Peter Firmin Collection Fetches £400k at Auction
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- Peter Firmin's artwork sold for more than £400,000 at Canterbury Auction Galleries as all 534 lots found at his Kent home cleared over a two-day auction, drawing bidders from around the world.
- The highest-priced lots were paintings featuring The Clangers and Noggin the Nog, with a signed Basil Brush artwork depicting the cheerful fox chatting to a mole selling for £6,000.
- An animated Gabriel the Toad character and an illustration of Nogbad firing a cannon at the Ice Dragon each fetched £4,200, while a piece showing Bagpuss with Emily and Professor Yaffle sold for £1,600.
- Sale curator Susanna Woodgate said it was "wonderful" to see "real fans" secure keepsakes of characters they loved, "perhaps to share with their own children and grandchildren."
- Canterbury Auction Galleries called it the largest collection of Firmin's art to go on sale, with some of the finds to be donated to The Beaney Museum in Canterbury, which already displays characters given by the family.
- Firmin, who died in 2018, produced Bagpuss, The Clangers, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine and Basil Brush with Oliver Postgate through Smallfilms from the 1950s to the 1980s — and Bagpuss was voted the UK's all-time favourite children's TV programme in 1999.
Why it matters: A 100% sell-through across 534 lots — including standout prices for The Clangers, Basil Brush and even Gabriel the Toad — shows that characters from 1950s–80s British children's TV still command a global collector market 25 years after Bagpuss topped the UK's all-time favourite poll and seven years after Firmin's death. The donation of surplus pieces to The Beaney Museum secures part of the archive in public hands while letting dedicated fans own the rest.
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