This time I’m going to show you a wide selection of mostly smaller items that were sold in the first and second Crazy auctions, and occasionally some of the other auctions, from jewellery to various random objects.
As always, to enlarge the images you can click on them, and to read more about each item you can click on its name. Enjoy!
Freddie Mercury was an avid collector of objects, who had a real eye for beauty, loved all things feline and had a great sense of humour. And that’s clearly in evidence here, as we continue looking back at my photos from the 2023 A World Of His Own exhibition that took place at Sotheby’s.
This time we’re looking at items to do with cats, clothing, books and music that he collected. Most of them are from the auctions Crazy Little Things 1 and Crazy Little Things 2, which raised £10.3 million altogether! But there are a few bits and pieces from other auctions mixed in too, just as there were some items from the Crazy auctions in my previous posts.
So there’s plenty to look through, and as before you can click on the images to enlarge them and the item names to learn more. Hope you enjoy as always!
For this post we’re going to look at a whole bunch of awards, because Freddie and Queen were honoured with a deluge of well-earned accolades during and after his lifetime, so there were lots on display in the exhibition. I’m not going to list them all, obviously, but I’m going to present a big selection that I took photos of, to give you a thorough sense of what was there. Most were sold in the Crazy Little Things 2 auction while a few were in the On Stage sale.
The vast majority of the sales awards adorned the walls of a room featuring Freddie’s royal cloak and crown (which you’ll see in a later post in this series). There were a huge number of silver, gold and platinum awards there, for the sales of singles and albums, and occasional awards for videos. But there were also some awards scattered around elsewhere too. A lot of the awards for disc sales look very similar by their nature, but there are a few more striking ones in amongst them.
So let’s crack on with it. As before you can click on the images to enlarge them and the award names to find out more, and I hope you enjoy!
Freddie Mercury didn’t just love the art of music, he was also a keen fan of paintings and prints. For example, in the first part of this series looking through the photos I took at the 2023 A World Of His Own exhibition at Sotheby’s, we saw some of the Japanese imagery that he had in his collection.
So now it’s time to dig deeper and see more of the art that he owned and had on display at Garden Lodge, his residence from which I recently shared many images of his furniture here and here. Most of these pieces were therefore sold in the At Home auction, but there are some from the Evening Sale and Crazy Little Things auctions too.
Towards the end of this post you’ll also see the famous door to the house, which itself is a work of art due to the fan tributes that completely cover it. And on a related note I’ll also show you my own visit to the property – not that you can see anything from the outside, but it still feels nice to say I’ve been there.
So with a reminder that you can click the names of the artworks to read more about them and the images to enlarge them, I hope you enjoy looking through it all!
But there were so many things to see on that theme alone that I had to split them up. So here’s another batch of beautiful and interesting items, where you can click on the names to read more about them and on the photos to zoom in. Enjoy!
Welcome to the third part of my look back at the exhibition Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own, which took place at Sotheby’s in London in August 2023, prior to the big auction in September that year. Last week I gave an introduction to the auctions and looked at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion and other items from that country, and now for this post we’re going to start looking around his famous home in London.
Garden Lodge was the 7-bedroom house in Kensington where Freddie resided during the 1980s until his death in 1991. He really made it his own, purposefully decorating and furnishing each room in its own unique style. Reading about it in the accompanying book, with the photos used to illustrate it, emphasises how utterly exquisite it was.
Back in 1980 he bought it for £500,000 in cash (over £2 million in today’s money), as he was keen to snap it up after his first visit. But when it went back on the market in February 2024, estate agent Knight Frank was seeking offers of over £30 million! It’s not clear if it’s been sold or for how much since then.
The At Home auction didn’t fetch quite that much, but the huge myriad of items, which had to be spread across multiple gallery rooms in Sotheby’s, altogether fetched a massive £5,314,823!
So I’m going to share a wide selection of furniture and accessories from Garden Lodge that I saw in the galleries, which I’m spreading over 2 posts as there’s so much of it. Most of these items are from the At Home auction, but there are a few from the other auctions mixed in.
As before, you can click on the images to enlarge them and the item names to see the Sotheby’s descriptions. I hope you enjoy!
Yesterday I began sharing photos from my visit to the Sotheby’s exhibition Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own back in 2023, which was a wonderful experience and a great privilege. It’s taken all this time to go through my pictures, figure out what most of the items are and what they sold for, and then organise it all here, but I managed it in the end and I’m excited to share it with you. You can click on the photos to enlarge them, and on the item names to see their full descriptions on the Sotheby’s website.
In the first part we looked at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion, so now I’m going to share a myriad of other items from that fine country that he owned and treasured, including vases, tea sets, ewers, incense burners, presentation boxes, books, dolls and more.
Most of the items were sold in the auction In Love With Japan, but some were included in the other auctions as well. In any case, they further demonstrate just how deep Freddie’s fascination went. And you can’t blame him. So I hope you enjoy this wide selection.
Over two years ago, back in September 2023, Sotheby’s auctioned off nearly 35,000 items (in roughly 1,500 lots) that once belonged to the legendary Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, from his home at Garden Lodge in Kensington. The event was called Freddie Mercury: A World Of His Own, and included everything from fashion to furniture, artworks to awards, ornaments to instruments, printed books to handwritten lyrics, and much more, proving that he was quite the avid collector to say the least! There were 6 auctions spread over a week, with the total sales coming to a whopping £39,936,046!
Before the big sell-off, however, Sotheby’s put most of the items on public display for a month, and I was one of the lucky 140,000 fans who went along to check it out. I certainly couldn’t afford to bid on the auctions, so this was as close as I could ever possibly get to it all. And it was an absolutely incredible privilege – a kind of magic if you will – as Freddie had such exquisite taste and attention to detail.
I came away with some lovely souvenirs as well, including a massive album of photos that I took, a large tote bag that I bought in the shop and have made good use of since, and the beautiful limited edition hardback book I ordered.
At the time I briefly mentioned the exhibition in my 40th birthday roundup, as going to see it was one of my big treats for myself. But it was always my desire to go through the photos in my collection properly, by finding details about the items and how much they sold for, using the Sotheby’s website and the accompanying book, before sharing as much of it here on my blog as I could. So I’ve been working on it bit by bit when time allows, and I finally finished going through it all this Christmas. It’s been a truly fascinating project for me.
So to mark the 50th anniversary of Bohemian Rhapsody in late 2025, and the 10th anniversary of my blog in early 2026, it gives me great pleasure to present hundreds of my photos of items in the exhibition – each of which you can click on to enlarge – along with links to all the details on the Sotheby’s website. You can see even more items on their site that I haven’t included of course, and it’s easy to create a free account if you want to see the final sale prices.
Neither Sotheby’s nor Queen, nor anyone else connected with the auctions or Freddie, have been involved with this, I’m just a big fan. While I could have just picked a few favourite items, I wanted to do the exhibition and Freddie justice, especially as many of these pieces may never be seen in public again.
The exhibition was split into 4 main sections – Japan, Home, Crazy Little Things and On Stage – and there were 6 auctions along the same lines (plus a second Crazy auction and an Evening Sale for the most significant items). So my posts will generally reflect that as well. Within each section of the exhibition, most items were from the auction of the same name, but there were often items from the Evening Sale or the other auctions mixed in as well, because they fitted the theme.
So here’s the first part of my extensive look back at the exhibition, with an overview of what it was like to visit, and then a closer look at Freddie’s love of Japanese art and fashion. I hope you enjoy!
Well Eye Never 
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