A Quirky Auction

            In writing the weekly Auctions and Antiques column in the Philadelphia Daily News I became familiar with numerous auctions throughout the Region.  I never encountered Brown Brothers of Buckingham, PA until I recently perused AuctionZip, an online service which previews area auctions each week. 

            I found the Brown Brothers listing for their January 21^st sale particularly intriguing for several reasons.  The listing read: Who are we? Where did we come from? Have we developed linearly from cave man to contemporary man, as we have been taught, each generation building on the next? Or are we part of vast millenial cycles, advanced civilizations rising and falling beneath tectonic plates, fire and brimstone, forcing us back into caves until our metaphorical rebirth. The circle repeating itself over and over, as cyclical as the Great Precessional Year itself.

Scholarship has yielded many clues holding us in fascination. Hieroglyphic tombs from Egypt, cuneiform tablets from Babylon, the Old Testament, Vedic Sanskrit, Homer, Herodotus, Orion, Stonehenge, Giza, Machu Picchu, Minoa, Atlantis, all tidbits, jigsaw pieces in a vast game of discovery. Perhaps we should add one more - maps. From these ancient sources much knowledge can be deciphered. This week we touch cartography, although not from antiquity, most certainly in a world most familiar to us...

continued at Brown Bros.

            This philosophical approach to promoting an auction was unusual to say the least. I thought it was at least worth investing a phone call to learn more.  Alas I can’t tell you more because when I called to speak to “Mr. Brown” (I don’t know how many Brown Brothers there are) he relayed through a subordinate that he was too busy to come to the phone to discuss his auction.

            In my experience most auctioneers are accommodating, hospitable and eager to be informative about their sales.  Then there are those who are just plain quirky and apparently comfortable dwelling in caves. Brown Brothers Auction is not one I’d care to attend anytime soon.