Kevin O'Connor chases his dreams at one of the last of the old-fashioned country auction houses, Purcell's of Birr.
I bought a camel saddle at Purcell's in Birr. The farmers were strangely silent as the bidding stalled at €20 - no use for it among the flat fields of the midlands. It was so beautifully made, from wood and brass, that I could not see it consigned back to whatever decaying pile of old Anglo-Ireland it had come from. A piece of Lawrence of Arabia for €20? No contest. I bought it. Purcell's is that kind of place, where you encounter the bizarre, the unusual and the plain exotic. Dust-caked oil paintings, first editions of Canon Sheehan's Knocknagow, Victorian china and obsolete farm implements whose purpose will test your mental agility. And there are always the sought-after "box and its contents", a sure lure for auction addicts.
Purcell Auctioneers draws the crowds once a month, mostly from its catchment area of Tipperary, Offaly, Laois and Galway, for its auction sales of about 700 lots at affordable prices. This is the midlands on the cusp of change. The last of old Ireland, where a Sinn Féin handbook from 1914 lies on the same table as the (British) Army Field Manoeuvres of the same year and where Dan Breen's My Fight for Irish Freedom goes in the same breath - and fetches less - than the green regalia of the Leinster Regiment of the first World War. The prices reflect collectors' values, not politics.
There are small household items illustrating the narrative of how Anglo-Ireland became Free State Ireland. Collins and de Valera, bitter in life and death, now side by side in framed sepia portraits that graced many a chimney piece. First-day stamp covers of the new Republic, then Pope Pius and John F Kennedy. Hearth and Home magazines. Embroidered fire screens and croquet mallets. Bayonets and opera glasses. It speaks of the erosion of the Protestant ascendancy and of the rise of Catholic small farmers, who became the merchant class, their sons in time becoming professionals and dumping the "old stuff from the old house".
Political amnesia sits as still as a butterfly on a summer window sill as Conor Purcell clips through the items in the auction room. "Everything is here to be sold. Come on now. A 15-day wall clock. Who will start me at €30? All right, then: €20. Okay, €10. I'm bid €12 . . . €14." Within an hour he has disposed of more than 120 lots, from horse harnesses to a Victorian fireplace, a framed drawing of a female nude to a New Metropolitan clothes wringer. A Haig whisky advertising sign, a copper bed warmer, two milk cans, a suitcase with Cunard Line labels and a dinner menu from the same ship.
Bidding is by numbered catalogue, but the old-time dealers prefer the nod, the raised eyebrow, the cough, the look away, the flick of the rolled-up catalogue. Purcell has sharp eyes for decoding gestures; people have different body language. Farmers, dealers from Dublin and Sligo, women with new homes who want a trinket from the past. By lunchtime he has disposed of 300 lots, with just a pull at a bottle of water to ease his throat.
Late back from lunch with a Sligo dealer who tells me that Purcell's is best for bargains, I miss an 18th-century first printing of Maria Edgeworth, the Longford author, but get Dan Breen for €40. As far as the crowd is concerned, the items - and the patchwork of history - are are all of a piece: they are hardly interested that Breen began his career as a republican gunman by campaigning against conscription in Tipperary. The green regalia of the Leinsters (lot 272: €140) and a book of locally enlisted men show how little impact he made outside his county, although the ledger might have identified some of his targets for killing.
So it goes on. A thick-set Armagh dealer fingers a double-barrelled muff pistol and ponders bringing it home to Crossmaglen. A set of Victorian iron gates will give "tone" to a new bungalow in Terryglass.
By 5pm we are all done. Paul Purcell is overseeing the dispersal of the 700 lots his brother has disposed of since mid morning. Many customers pay on the spot and leave with their booty. On the way out I meet Albert Jordan from Wicklow, wheeling his portable forge of a double bellows and pannier. A metal worker, he had his eye on the forge, a beautiful piece of crafted iron and leather. "I paid €520, but nobody else was going to get it. I had my eye on it since I saw the catalogue on the internet." Could he, I wondered, make me a set of camel shoes? I have the saddle.