One of a set of talismans, strung with naturally-holed stones to ward off the 'evil eye'
The Glanfield Collection of Farm and Craft Bygones is an array of museum-quality artifacts from a Guildford collector, glimpses of our pastoral past on auction at John Nicholson's Auctioneers on June 20
An iron-bound shepherd's pot used to hold Stockholm tar for treating lame sheep
Guildford's John Glanfield helped to found the Rural Life Museum in Farnham in 1973, and in the process acquired a taste for collecting relics of rural life in Britain. His hoard of bucolic treasures, gathered over almost 40 years, spans a vanished lifestyle of the 18th and 19th centuries.
“When I helped to restore exhibits at the museum in Tilford my friend gave me an ancient wooden harvest bottle in thanks", John explains. "It’s a small beer cask carried by reapers as they worked long days scything hay and corn. That prompted me to collect more farming bygones.”
Now, aged 82, he's ready to pass on a collection of artefacts too varied to possibly summarise. John Nicholson's in Haslemere will be auctioning the items off, with lots that include the clog-making kit of a 19th-century Welsh cobbler, a set of talismans for warding off the 'evil eye', and a decorative shepherd's drinking horn with a whistle tip.
“In a sense", he muses, "I was beach-combing a historic shore for whatever the last tide cast up." Collecting items like this, he believes, is often "our final chance to rescue what little has survived, from sometimes uncaring hands".
These relics that are often overlooked until it's too late - making John's auction a rare opportunity for those looking for a piece of our pastoral past.
The auction takes place on June 20. You must register ahead of time if you want to bid
