The Ivy bar sells for £31,000 at auction

The Ivy restaurant’s private bar was sold for 30 times more than its estimate at a charity auction featuring memorabilia from the iconic restaurant this week, fetching £31,250.

The celebrity hangout, which has famously played host to the likes of David Beckham and Brad Pitt over the years, auctioned off a host of memorabilia including artwork, pane glass windows, a cocktail shaker used to serve Tom Cruise and even the ladies’ toilet at Sotheby’s this week.

Every item listed from The Ivy at the Made in Britain auction was sold from its oak front door, which fetched £27,500, to the restaurant’s private bar, which sold for £31,000. The bar was only expected to be sold for up to £1,500.

The biggest seller of the night was a painting by Bridget Riley which sold for £413,000, while Turner Prize winner Sir Howard Hodgkin was among four artists who saw their personal auction records smashed, after his work, Ivy, was bought for £106,000.

The auction, which was prompted by a refurbishment of the venue, raised more than £1 million for Child Bereavement UK.

Director of The Ivy Fernando Peire said: “I am thrilled that through The Ivy’s sale of art and artefacts we were able to raise such a significant sum to benefit Child Bereavement UK. On the brink of the restaurant’s centenary, the extraordinary interest raised by the Sotheby’s auction underscores the public’s enormous affection for The Ivy and its private dining room. We very much hope that the items sold tonight will become talking points in the homes for which they are destined – for at least another hundred years.”