Tufty to appear at Christie’s

Regular readers may recall that earlier this year we reported an appearance by a number of ‘Tufty’ puppets in front of the Antiques Road Show team when it visited Sherbourne in Dorset.

Robert Smith, Dorset’s head of road safety, rescued the puppets from a skip during an office re-organisation many years ago. They were in a very moth eaten state but they still caught the imagination of the Roadshow’s experts.

Now the same puppets are to be offered for sale at the internationally acclaimed Christie's Auction House in London. "Christie’s have agreed to auction the puppets at a specialist auction of fine toys, puppets, dolls and automata in their London showrooms in October," explains Robert Smith, Dorset’s head of road safety. "If we manage to achieve a sale we will use the proceeds towards a worthy road safety project in Dorset."

According to Robert, Christie's are very confident of achieving a sale, and he has promised to keep us informed of the outcome.