Christie’s auctioneer Rahul Kadakia treasures his gift of the gavel
The newly appointed president of Christie’s Asia Pacific talks about his favourite part of life as a showman
Rahul Kadakia’s favourite gavel is not particularly beautiful. The lacquer has dulled, the wood is chipped with paint from the rostrum and the head sits slightly off-centre after cracking open during a Geneva sale, when a lot estimated at US$100,000 soared to US$1 million. It is, by any conventional standard, worn out.
“This gavel has sold billions of dollars,” he says, with a small laugh at the incongruity. Newly appointed president of Christie’s Asia Pacific, Kadakia, 51, speaks quickly, with an easy, natural confidence and charm perfect for the auction floor.
The gavel has been with him from the beginning. In 1998, preparing for his first auction at Christie’s in Geneva, Kadakia realised he didn’t have one. The larger offices in London and New York would gift new auctioneers a gavel from the bids department, but the smaller Swiss outpost had none.
The well-worn gavel is also the starting point of a collection that now numbers around 60. In Kadakia’s New York office, they range from antique auctioneers’ gavels to judges’ gavels and presentation pieces engraved for ship launchings. There are ivory varieties from when they were able to sell them at auction. Some are tiny “ladies’ gavels” with a pencil hidden inside the handle, designed so the user could jot down the buyer’s name the moment a lot was sold.
Why collect gavels? Sure, he enjoys the trading, dealing and negotiating with clients, he says, but most of all, he loves the showmanship of the auction at the end of it all.