‘Iconic’ Gandhi glasses go for record £260,000

By Amit Roy

ANDREW STOWE, the auctioneer who sold a pair of “gold-plated circular rimmed spectacles” that had once been worn by Mohandas Karamchand Gan­dhi for a record £260,000, has told East­ern Eye he has now been offered other memorabilia belonging to the Mahatma.

The online auction of the spectacles, which Gandhi had worn in the 1920s when he was practising as a lawyer in South Africa, took place last Friday (21) at East Bristol Auctions in Hanham, Bristol.

Stowe, 32, told Eastern Eye in an exclu­sive interview: “We’ve already been con­tacted with lots of other Gandhi-related items. I’m sure this won’t be the last piece of Gandhi memorabilia that we sell. When an auction house gets something that’s high profile like this, it tends to bring other stuff out of the woodwork.”

The successful bidder was a private collector in the United States. With a “buyer’s premium” of 21.6 per cent on the hammer price, he will have to write out a cheque for £316,160.

The vendor is an elderly man from Mangotsfield, once a village north-east of Bristol, who intends sharing his unex­pected windfall with his daughter. Not realising the value of the spectacles, he had put them into a plain white envelope which he pushed through the letter box at the auction house one weekend.

When told they could fetch anything between £10,000 and £15,000, the estimate published in the catalogue, he “nearly fell off his chair”.

The vendor had been left the specta­cles by an uncle who had worked for Brit­ish Petroleum in South Africa and been gifted the pair by Gandhi.

Six minutes into the auction came the moment of drama when Stowe brought down his gavel: “If you are interested I will count you down – going once at £260,000, twice at £260,000, your final, fi­nal call at £260,000 – round of applause is definitely required at £260,000….sold!”

Later, Stowe revealed: “We had interest from all over the world – bids came from India, Qatar, America, Russia, Canada.”

Stowe agreed it had been “quite a Fri­day”. News of the impending auction had appeared in thousands of newspapers across the world. “Within 24 hours of that appearing online, it had become an inter­national news story.”

As for the actual auction, “we knew it was going to be popular. But we didn’t think for a single second it was going to explode how it did – that was a real shock.

“All of the bids came in online to start with. They bid up to about £150,000 to £160,000. After that, they stopped bidding. Then it moved over to two telephone bid­ders, one in America, the one who won it, and then another gentleman based in the UK – and they took it from there.”

Stowe offered a little more information about the buyer: “The gentleman who bought them is very happy with them. He’s got a number of important things in his collection. But I suspect they will just be kept for his own viewing pleasure.”

It seems unlikely the spectacles will end up eventually at a heritage museum in India: “Not in this case. This gentle­man’s American, collects historic memo­rabilia and lives in America.”

As to why the spectacles attracted so much interest, Stowe offered this expla­nation: “Primarily because they belonged to Gandhi and Gandhi is one of the most important figures in the entire world and entire modern history.

“But I also attribute much of its success to the unusual way in which we received them, which was [they were] just stuck in our letter box one day.

“That story captured the imagination of people all around the world. And you know, people want that story where they have a family heirloom they think is worthless and then it turns out to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. While they are Gandhi’s glasses, and I’m sure that is 90 per cent of their appeal, the extra 10 per cent proba­bly did come from the unusual way in which we got to receive them.”

The vendor would initially have been happy to have received £50 for the pair, Stowe said. “He’s on his own, in his 80s. And his daughter actually took the day off work to take her tablet around to his house so they could watch the auction together. Which was rather sweet. It’s nice to have a good news story.”

Stowe added: “The glasses have been in the same family for 100 years and our vendor never actually knew his uncle. He never met him actually – he died before he was born.

“But the family story was that Gandhi had made a visit to British Petroleum where the uncle worked in South Africa. At some point in that meeting, Gandhi gave him his glasses as a thank you.

“There are quite a few historic refer­ences to Gandhi giving away things like his glasses, his sandals. It was something he did fairly often. There’s probably around about 20 or 30 different pairs of glasses that he actually gave away over the course of his life.”

The auction has given East Bristol Auc­tions an international profile: “In the UK, we are one of the top 10 auction houses. But this puts us on an international plat­form,” Stowe admitted.

“It is one of those items that will be remembered forever. And not just by us, but by people all around the world. It’s been a wonderful thing for us and for our company. I keep saying this is probably one of the most important auction dis­coveries of the year.”

Stowe conducted a thorough research into the provenance of the spectacles before including them in the auction of “military & history” memorabilia.

After training as a lawyer in London, Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a law­suit. He went on to stay in the country for 21 years. It was in South Africa that Gan­dhi first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights.

Stowe continued: “We looked at the story to verify it was possible. The vendor’s uncle was in South Africa at the right time, as was Gandhi. We then looked at the specifics of the glasses, which matched other known examples in museums.

“We discovered one pair in a museum which has the bridge section distinctly distorted to fit Gandhi’s nose, and ours carries the identical distortion – that can only be something specific to Gandhi.

“Unfortunately, through 100 years and three generations, the story hasn’t been preserved as neatly as we’d like, but the broad strokes are there, and all the pieces of the jigsaw slotted together perfectly.”

Stowe said: “All the evidence does point to them being genuine. We had about 20 different people bidding. All looked at the same evidence and came to the same conclusion.

“When you think of Gandhi, you think of the glasses, you think of the loincloth, you think of the sandals. It’s just one of the iconic pieces of his make-up.

“It’s like Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, it’s like Winston Churchill’s cigar. They’re just iconic everyday items.”