No . 133
The Trusty Servant
Anthony du Boulay with Dr Richard Foster , Keeper of Collections at Win Coll
in Surrey , its buyer John Paul Getty haggled with du Boulay over the value of a tapestry hanging over a damp patch on the wall of the Tudor mansion .
They were only five guineas apart , but the so-called richest man in the world refused to budge . The tapestry went into auction at Christie ’ s and made twice as much as Getty ’ s offer – du Boulay was thrilled .
On occasion , moreover , his enthusiasm could be matched by his temper . He once threw a typewriter at a colleague .
But it was his instinct to identify truly special ceramic pieces that distinguished him . Perhaps his most astonishing discovery came on a weekend break in 1966 , a story picked up by the Telegraph ’ s correspondent : ‘ Anthony du Boulay , the porcelain director , is not , on his own admission , particularly hot on tennis . His eye is inclined to wander . Profitably , as it turned out during a visit to a friend in Yorkshire .
‘ They borrowed another friend ’ s court . The path led past the French windows of the owner ’ s dining room ; du Boulay ’ s eyes were diverted to something on the floor under the sideboard . He peered . He forgot about tennis . What he saw was a blue and white Chinese porcelain flask , about 18 inches high and of a most unusual shape : like a slightly flattened gourd , with a narrow neck . Impossible to use . White shorts , Fred Perry vest and all , du Boulay knocked at the door .’
The useless dragon flask fetched £ 25,200 , a then world record price for a piece of Chinese porcelain ( its present value is estimated at £ 30 million ). Its consignor was delighted , as was their maid , who noted that the pot had impeded the progress of her vacuum cleaner .
Anthony John Houssemayne du Boulay was born on July 16 1929 at Emsworth in Hampshire , the son of Commander Charles Houssemayne du Boulay RN and his wife Mary ( née Morgan ). In 1914 , during action off the Belgian coast , his father had taken command of the destroyer HMS Falcon after the death of its captain and led the vessel to safety .
As a schoolboy at Winchester College , Anthony began attending country-house auctions . An early purchase was a rare surviving example of an 18th-century English porcelain vase made at Vauxhall and of museum quality .
When he joined Christie ’ s the auction house was still billeted in Spencer House , Green Park , having been bombed out of its King Street premises during the Blitz . The firm returned to St James ’ s in 1953 . Du Boulay later acknowledged that he had been in the right place at the right time : ‘ China was entirely inaccessible ; Japan was destroyed ; and Europe was heavily disrupted . London ’ s Oriental Ceramic Society , founded in 1921 , was an extraordinary mother lode of surviving expertise .’
In 1965 , du Boulay married Judith Elizabeth Makgill Crichton Maitland . That same year he sold Lord Margadale ’ s Chinese porcelain from Fonthill , including a massive Xuande cloisonné enamel jar and cover discovered in the basement .
Over the following years there were more extraordinary lots , including , in 1972 , the celebrated ‘ Umbrella Jar ’, a 14th-century blue and copper red vase that achieved £ 220,500 . ‘ I remember Goro Sakamoto bowing to it , before I knocked it down to him for a then world-record price ,’ du Boulay recalled .
Anthony du Boulay in Cook ’ s House Photo , 1945
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