Original artwork of the Enid Blyton character Noddy will be auctioned on the Internet from today, May 5th, until May 18th with some 150 lots expected to fetch $100$150 (€109-€164) up to $2,200$2,800. It is expected that more drawings from the Enid Blyton Company Noddy archive will make from £250£350 sterling (€424-€593) to £600£800 at a separate live auction in London next Thursday, May 11th.
A letter containing the first images of Noddy, Big Ears et al fetched £35,000 sterling at a Sotheby's auction in October 1997.
According to Ms Catherine Porter, specialist in children's and illustrated books and drawings at Sotheby's, Blyton created a story for a nodding wooden toy doll in spring 1949. Her publishers had seen the work of Dutch illustrator Harmsen van der Beek. "They had their meeting, he and the Enid Blyton publishers, and subsequent to the meeting he wrote a letter to her saying I've visualised your characters like this. And he drew the characters around the top of the letter. . . it was the very first appearance of Noddy." Little did he know the value that would later be put on that simple letter. Noddy went on to sell more than 200 million copies and was translated into more than 40 languages.
This is the third auction from the Noddy archive. At the first auction in 1997, most purchasers were private collectors. "It was opening up a whole new collecting area. And they were people who were just passionate about Noddy and had not necessarily bought anything at auction before. A lot of them were new to Sotheby's and new to the whole concept of buying at auction. So it was quite exciting introducing them to the whole auction world as well," she says.
An item of special interest in the forthcoming live auction is a drawing entitled "Bumpy leapt up lovingly and knocked Noddy into a puddle!" The drawing depicts Mr Golly filling Noddy's car with petrol at the "Golly Garage", which was redrawn in the 1990s reissued edition. The garage was renamed "Toy Garage" and Mr Golly replaced by Mr Sparks. The ink and watercolour drawing is expected to fetch £400£600 sterling.
Says Ms Porter: "Yes, Golly was a golliwog. He was a very black golliwog like the golliwog you used to get on the jam jars. And it was never intended with any racist overtones at all. And in the early 1990s when the books were reissued, the golliwogs were drawn out and the books were made much more politically correct."
Images for the www.sothebys.amazon.com online auction are being uploaded today. "Each lot has a shelf life of between 12 and 14 days so you can enter a bid and at the end it will be closed and whoever has the highest bid will get that lot," she says.
Online, each lot has a description, an estimate and a picture and it says how many days, hours and minutes are left for bidding time. Moreover, it shows the bidding history as the bids start developing. "We're finding with the Internet auction that most people bid in the last few hours, so something can be on there for two weeks and have no bidding activity. Then suddenly two or three hours before the end lots of people start bidding.
"I think what they do is they don't close until there's been a gap of 10 minutes. So if there's suddenly frenetic bidding activity, they will wait for that to cease. And then they will leave 10 minutes," she says.
Readers can enter and register for the online auction at any time from today, May 5th until May 18th.
www.sothebys.amazon.com jmarms@irish-times.ie
