Bill Brooks: founder of Christie’s South Kensington

William Frederick Brooks was born in Marylebone, London, in 1924, the son of Bertram Brooks, who drove a horse-drawn delivery van and was a former corporal in the Royal Horse Artillery who had served in India, and his wife Rose Plummer. He was educated at Capland Street School until he was apprenticed to a silversmith when he was 14. In 1941 he joined the RAF. He flew with 166 Squadron in 1945, operating Wellington bombers from RAF Kirmington in Lincolnshire. At the war’s end he was posted to the eastern Mediterranean in support of the Navy’s Palestine Patrol, attempting to limit immigration. He was demobbed in 1947, and the following year married his teenage sweetheart, Joan Marshall.

He fell into the auction business by chance. At lunch with the father of an old girlfriend, he met the chairman of Druce & Company, an auctioneer in Baker Street, and he joined the firm as a saleroom porter, floor sweeper and general assistant. This allowed him the opportunity to learn the furniture trade from the bottom up.

The chief cataloguer was jealous of his knowledge, and the young Brooks could only sneak a look at his papers and manuscripts during the precise hour he took for lunch. However, during that hour the cataloguer regularly consumed ten pints of beer, according to Brooks, plus a similar amount over a rather longer period each evening, and he soon keeled over, leaving the way open for Brooks. He progressed rapidly enough to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in 1955.

As now, the lower echelons of the business were not well paid, and when in 1956 he took a position at W. & F. C. Bonham & Sons, the family firm in Knightsbridge, his wages took a further cut. Wisely his wife had concealed from him that she was pregnant with their third child, fearing that he would not have taken the gamble. In other respects, however, the post was a considerable upward step, and he fully justified her confidence in his future.

He had wide responsibilities; along with antique furniture he oversaw a new collectors’ department that included such specialities as furs and arms and armour. Here it was that he honed his exceptional skills as an auctioneer. An approach to Phillips came to nothing, as it was apparent that the firm would not be big enough for two such characters as Brooks and the incumbent saleroom foreman, but in 1962, using the general knowledge that he had acquired, he moved on again, to set up his own business, Associated Valuers.

Valuations for probate and insurance are an important element of the fine art auction business, and it is not surprising that a struggling auction house, Debenham Storr & Johnson Dymond, which had been established in King Street, Covent Garden, since 1813, soon saw the benefit of an amalgamation with the new venture. Debenham was known for diamond and costume jewellery auctions, bankrupt and pawnbrokers’ stock and what were known as “police sales”.

Jim Collingridge, then a porter and later a distinguished gemologist and director of Christie’s South Kensington, remembered the arrival of a figure in an undertaker’s long black coat and homburg, introduced as “Mr Brooks, who will be working with us”.

Brooks became managing director and rapidly returned the business to profitability. In 1969 the firm acquired W. E. Coe & Company in Old Brompton Road, and emerged as Debenham Coe. Despite this turnaround, in 1974 the Allom family of architects and decorators, who had inherited the business from the original John Storr, wished to disengage, and Brooks had to look to his and the company’s future.

It was the practice of the large auction houses to pass on goods of lesser value to smaller firms — Druce had been Christie’s recipient; later they used Phillips — and Brooks suggested to Sotheby’s that it should formally adopt Debenham as its secondary saleroom. Sotheby’s, however, preferred to divide the market by period rather than value, and set up Sotheby’s Belgravia, its 19th-century rooms, instead. Guy Hannen, managing director of Christie’s, was quick to seize the chance. In his enthusiasm he told fellow directors that if they would not back him, he would buy the business himself. Brooks remained as joint managing director of the new company, with Paul Whitfield from Christie’s furniture department and a board drawn from both firms. Several specialist departments moved from Christie’s to South Kensington, and new specialities were introduced that would have been uneconomic in King Street. The enterprise was a great success from the start. Debenham Coe’s annual turnover had averaged £750,000; in its first year, South Kensington turned over £2,250,000, and there was even a small operating profit. When Brooks retired on January 1, 1987 — his 40th anniversary in the business — annual profits were more than £1 million.

The social side of the business was not neglected, and already in Debenham’s days Brooks’ parties were the talk of the trade. As his son Robert, now chairman of Bonhams, recalls: “He taught me auctioneering, and also the vital importance of the long, liquid, boardroom lunch.” One such convivial occasion at South Kensington, where the boardroom was on the gallery overlooking the main saleroom, was first disturbed by sounds of confusion from the afternoon sale below, and then by an inrush of porters with the relieved cry “Ah! There’s Lot 38” as they removed a “long set” of chairs from beneath the guests. Lunch continued as a stand-up buffet.

Brooks had acquired Bishopswood House, a small estate in Herefordshire, and after retiring he applied himself to restoring the house and growing the shoot. In 2005 he was asked by his son to open a new lecture theatre at Bonhams, and it was only when he had unveiled the plaque that he discovered that it was named after himself.

He is survived by his wife, Joan, and their two sons and daughter.

Bill Brooks, founder of Christie’s South Kensington, was born on January 29, 1924. He died on December 9, 2009, aged 85