Decorative Art

Amusing animals assuming human characteristics are not just for social media. The anthropomorphic figure groups modelled by George Tinworth (1843-1913) for the Doulton Lambeth factory rank among the best of all Victorian art pottery.

This set of three tubeline tiles featuring polychrome birds in a grassland setting, is one of the many pieces on offer at The Cotswolds Decorative, Antiques & Art Fair at Westonbirt School.

The so-called auricular style – all organic fluid lines and asymmetrical shapes populated by marine invertebrates and reptiles – can first be found in the 1598 ornament book of Northern Mannerism, Architectura…, by Wendel Dietterlin of Stuttgart.

While good-quality but familiar Georgian silver such as entrée dishes, tureens and sauceboats estimated in the £6000-12,000 range met stiff resistance at Dorchester auction house Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) on June 28, two top-quality pieces made their money.

Pairs of Georgian candlesticks by the best-known London specialist makers such as William Cafe and Ebenezer Coker continue to sell well enough, as long as condition is acceptable.

This novelty silver scent bottle, below, appealing to two niche sections largely immune to the swings of the larger silver market, was a target for collectors when offered at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium).

Not every Victorian silver tea and coffee service was sold for scrap in the great meltdown of 2011– when at one point the price reached almost £30 per oz.

These outsize tongs, below, proved the major surprise at Adam’s (20% buyer’s premium) in Dublin on June 17.

As collecting evolves, many pieces of decorative, and historically captivating, Georgian silver are priced very keenly at both auction and retail.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

The recent death of designer Stuart Devlin and the book he published just a few months before could lead to a reappraisal of his work.

Considering that Norwich was, after London, the largest and wealthiest city in England from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, its assay office (1562-1705) was comparatively shortlived. As such, secular silver produced in the city rarely appears on the market.

Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) is currently selling across a number of auctions a cache of items from the family of HG Murphy (1884-1939), whose Falcon Studio produced some of the finest English silver of the inter-war era.

This Daum cameo and enamel vase decorated with a winter landscape from c.1900 is one of the pieces offered on the stand of Solo Antiques at the next Galloway Antiques Fair, where it is priced at £5950.

A Washington DC appeals court has upheld a decision to allow a ‘Nazi forced sale’ claim against a collection of medieval devotional art to go to trial in the US.

While the big-money lots often steal the headlines, much of the antiquities market remains affordable.

Vincennes, Sèvres and Meissen are among the stars of a Paris and London auction spotlight.

Bonhams’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) main summer sale of European ceramics took place at its Bond Street rooms on July 5. On offer were 245 lots which raised a hammer total of just under £600,000, with a 62% take-up.