They have monikers that sound like exotic birds - cleeks, spring-neck brassies, long-nose baffing spoons - but actually specify types of antique golf clubs, a sampling of the nearly 800 in the collection of Jeffery Ellis, which Sotheby's is to sell in New York on Sept. 27 and Sept. 28. The pre-sale viewing begins Sept. 20.
"It's our first single-owner golf memorabilia sale in New York, and we expect it to realize more than US$4 million," said Leila Dunbar, the specialist in charge.
Ellis' clubs were made from 1600 to 1930, when the era of the wooden-shaft club came to an end. Fashioned with shafts of aged hickory, ash or lemonwood, these early clubs have heads with an insert of ram's horn or a lead backweight. They are works of art, with the golden patina of age.
"Golf has generated the most creative equipment of any sport," Ellis said.
There are clubs with long wooden heads called long-nose clubs (used to drive, play shots toward the green and putt); long, middle and short wooden spoons (used as fairway clubs for approach shots); irons (for getting balls out of cart tracks, sand, rocks or high grass); and rakes (employed to get relief from temporary pools of water). The variations seem limitless, but then there are 14 clubs in an average golf bag.
Dunbar, herself a golfer, doesn't know who will bid on these clubs: individual collectors, golfers or owners of golf courses. Most of the lots are estimated to sell for a few hundred US dollars.
"There are more than 56 million golfers worldwide, and half are in the US," she said. "Every golfer collects something: a logo ball, medals, commemorative shirts and hats, sporting paintings and posters. These clubs represent the history of the game before the 1930s. Golf is not like baseball - think of baseball cards - which has 50 times more memorabilia."
Ellis, a native of Oak Harbor, Washington, has been a serious golfer since he was seven. He has collected antique clubs for more than 30 years.
"My goal was to collect one of every different kind of antique golf club, but only the most creative, innovative and historic examples - clubs that tried to push the envelope and make golf better," Ellis said. "I strove for clubs no one else had, and clubs that did not exist anywhere else in the world. Variety is what I was after."
He is not referring to the vintage clubs one sees at garage sales and on eBay.
In 1979 Ellis quit his job at an insurance company and turned his hobby into a full-time business: buying, selling and trading antique collectible golf clubs on his Web site, antiqueclubs.com. He also works as a consultant to golf companies like Callaway.
"Then, in the 1980s, he saw there was no definitive reference book on clubs, so he decided to write one," Dunbar said. "It took him 10 years to finish The Club-maker's Art: Antique Golf Clubs and Their History." In 2003 he published a second book: The Golf Club: 400 Years of the Good, the Beautiful and the Creative." Almost all the clubs in the sale are featured in these books.
Why is he selling his collection?
"It's the natural conclusion of what I've been all about," Ellis said. "I've done what I set out to do. I've collected, and I've written books on the topic. There's not much left for me to track down, acquire and write about. I always saw myself as a curator, never as a final owner."
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