Original Noggin the Nog, Bagpuss, and Ivor the Engine Artwork to Auction
Peter Firmin, original Noggin the Nog artwork in colour for the cover of The Saga of Noggin the Nog - book 1, monogrammed with title to lower margin
More than 400 pieces of original artwork by illustrator Peter Firmin for some of the UK's most popular children's characters including Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, The Clangers, and Noggin the Nog come to auction at The Canterbury Auction Galleries on July 31 and August 1.
Firmin, together with writer Oliver Postgate, created the characters for a series of books and animated television series. Firmin died in 2018 aged 89. The artworks include storyboards, original watercolours and pen drawings including the first, hand-drawn comic strip of Ivor, and were discovered by his children at his home in Kent while the family farmhouse was being tidied up to be sold.
The Canterbury Auction Galleries call the studio collection items a “treasure trove” and said it is the largest collection of Firmin’s work to come up for auction.
The Firmin family has donated the original Bagpuss doll and original family of The Clangers to Canterbury’s Beaney museum which has been holding them on loan.
