£445,000 for 2,000-yr-old electric lamp

Jan 23, 2011 |

London

An antique electric lamp has been sold at an auction here for a whopping £445,pounds after it was found to be a 2,000-year-old Roman relic. The 19-inch-high ornament fetched £445,250 when the contents of late school teacher John Barratt’s home were sold, Daily Mail reported on Friday.

It was acquired in the 1950s by John Barratt’s father Sir Sydney Barratt, a distinguished scientist who helped create the World War II Dambusters’ celebrated “bouncing bombs”, it said. Following John’s death in 2010, his niece sold the mansion with an asking price of £6 million, and some of the contents have now been auctioned by Christie’s. Auctioneers were stunned when bidding raced rapidly towards half a million, boosting the total proceeds from the sale to £3.2 million.
“The item came into us in the form of an electric lamp that had a 1970s-style red lampshade on top of it. We had a closer examination of it and unscrewed the lamp and took the lid off to look inside,” Georgiana Aitkin, Christie’s head of antiquities said. —PTI

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