a stall advertising the Great Centenary Charity Auction, on whose twitter account I have already posted it…

Uniforms Then, for the afternoon I was engaged in imaging lots for the May sale. There a some interesting items to image, a selection of which I now share with you…

455 455a 455b 457 457a 457b 457c 459 459a 459b 459c 472 472a 472b 620 620a 622 622a 622b 622c 642 642a 642b 642c 464 464a 464b In ascending order the lots featured above are 455 (Nature), 457 (Glastonbury), 459 (Robert Hooke – among many other things author of Micrographia, one of the first books ever written about the use of the microscope), 464 (Edmond Halley, a near contemporary of Hooke, now best known for the comet that bears his name), 472 (Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”), 620 (Alderney “Womble” stamps), 622 (Nassau Postcard with stamp and postmark) and 642 (Nepal postcard, with stamp and postmark).

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Two Very Hectic Days

As usual, before getting into the main meat of this post I have some links to share with you.

LINKS

First of all, I urge everyone to sign and/ or share Joanne Fowler’s petition about the treatment of her 93 year old father.

The only other link I am sharing with you today is courtesy of Vox Political and while I would the first to acknowledge that Tory lies are no longer (if they ever were), the stuff of headlines, the scale and extent of the lying that Mike Sivier exposes is even by the standards of the political home of Mr Shapps/Green/Fox scandalous as the full post reveals.

When I wrote my intro to the Mike Sivier piece it was going to be the last link I included, but this story from the Independent about food banks, which I picked up via twitter was too important not to include – it exposes the sheer nastiness of how the DWP conducts itself these days.

TWO HECTIC DAYS

I was aware that Thursday and Friday were going to be hectic, since I had decided to attend an evening meeting in Norwich (of which more in a later post) in between two work days, and on the Friday evening I would be calling in at my parents house to pick up the post since they are currently away in Greece. What I did not factor in was losing half an hour at Castle Meadow, central Norwich not because a bus failed to show, but because the bus did show but failed to stop! This is at a very important stop, and with me approaching the bus with the fare already in my hand ready to hand over. I absolve Norfolk Green as a company of any blame for this incident, especially given the high standards of service I have generally received over a decade of being a regular user of their buses, but they clearly have at least one rogue driver. This meant that instead of arriving at my desk at 9:30 and being able to ease into Friday’s work I arrived on the dot of 10 and had to get stuck in rather quicker. Also, the down-time immediately post work was reduced by the necessity of getting a haircut (being on the rostrum with Antiques Road Trip filming and having a jungle on top of my head would not have been a great idea!).

Thursday was taken up with imaging in the main, although I did get a press release out early in the day, and created a poster near the end of they day. This was to advertise an antique Enfield-Snider percussion cap rifle which will be in the May auction (n.b. it is of a calibre that is no longer manufactured and hence can no longer be used as a firearm)…

Much of the rest of Thursday’s imaging was mundane stuff, but some is worth sharing…

252 252a 253 253a 253b 255 255a 255b 341 719a 719b 721 721a 721b

Friday morning was taken up with imaging lots for a Timed Bid auction, conducted via www.the-saleroom.com, not many of which were of any great interest. In the afternoon, in between starting to load the van ready for going down to the Racecourse on Tuesday, I imaged a handful of lots which needed special attention…

This gold coin, lot 218 in our May auction, was a particular challenge as it had to be imaged through plastic casing.

218a 218b

The only other imaging I got done in the afternoon was of the Soviet Union badges which comprise the last three images of this post.

Yesterday at James and Sons

This is the first of two blog post I shall be putting up in the course of today. The other relates to an important meeting that I attended in Norwich last night. I have three things to cover from yesterday at work, after I have shared a few links with you…

LINKS

My first link is to a very interesting post in support of the tax dodging bill.

The other links I am sharing here rather than saving for my next post are all concerned with petition seeking to get Katie Hopkins sacked, about which I have already blogged. At present it has just passed 270,000 signatures, as you can see by visiting its home page. As well as the petition, complaints have been flooding in to IPSO, the press watchdog – more details can be found by checking out this piece from Huffington Post. Finally, both Ms Hopkins and the editor of the filthy rag that published her imitation of the Third Reich have been reported for incitement to racial hatred – more details in this piece from The Independent.

YESTERDAY AT WORK

My day at work yesterday featured three different strands, a press release, the official post about which can be viewed on the James and Sons website. I now reproduce the jpg version of the original document and a link to the word document…

Antiques Road Trip

The composite image I created for the press release.

The second strand was resolving queries, which involved taking a picture of some old writing so that it could be sent to someone for translation, and also getting some close ups of stamps to resolve a query about lot 491 in our April sale…

DSCN4132 DSCN4133 DSCN4134 DSCN4135 DSCN4136 DSCN4137 DSCN4138

Finally, the greatest part of my day was spent imaging new stuff for our May auction (27th, Maids Head Hotel, Norwich):

511 518 518a 519 519a 520 520a 520b 525 525b 525c 526 526a 529 529a 537 708 708a 758a 760b 760c 760d 774a 774b 774e

Please share widely and do look out for my next post which will be about the Save Ashcroft Campaign.

Thursday and Friday

On Thursday, the printed catalogues for James and Sons next auction got to the shop. Here is a cover shot…

Catalogue Cover 001

A full catalogue can be viewed online by following this link.

As well as producing images to resolve queries, I imaged a couple of lots that had not previously been done.This gave me some good pictures to choose from…

This is the first image for lot 452, which needed 18 images in total.

The relevant detail from the front cover

This is one of the ten maps mentioned on the front cover.

Lot 497 was a box full of stamps and postal history items. I have included only the small high quality bits in this blog.

This vast collection of buttons was hard to do anything approaching justice to, so it was no surprise to get a query about it them. This was the main image I produced in response.

I then produced a close up shot of some of the finest items in the collection.

The label on this toy was just one thing that was requested in addition to the original image.

One of the two new images I produced to show the toy in its full glory.

The bus journey home that day was not a good one (n.b. Norfolk Green usually provide an excellent service – stories like this are very much the exception) since the engine of the bus were on overheated and shut down. Since were on Queen Elizabeth Way, in between Knight’s Hill and the hospital, the driver tried to keep it going to reach the hospital where we could pick up other buses into town. Sadly, he was not able to achieve this, and we had to wait within sight of the hospital for a replacement bus to pick us up, while the driver of the original then had to wait for a maintenance vehicle to arrive and tow his bus to the depot (I presume). Opposite Gaywood Tesco, someone having failed to spot that the destination board on the front of the bus said “PRIVATE HIRE” by way of indicating that it was not picking up tried to get on and had to be told twice that this bus was not picking up. Meanwhile, to put in perspective how unimpressive it was for someone who was not apparently incapacitated in any way to want to get a bus in to town from there, one passenger (’twas I) had decided that as it was bright and sunny outside he was going to walk the rest of the way to the town centre.

After attending to matters at Nelson Street, I got some close up pics of decorated windows at King’s Lynn Minster…

Friday featured both some imaging to resolve queries relating to the April auction and starting to image for the May auction. It also featured in a big way one of other regular duties, that of porter. I have some good images to share, including a map from just outside Fakenham Library…

However, I did get away early owing to the fact that none of the people who had keys could stay on beyond 3 o’clock. The bus home did this time survive the journey. Queen Elizabeth Way was slow again, but this time that was caused by nose to tail traffic, and the bus was stationary long enough for me to snag two excellent shots of the ruins of Bawsey Abbey…

Banknotes Press Release

Before I get into the main meat of this blog, here is an important and interesting piece from Tom Pride, political blogger and satirist.

Given that banknotes played a starring role in James and Sons last auction on March 26th, and that those notes were part of a very large collection, the second and third parts of which will be sold on April 29th and May 27th, it was inevitable that a press release focussing on banknotes would be required, and yesterday was the day I sent it out. The official post on the James and Sons website can be viewed by clicking here and has already been widely shared on twitter. Meantime, here is the press release itself in both word and jpg form…

Banknotes Reach High Prices at Norwich Auction

Also yesterday I had to produce some images of a new donation for the Great Charity Centenary Auction, some of which I now share…

These five shots are of the same item, in two different settings and with various degrees of editing.

Also yesterday I dealt with some of the very few items for the April auction that have yet to be imaged. A full catalogue for this auction is available for viewing by clicking here. Here are the highlights from the lots I imaged yesterday…

A Frantic Day’s Imaging

Before getting to the main meat of my post, as usual I have some links to share with you. So…

LINKS

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/amazon_corridor_dn_c/?bYDPLib&v=56336 This is a VERY IMPORTANT petition.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/04/02/are-zero-hours-employers-committing-electoral-fraud/ Rumours have reached Mike Sivier that some of the unscrupulous bosses who use zero hours contracts have been threatening those on such contracts with dismissal if they dare to vote for anyone other than the conservatives. If these rumours are true, they are prima facie evidence of criminal activity.

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/electoral-fraud/preventing-and-reporting-electoral-fraud This is the website to visit if you suspect someone on electoral fraud.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/04/02/economists-agree-austerity-is-bad-for-you/ Mike Sivier acts as a conduit to…

http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/economists-vs-business-leaders.html This very interesting post from a professional economist.

https://www.change.org/p/politicians-ian-duncan-smith-come-clean-about-cuts-affecting-disabled-people?utm_campaign=fb_dialog&utm_medium=email&utm_source=signature_receipt&post_id=1319562568_10206450022592245#_=_Not only this is a very important petition, signing it will also help to clog up IDS’s email inbox!

https://tompride.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/ceo-accuses-tories-of-using-his-name-in-business-letter-without-his-permission/ Hot off the press – more bad news for the Tories re yesterday’s infamous letter.

Before moving on to today at work here are some pictures that will feature in the printed catalogues…

This one, unusualyy is not 100% my work - it is my photography but my colleague Andrew's editing. — This one, unusualyy is not 100% my work – it is my photography but my colleague Andrew’s editing.

IMAGING

A combination of factors made today a bit of a tough day, but at the end of it I had accomplished a good deal, and had imaged some very interesting items. By the end of tomorrow the imaging for April’s auction should be complete. Meantime, here is a selection of interesting images from today…

As I was inserting these pictures, I got details of a small victory for the Living Wage Campaign, more info at: http://leftfootforward.org/2015/04/a-victory-for-the-living-wage-campaign/

	Thomas on World T20 Cup Underway
	Anna on World T20 Cup Underway
	London Underground t… on Project Piccadilly
	Thomas on All Time XIs – Detective…
	Anna on All Time XIs – Detective…