Bagpuss creator's artwork sells for £400k at auction

Artwork by the creator of Bagpuss has sold at auction for more than £400,000, attracting bidders from around the world.

The sale included more than 500 paintings, books and collectibles that were found at Peter Firmin's Kent home when it went up for sale.

The artist and puppet maker co-created characters including Bagpuss, The Clangers, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine and Basil Brush, with fellow creator Oliver Postgate.

All 534 lots sold during a two-day auction, Canterbury Auction Galleries said.

Among the highest-priced lots were paintings featuring The Clangers and Noggin the Nog, while a signed Basil Brush artwork, showing the cheerful fox chatting to a mole, sold for £6,000.

An animated Gabriel the Toad character and an illustration of Nogbad firing a cannon at the Ice Dragon both fetched £4,200.

Bagpuss and his friends remained "rightly popular", auctioneers said, with a work showing the famous pink cat with Emily and Professor Yaffle selling for £1,600.

Susanna Woodgate, who curated the sale, said: "It was wonderful to see real fans managing to secure a keepsake of something they loved, or perhaps to share with their own children and grandchildren."

The auction house said that it was the largest collection of Firmin's art to go on sale.

Some of the finds from Firmin's home will be donated to The Beaney Museum in Canterbury, which already has a display of characters given by the family.

Firmin, who died in 2018, created Smallfilms with Postgate, producing some of Britain's best-known children's television characters from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Their work enjoyed a revival around 2014, auctioneers said, and Bagpuss was voted the UK's all-time favourite children's television programme in 1999.

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