Bidders make a song and dance out of rare attic find
A very rare bound volume of dance music and instructions discovered in a Lutterworth attic sold for £3,720 including fees at auction in Market Harborough this week.
John Playford’s The Dancing Master is an early surviving example of a hugely influential English dancing manual. First published in 1651, it ran to 18 editions by 1728, each reflecting the latest fashions in ‘country dances’.
The volume went under the hammer at Gildings Auctioneers on Tuesday, 8 September.
It was uncovered during an attic clear-out, after being passed to its owners by a Lutterworth music teacher in the early 1990s, as part of a wider collection of musical instruments and sheet music.
The book was hidden among these items, tucked inside a small cardboard box wrapped in a 1937 King George VI coronation handkerchief.
As working manuals, copies of The Dancing Master were used and regularly updated by dancing instructors, meaning very few survive. This volume, which offers a fascinating snapshot of 17th-century social customs, contains two early editions and supplements dating from the late 1690s to 1702.
The book includes the handwritten inscription 'John Stevens, Lutterworth, 1698', which suggests it had a local owner more than 300 years ago.
Gildings director Will Gilding said: “The winning bidder made a two-hour journey to attend the auction in person and fend off online competition from further afield. Putting a value on an item as scarce as this fascinating piece of social history, which was offered with a guide price of £3,000 to £5,000, is not straightforward. So, we were delighted for both our buyer and our seller, who by chance were seated next to each other during the auction.”
The dances in the books were designed for social occasions, with participants moving in paired formations, accompanied by popular tunes on the violin or flute.
This heavily restored bound volume is missing its title pages as well as some other pages. It contains an unknown edition of The Dancing Master, thought possibly to be the ninth edition, along with the second edition of The Second Part of the Dancing Master, dated 1698.
It also includes An Additional Sheet to the Second Part of The Dancing Master and Twenty Four New Country Dances, thought to have been printed in 1702.
Will Gilding added: “Finding a battered old book during an attic clear-out and seeing it go on to sell for more than £3,000 is something we'd all love to experience. It really is a reminder that remarkable pieces of history sometimes do turn up in the most unexpected places.”
Those with similar items to sell can arrange a free, no-obligation valuation at www.gildings.co.uk.