Looks like the Lockdown Quiz was rather too daunting and appears to have defeated everyone! We didn’t get one completed or even semi completed response to the quiz. The Christie’s Christmas Quiz from 1978 was indeed a fiendish beast, and if I’m honest, I don’t think, even with the help of Google it was possible to answer many of the questions. There certainly were some really perplexing questions; who knew, for example that Augustus John and King George V were the only British Army Officers that were allowed to keep their beards in World War One (Question 23)? Or the answer to question 84 – ‘If James Yates is 5338, who is 2341’?….the numbers are pewterers numbers, so, obviously, 2341 is Robert Hitchman!….of course!…
There were some rather standard empirical art history questions, which I guess many people would be able to answer quite easily – Question 26, for example, which asked to match up the ‘ism’ to the artist; or question 14, which asked to name the artist who painted particular paintings – such questions seemed pretty easy to deal with, especially with the help of Google – but many other questions seemed to be rather obtuse – I particularly liked question 16 – ‘L.S.D. stands for what?’….no, it was not acid (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide), but ‘Librae. Solidi. Denarii.’
Some of the questions were too obviously time specific – question 22, for example ‘What is the record for an ‘elephant’ – one needed to know that an ‘elephant’ is a folio size, and that the record at auction in 1978 was £216,393; or question 61, ‘Which proved more expensive: vultures, bantam cocks or cocatoos’ – (they are all birds modelled by the Meissen porcelain factory, and hence, it’s Vultures….of course!).
Anyway, I know you will all be waiting to see the answers to the quiz, to see how you did – so here are the answers!….Hope you did well, even if you didn’t submit your answers for the prize!
Answers 1-40:
Answers 41-100:
They were really hard, weren’t they!
Mark
antiquedealersblog 