At an Antiques & Interiors auction on November 25 a set of five gelatin prints showing the infamous Cottingley fairies were offered on behalf of a vendor from the North Shore suburb of Wahronga, Terry Ingram reports.
Theodore Bruce's was especially honoured to host their presence. For apart from the odd piece of Wedgwood Fairyland lustre and an occasional watercolour by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite, Sydney's northern suburbs are the last places one would expect to be blessed with fairies.
Or, for that matter, a real, as opposed to a plaster gnome, as one also featured in the photos.
The handtinted photographs, of which an unknown number were made over the years from the original negatives, appear on the market from time to time. They were taken by two young girls Elsie Wright (1901-1988) and Francis Griffiths (1907-1986) in 1917.
The girls claimed the photos, taken in Cottingley near Bradford in Yorkshire, England showed real fairies.
They perpetrated one of the great hoaxes of the 20th century and the response to their appearance is evidence of the potential deep and enduring unforeseen power a hoax can command..
Many British survivors who had lost loved ones during World War I turned to Spiritualism in a desperate attempt to make contact with the dead.
The author and creator of Sherlock Holmes, the deductive genius and great sceptic, was taken in.
At home and on trip to Australia the novelist Conan Doyle used their appearance to promote his belief in a currently accessible other-life.
Many lives must have been changed and not necessarily for the better by the ensuing belief.
The hoax held some power until the 1970s with photographic companies not being unanimous in exposing it.
Just over sixty years after the photos were taken one of the girls admitted to using cut- outs from a children's book to doctor the photos.
There appeared to be little doubt that the photos sold at Bruce's at least were genuine specimens from original negatives.
They were also mounted on brown paper and colour tinted as others have been.
Some auction bids in other rooms may appear to come out of Never Never Land where fairies live but there was no disputing the interest in the latest offering at Bruce's
They sold for many multiples of their estimate loosely in the few hundreds of dollars to maket $3400 hammer, $4148 with premium.
Other prints of the same snaps and material relating to the hoax have made frequent appearances in the saleroom over the years.
In March 2001 an entire archive of master copies of the original photographs and other negatives along with a three-page commentary commissioned by photography experts to prove that the pictures were not faked, fetched £6,000 at auction an auction held by Bonhams & Brooks auction in London's Knightsbridge.
It included previously unpublished pictures of Elsie and Frances holding hands.
The price paid at Bruce's is within the range of other sets recorded as having come up at auction.
Victorian paintings of fairies in Victorian art, including Frederick McCubbin's, fetch in the millions of dollars.
