It definitely feels like we’re no longer in the era of “Normal, Middle-Class William and Kate.” They’re the Prince and Princess of Wales now, with access to the Duchy of Cornwall piggy bank, and they’ve been on a spending spree for the past year. New bot farms were purchased, a growing communications staff, a hunt for a new and well-paid CEO, a new dresser for William, plus someone has to buy all of those cheap wigs for Kate. So would it surprise anyone that William and Kate were doing a little auction-shopping recently?

As withering put-downs go, few equal the inspired snobbery of the remark recorded by the late Alan Clark in his diary that ‘the trouble with Michael [Heseltine] is that he had to buy all his furniture’. But, though the line – which Clark attributed to fellow Tory minister Michael Jopling – lives on, has it now been royally dismissed?

I ask because none other than the Prince and Princess of Wales indulged in what might be described as fervent window shopping last Friday when they paid a discreet and entirely private evening visit to the salerooms of auctioneers Dreweatts, in Berkshire.

‘They were looking very, very interested,’ a devotee of the antiques trade tells me, adding that ‘everybody was all of a twitter to see them. It was the beginning of the very big champagne reception that auctioneers always have before a serious sale.’

And few sales are such landmark occasions as the one that lured in Prince William and Catherine. Beginning on Wednesday, it’s the three-day auction of the extraordinary collection amassed by Robert Kime, who oversaw the redecoration first of Highgrove and then of Clarence House for King Charles.

Numbering nearly 1,000 lots, ranging from Mughal carpets to Delft vases, it’s expected to bring in at least £1.5million – a tribute to Kime’s inspired but understated style, both as an interior decorator, as he described himself, and as a gimlet-eyed antiques dealer, whose genius won him the adoration of clients like Daphne Guinness, Lord and Lady Lloyd-Webber and Lord Puttnam.

Dreweatts, and Kensington Palace decline to comment on William and Kate’s visit. Others suspect that a discreet telephone bid – or two – may be made on their behalf.

‘Not so much to buy for themselves but as presents for Kate’s parents or brother or sister,’ suggests another admirer of Kime, who died suddenly last year aged 76.

‘Perhaps not the Ushak medallion carpet for £50,000, or even the George II longcase clock for £4,000 but the 15 Bronze Age axes for £2,000. What else would you give a mother-in-law?’

[From The Daily Mail]

LMAO, Carole Middleton’s broke ass isn’t getting any of that. Please – this was William and Kate shopping for furnishings for their separate homes, I guarantee. Kate barely moved anything into Adelaide Cottage last year because she believed that it would just be a temporary situation until they were given Windsor Castle (and enough space to live separately within the same medieval fort). Now it’s dawning on her that she needs to redecorate her separation home because she’s going to be there for a while. And what was William buying? New stuff for his separate home, which may or may not be Frogmore Cottage?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.