Charlie has been an Auctioneer at Bonhams for 11 years and is head of period design. He's someone who loves the challenge and excitement of the auctioning process; from discovering antiques to making sure they get sold.

1000 LONDONERS
This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view.

www.1000londoners.com
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Twitter @1000_londoners

1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit www.chocolatefilms.com

Transcript:

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Bonham's here in Montpelier St and to the decorated sale. Now we'll start with lot number one, Victorian painted bamboo decorated chest. Something that always fascinated me were the arts, my father had always collected art and I used to love going to auctions with him. I used to find it absolutely fascinating the whole process and the sort of drama of the sale room. My name is Charlie Thomas, I’m the department director for furniture and works of art here at Bonhams in Knightsbridge. I think my love of furniture is the practicality of it - it's useful, it's all been made, I love the way that what we sell is still a very practical commodity - people buy these items to use and I love the way they look as they get older. I love the way the colour changes and they pasinate. I'm an environmentalist, it's the purest form of recycling. I lived in London until i was eight and then went to boarding school in Wiltshire. So I was basically living in this great big stately home, it was converted into a boy's boarding school in the middle of nowhere. I believe that children maintain
their innocence in the countryside for a longer period than they probably do in the city- you're exposed to a lot more that you wouldn’t be exposed to the countryside until you're probably a lot older. I enjoy that mix, I don't think I could live without having either one of those, I love the countryside but I also love being in London. I used to get very nervous before an auction, but with experience you lose those nerves and the nerves turn to the buzz of the sale room. Occasionally we do few charity auctions, I did one in Dubai for Dubai Film Festival- where first of all I saw Frieda Pinto's dress that she was wearing, she got up and auctioned off her dress and then Colin Firth was there and he got into the spirit of things and he auctioned off his dinner jacket he was wearing and that was all very amusing - wasn't in the auction catalogue.

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