Latest News Articles by Terence Ryle
Dove design wings its way to auction
01 July 2019Scantily catalogued as a Georgian/Victorian micro-mosaic plaque depicting a dove, a classic example of the pieces produced by Italian craftsmen and beloved by wealthy Britons on the Grand Tour was equally appreciated by bidders at Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium).
That’s the spirit at £5900
01 July 2019Top-seller at Richard Edmonds’ (20% buyer’s premium) latest specialist motoring accessories sale was a hanging lightbox proclaiming the virtues of Pratt’s Perfection Spirit.
Somerset’s cosmopolitan touch
24 June 2019A sale with multinational appeal – and a baroque revival cabinet spared from Rentokil.
Carved coral Tripani adviser
24 June 2019Italy – or more specifically Sicily – came up trumps for Stamford auction house Batemans (20% buyer’s premium) in the form of this 4½in (11cm) carved coral and copper-gilt urn and cover.
Cohray’s handmade modernism
24 June 2019In the 1950s French designer Raymond Cohen and his firm Cohray were producing a range of ultra-modern furniture that – although made for the machine age – were all put together by hand.
Esther Scroll with £25,000 golden touch
24 June 2019Topping by some way an offering of 300 pieces of jewellery at Lyon & Turnbull’s (25% buyer’s premium) Edinburgh sale was a Persian gold and niello decorated Esther Scroll holder.
Tyneside ceramics hero – and footballer
24 June 2019Ceramics commemorating the coronation of Edward VIII are less rare than often supposed, having been produced in abundance before the coronation was aborted. Most bring relatively small sums.
Sofa table suited to current tastes
24 June 2019Other than davenports, few pieces of functional antique furniture fell farther down the price ladder during the slump than sofa tables but the examples here bucked the fashion at Moore Allen & Innocent (20% buyer’s premium) of Cirencester.
Howard comfortably unearthed
24 June 2019Featuring in the same two-day auction as a £7000 cache of Beatrix Potter ephemera found in a Cumbrian Victorian villa which had made national headlines, this less-heralded sofa impressed at 1818 Auctioneers (17.5% buyer’s premium).
Brass bound to sell
24 June 2019The fitted interior of this William & Mary casket, below, was later but its fine brass-bound marquetry exterior with hidden lock mechanism made it the most eye-catching lot at Mallams’ (22.5% buyer’s premium) auction in Cheltenham on June 6.
East meets West in £11,500 cabinet
24 June 2019The resurgent interest in quality Japanese material and the slower revival of English furniture were both evident in a cabinet on stand sold at West Sussex auction house Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium).
Chest attributed to Flemish-born London maker Gerrit Jensen tops furniture from Worcestershire manor
17 June 2019A consignment of furniture from the medieval Eastington Hall, Worcestershire, boosted Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) latest sale in Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire.
Why EM Ginn’s Expert sounded perfect at £8500
17 June 2019The sale of a remarkable gramophone collection two years ago at the Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium), in which an EMG gramophone took £6500, prompted the consignment of another large collection to the June 4 sale at the Cheltenham rooms.
Arts & Crafts oak from the second and third generation
17 June 2019Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) offered 12 impeccably provenanced pieces by Peter Waals (1870-1937) at Oxford on May 23.
Thornhill’s Chinaman strikes a chord in Ayr
17 June 2019More of a curiosity than a clock but a decorator’s dream, a life-size caricature of a smiling Chinese man clutching a willow-pattern plate with gilt dragon hands emerged in the Ayr rooms of Thomas R Callan (17.5% buyer’s premium).
Collectors tune into Diss sale for mechanical music delights
03 June 2019Best-seller and one of the biggest surprises at the white-glove sale of a mechanical music collection was a musical box, the catalogue entry of which could be summarised as ‘famous name, doesn’t work’.
Moorcroft shows Australian appeal
03 June 2019While British studio potters were battling to break through in the 1930s, established factories, even Moorcroft, were struggling to survive the Great Depression.
Pet food signs serve up tasty sums
03 June 2019Coming fresh to market from a corn merchant’s shop, seven early/mid- 20th century enamel signs extolling Spratt’s pet food for dogs, cats and canaries attracted UK collectors to Bishop & Miller’s (20% buyer’s premium) Stowmarket sale on May 17.
Candlesticks back in spotlight
03 June 2019The hope at every house clearance came true for Reading auctioneer Chris Boreham when he unearthed this set of four Georgian silver rococo candlesticks at a local home.
Studio pottery at a price to suit
03 June 2019Headline stratospheric results should not put collectors off, as a London auction underlines.