David Stagg; Convivial, founder of Bloomsbury Book Auctions
Hyfler/Rosner
February 13, 2009
David Stagg: founder of Bloomsbury Auctions
One of the "three musketeers" who, 25 years ago, founded
Bloomsbury Book Auctions, now simply Bloomsbury Auctions,
David Stagg was a very effective auctioneer and a brilliant
business-getter.
Good auctioneers, like successful politicians and
barristers, must have a touch of the thespian; they must
command the attention of their audience, and by cajolery and
charm bend it to their will. In fact, Stagg had had early
dreams of becoming an actor. He certainly possessed the
charm, which, together with his ready laughter, won him
friends throughout the trade. Collectors and bibliophiles
also learnt that behind the laughter was profound knowledge
and wide reading.
The son of Sidney and Edith Stagg, David Stagg was born in
1947, in Greenwich, southeast London, which remained home
throughout his life. He was educated locally and in the
1960s he was already enjoying London life so much that he
turned down a place at the University of Edinburgh.
Like so many others who were to become eminent in the book
trade, he began his career working in a junior managerial
capacity for Ben Weinreb (1912-99), the runner turned
bookseller and print dealer whose business in Great Russell
Street came to "outdo every bookseller in the world" in the
field of architectural books. In 1968 Weinreb sold his
entire stock, uncatalogued, to the University of Texas, and
thereafter he was able enjoy his enthusiasms, although he
never stopped buying and selling, and building libraries for
collectors such as Paul Mellon.
Weinreb, who also had an early flirtation with the stage,
was particularly passionate about the architecture of
London, publishing with Christopher Hibbert (obituary, Dec
29, 2008) the invaluable and anecdote-filled The London
Encyclopaedia (1983), and Stagg was an eager acolyte. The
buildings of London became a lifelong enthusiasm for him
too, and he was a considerable authority on the subject.
Weinreb's training and example also meant that he was ever
alert to the saleable possibilities of everything.
A notable instance came after Stagg had joined Sotheby's in
the mid-1970s. He was in Edinburgh working on the great
sales from the Signet Library when he noticed that a skip in
the street outside one of the city's theological colleges
was filled with old volumes. He plunged in and found that
many were rare and valuable. On inquiring within, he secured
for sale not only the books that had been thrown out but
many more still on the shelves. Auction catalogues are given
codenames for reference, and the only indication of the
collection's unusual background at the sale a year later was
the codeword "skip".
In 1968 Sotheby's had taken over Hodgson's Rooms, the
specialist book auctioneer in Chancery Lane, which dated
back to 1807. Ironically, in 1909 when Hodgson's had been
offered Sotheby's for £30,000 the opportunity had been
turned down. It remained a very old-fashioned, slow-paced,
business, a distinct anomaly in the expanding Sotheby's
empire. However, at Hodgson's the nucleus of what was to
become Bloomsbury was forming. Lord John Kerr was head of
the book department, and among Stagg's colleagues were Peter
Collingridge and Michael Heseltine, still a consultant to
Bloomsbury.
Eventually a turnaround time that might stretch to 14 months
between the consignment of a property for sale and payment
to its owner became unsustainable, and Frank Herrmann was
called in to reorganise the department. Hodgson's Rooms was
sold - the name remains as a wine bar - and the books moved
to a building across Bond Street from Sotheby's. This had
originally been the "greenery-yallery" Grosvenor Gallery of
the Aesthetic Movement, and later was equally well known as
the Aeolian Hall. Unfortunately, Herrmann did too good a
job. He promoted "fast sales", with three weeks between
consignment and auction and payment a week later. However,
this rapid turnover made it difficult to find enough items
to sell, and it was also faster than ideal for Sotheby's
accountants. One way that an auction house can make money is
by having the use of buyers' money for a month or more
before it is passed on to the vendor.
At the same time departments were encouraged to turn away
small-value lots, a change of policy that particularly
affected the book trade. In recessions the leading auction
houses are always quick to cut staff, and the financial
downturn of 1981-82 was no different. Stagg was among the
redundancies. Herrmann had already left Sotheby's, and his
suggestion that there was an opportunity for a new
specialist business offering the lots valued at under £1,000
or so that the leading houses no longer believed to be worth
their while, fell on receptive ears. He was joined first by
Stagg and then by Kerr, who made an ideal chairman.
Bloomsbury Book Auctions opened for business in 1983,
initially in Herrmann's Bedford Square house, but soon moved
to more spacious premises in Hardwick Street, near Sadler's
Wells Theatre in Islington.
For the first ten years Stagg was managing director, but he
was better suited and happier in his subsequent role as
chief valuer, appraiser and business-getter. He was a big
driving force behind the start-up, growth and more recent
flourishing of Bloomsbury; he was truly devoted to the
company, and worked with remarkable energy, and without fuss
and fanfare putting in the hard graft and late hours as it
expanded.
In April 2004 the business moved closer to the heart of the
book trade, taking a building in Maddox Street, on the
Mayfair side of Regent Street and close to Sotheby's. At the
same time the name was changed to reflect the launch of
sales beyond books, in adjacent fields such as prints,
photographs and modern art. Despite his illness since cancer
was diagnosed last year, Stagg continued to spend an
enormous amount of time and energy in organising a
Bermondsey warehouse and arranging the final vacation of
Hardwick Street.
Beyond the world of books Stagg enjoyed riding, skiing and
cricket, and he was a member of a Greenwich pub football
team known as GBH. In Frank Herrmann's words, his was "the
laugh that always echoes through our offices", and to
another old friend Stagg, or "Staggy" as he was known, "was
marvellously lived in". He was a valued raconteur and lover
of parties, drinking, smoking and the good things of life.
In 1977 he married Jean Hill, with whom he had two
daughters. That marriage ended in divorce, and in 1995 he
married Jane Bown, with whom he had a son. They all survive
him.
David Stagg, book auctioneer, was born on May 22, 1947. He
died of cancer on January 17, 2009, aged 61