More than 150 items from Margaret Thatcher’s estate, including her prime ministerial dispatch box, wedding dress, power suits and several handbags are being sold at auction in London.
The sale at Christie’s comes after the V&A reportedly turned down an offer to exhibit the late prime minister’s clothes, a claim that was denied by the museum. The auction house describes it as “providing public and private insights into the trajectory of a political titan”.
The 186 items are being sold individually with estimates for the lots ranging from £200 to £180,000. At the top end of the range is an art deco emerald and diamond necklace by Chaumet.
The red dispatch box is expected to sell for up to £5,000. Thatcher’s wedding outfit – comprising a midnight blue velvet dress, a matching soft brimmed cap topped with a pink ostrich feather, a blue velvet muff and an art deco brooch – is estimated to fetch up to £15,000.
There is also a figure of an American bald eagle, with the inscription: “Presented to the Hon Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain for staunch and spirited support of the market economy principle. The award was presented by the Hon Walter H Annenberg with the best wishes from Ronald Reagan, president of the United States June 13th1984, presented at the Foreign Office, 10 Downing Street.”
In total, more than 400 objects from the estate of Britain’s only female prime minister are being offered by Christie’s, with the other 233 lots being auctioned in an online sale, which began on 3 December and ends on Wednesday.
The online auction includes one of Thatcher’s dressing tables and a set of five caricatures, one of which features John Major in a child’s harness and reins being pulled by a woman carrying a handbag. The woman’s face is not visible but it is clearly intended to be Thatcher, reflecting the perception of her as a backseat driver during her successor’s reign. The caption reads: “Life is tougher for today’s children (Barnado’s survey)”.
Handbagging is a verb that the Oxford English Dictionary notes was “coined in the 1980s by Julian Critchley, Conservative MP, with reference to Margaret Thatcher’s ministerial style in cabinet meetings” over her sometimes ruthless conduct towards cabinet members.
So naturally a number of her bags appear in the auctions, including a classic navy blue leather item by Launer, London, being offered with a Washington University silk scarf and estimated to fetch up to £3,000. Together, the two sales are expected to raise about £500,000 for unnamed beneficiaries of Thatcher’s estate.
Thatcher, the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, died in 2013, aged 87.
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