Vase

Police are investigating a raid on The Old Mill Antiques Centre in Bridgnorth, Shrophire.

After viewing events in London, Derbyshire and at the Antiques for Everyone fair in Birmingham, Fellows held their much-anticipated Blue John Sale in the Jewellery Quarter last week.

An impressive collection of pictures, studio pottery, furniture, personal effects and letters has been consigned to auctioneers Mitchells of Cockermouth from the estate of Mary Burkett, former director of Abbot Hall art gallery in Kendal.

There are signs that last year’s publication of ‘The Della Robbia Pottery’ by Peter Hyland has given a lift to the market for the distinctive wares produced in Birkenhead by Harold Rathbone and Conrad Dressler between 1894-1906.

This 13in (33cm) Macintyre & Co Florian ware vase dated to 1898 and designed by William Moorcroft is going under the hammer at Catherine Southon’s sale in Surrey.

The prize consignment of paintings, sketches, ceramics and ephemera produced by key members of the Rhead family of potters, offered by Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter on January 22-23, comprised 117 lots in all.

It was the most important consignment of work by the Rhead family to come onto the market in years. But would the respect in which the remarkable dynasty of potters are held translate into remarkable prices?

The second tranche of ceramics, paintings, sketches and ephemera produced by various members of the Rhead family of potters was sold at the latest fine art sale held by Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter.

Warren & Wignall of Leyland in Lancashire are offering a collection of privately-sourced Moorcoft including Macintyre, Claremont and Moonlit Blue in their upcoming sale.

This stoneware bird jar dated 1891 established a new auction record for Martin Brothers when it made £67,000 at the latest Arts and Crafts sale held by Woolley & Wallis.

A routine house call in the Macclesfield area saw Cheshire auctioneer Adam Partridge return with a superb pair of Elkington & Co ormolu and cloisonné enamel vases in the boot of his car.

The Madoura Collection lived up to its billing as the single most important sale dedicated to Picasso ceramics ever held when it went under the hammer at Christie’s South Kensington.

The small Wiltshire firm Jubilee Auction Rooms – opened in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee year in 2002 and soon to move to larger premises in Pewsey – received inquiries from all over the world when it emerged they had unearthed a remarkable jewel-decorated flask by William Burges (1827-81) in a routine house clearance.

Moorcroft Boy recorded one of the great comebacks in racing history when he recovered from a horrific injury at Aintree in 1995 to win the Scottish National the following year.

ON the evening of Tuesday, March 1 thieves broke into Willingham Auctions and stole four fruit-decorated Royal Worcester vases.

OF all the many subjects painted by Harry Davis during his long tenure at the Royal Worcester factory, among the rarest and most desirable are polar bears in an Arctic landscape.

This monumental 19th century Russian gilt-bronze mounted porcelain vase, created by the Imperial Porcelain Factory in St Petersburg, is thought to have been included in the wedding dowry of a daughter of Tsar Nicholas I.

Kensington Church Street dealer Paul Reeves did a double-take at Sotheby’s earlier this month. As well as curating their March 20 mixed-owner decorative arts sale titled The Best of British, he also mounted a week-long selling exhibition of his own stock under the same title in their Bond Street Galleries.

Offered in one catalogue, British Art pottery was the main thrust of two sales held by Woolley & Wallis staged at the end of last year.

The Birmingham industrialist and designer Matthew Boulton was the toast of the Paris salerooms last week when this impressive ormolu-mounted fluorspar vase was sold at Drouot Richelieu for €170,000 (£121,430) plus premium.