Lessons From Silver Studio in Valuing Wrightscale 16mm

 

No apologies for looking at parallels with an eminent Silver Studio artist as we ramble on about valuing your Wrightscale models

Wrightscale 15mm Excelsior models

You like good pictures and it is interesting to consider the question: what constitutes a lifestyle asset.

Malcolm has inherited the copyright for  Frank Price, the last Chief Designer of Silver Studio and so we can illustrate our thougts with piuctures from another art form. Our readers like original illustrations, so here we go!

Previously, I observed that a degree of scarcity increased the value of a Wrightscale model. They are not produced in the volume that, say, the fine plastic goods purveyed by LGB have achieved. Now, this blog post goes on to argue the opposite. The fact that there are other models out there actually increases the value of yours.

An artist needs to put the work out there, for the benefit of previous customers as well as to increase future sales. Silver Studio is a case in point. As Philip Hook remarks, the most over-worked word in the vocabularies of dealers etc and here I would include fashionable merchants of fabric and wallpaper, is ‘iconic’. Thus for example, we have the Liberty print. The same dense, floral fabric patterns crop up from decade to decade and are still to be found in catalogues today.

Design by Frank Price of Silver Studio. The original is 8 by 8 cm, that is at the stage where he would begin discussions with the client in this case possibly Liberty. Illustration courtesy MD Wright  

The underlying assumption is that the arts are good insofar as they are ‘typical’ or ‘recognisable’. A woman will pay a 10% premium for a blouse in a print which has her friends cooing ‘Ah! I so love Liberty!’ The pleasure goes both ways. The purchaser feels that the premium price was worth it. The friend feels pleasure in having spotted the iconic design. On the strength of their shared joy, they will indulge in another skinny cappuccino together.

Liberty owes many of its hallmark prints to the artists of the Silver Studio, especially to Frank Price.

Frank Price also produced chintzes, often inspired by older patterns. He gave them an edge, however, for example, updating an old Harry Napper birdie design.

 Harry Napper was a highly respected Silver Studio designer 1896-1906. The brief for Price was to give it a modern edge. He did so by creating a design in three planes. One plane very cleverly seems to reach towards the viewer. The bird comes out to meet the observer. The supporting foliage is indicated on the second plane. Behind yet again are shadows.

As well as homage to Harry Napper, Frank has extracted the visual language of Japan, the use of shadows to underline reality. Silver Studio designs regularly borrowed from Japan and so, just as in the case of the Liberty fabric. The observer says ‘Aha!’

Design by Frank Price for the Silver Studio SD16879. Reproduced courtesy of MODA, Middlesex University

Unfortunately for Silver Studio and Frank Price, their names were not recongnised until too late, after the Studio closed.

There is iconic art and iconic Wrightscale. Malcolm’s Unique Selling Point is Live Steam in 1/19 scale, running on 32mm track. This already demanding characteristic is combined with accuracy, or, more correctly, fidelity to a prototype. These qualities were not chosen in an arbitrary way.

A model at this scale on that track is one that runs on real-life 2’ or 60cm gauge. This gauge was originally rather obscure, used by the very trail-blazing Festiniog (Ffestiniog) railway. The history and personalities appealed to him. Then the gauge ‘jumped’ to France. Narrow gauge innovators such as Decauville specialised in 40 and 50cm until a Captain in the French Army, Prosper Péchot, proved the worth of 60cm. The Army reluctantly adopted his ideas; the German Army copied him enthusiastically and soon the gauge was widely used. Again, this is quite a powerful story, moving from military exercises to the trenches of the First World War. After the French and Germans adopted the gauge, forestry railways and public carriers in Britain began to adopt it as well. Behind the ‘icon’ there is a genuine artistic voice.

Wrightscale 16mm'Excelsior' in 0-4-0 configuration as used on the Kerry Forest Tramway

This USP is unattractive to other model-makers. If they want accuracy, they go electric. If they want ‘Live Steam’, they go freelance. Wrightscale models have been pirated and reverse engineered, but the connoisseur can easily tell the difference. There are parallels with work fromn SIlver Studio. At the bottom of the Frank Price design can be seen ten coloured rectangles. Each on is a colour which has to be separatelyprinted on to the surface of the fabric. This requires 1000% more labour, much more skill and great possibilities for wastage.

You will observe the essential paradox in Malcolm’s art. There is a similar paradox found in Silver Studio. Both had chosen a USP which is tricky and 'uncommercial'. This tends to make them scarce. At the same time, there are/were enough examples out there to create a market.Even more importantly, there are enough people with the good taste to appreciate rare quality when they see it. For good quality 16mm scale, the possible market is between five and ten thousand, judging from the membership of the 16mm Association and the attendance at the AGM. Of course only a fraction would be possible purchasers. Under a thousand Wrightscale locomotives have ever been produced.

Wrightscale 16mm model of 'Excelsior' in 0-4-2 configuration,as used until it was scrapped

More would-be buyers than sellers? You have a rising market. Prices will go up. 

If you are interested

Philip Hook Breakfast At Sotheby’s is a shrewd and humorous look at making money on the art market. It is well written. You can see that he even insists on an apostrophe in his title. Not many authors go for this level of detail.

For the full story of Festiniog to First World War by way of the French Army, read Colonel Péchot: Tracks To The Trenches

For more about the Silver Studio, look at the online archive of the Museum of Domestic Art and Architecture at www.moda.mdx.ac.uk

For more about Frank Price, read Frank Price: Golden Hand Of The Silver Studio