A SELECTION of fascinating lots have been put together to create what is likely to be one of the most interesting auctions ever held in Penzance.
The Cornishman has already reported on the unquestioned star of David Lay's pre-Christmas Antiques sale – a record player owned by Elvis Presley during the early part of his army service in Germany.
The record player was given by the 'King' to a German woman, Ellen Marschhäuser, who had helped Elvis's father, Vernon, with some German translation.
She later married an Englishman, Jim Jenkin, and the record player lay in his attic for decades until a picture in a national newspaper of Elvis Presley with an identical record player jogged Mr Jenkin's memory.
However there is plenty else to intrigue and attract potential bidders, including a very innocuous-looking scrubbed pine table that has come from the kitchen of a house called Lambe Creek on the Fal.
At this table during a surrealist summer in 1937, sat the likes of such artistic greats as Man Ray, Max Earnst, Leonora Carrington, Henry Moore and Paul Eluard, all guests of the artist Roland Penrose and photographer Lee Miller.
It is believed that Picasso also sat at the table.
For those of a nautical persuasion, there is an 11-foot carved wooden name board, which once graced the stern of HMS St Vincent.
She was a first rate ship of the line launched in 1815 and saw active service as a flagship of the channel fleet and in the Crimea.
Likely to cause a stir are the 500 pieces of blue and white transfer-ware pottery collected by Michael Hickman while the massive Liverpool Spring Cup, a tour-de-force of Edwardian silversmithing, was presented in 1903 to 'Fighting Furley' a highly successful racehorse of the time.
The sale takes place on the December 12 and 13 at David Lay's Penzance Auction Rooms; viewing is on Saturday and next Wednesday.
