Decorative Art

The missing element in a rare series of vases by a celebrated Arts & Crafts designer has now been located for a Cheshire country house after it was spotted in an ATG advertisement.

IN an unusual trade initative, three London dealers have combined forces to buy and sell one of the largest silver collections in private hands and one of the biggest for sheer numbers ever to be offered in the trade.

By the mid 19th century it had been completely discredited as a science, but between the 1820s and 1840s phrenology was at the peak of its popularity. And Edinburgh, where the first phrenological society was founded in 1820, was one of its centres.

A long-standing member of both the British Antique Dealers’ Association and the vetting committee at the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair, the late Polly de Courcy-Ireland, who died last year, was without doubt one of the country’s leading authorities on treen. First opened in 1972, her shop in Alresford, Hampshire was a favourite with collectors for over 30 years.

IT is almost 10 years since the noted Wiltshire glass dealers Delomosne last held an exhibition with accompanying handbook, and that was the collection of cordial glasses belonging to the late John Towse.

As if they will need it, some of the lots included in Christie’s June 13-14 sale of items from the collection of HRH The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930-2002) have received a little posthumous pepping up.

Rare and significant works of art from the Old World will just occasionally surface, unrecorded, in the New.

Giving Scotland’s once-neglected art glass further standing in the saleroom, a good range of Monart and Ysasrt glass emerged at auction recently North of the Boarder.

Pottery specialist to leave landmark Kensington Church Street premises for Mount Street

ATG have learnt that the strong prices for precious metals on the commodities market has meant some dealers have started selling silver and gold antiques as scrap.

A Bedford woman who was downsizing homes decided to enter this piece of family silver into her local auction house. It proved to be the stellar entry in W&H Peacock’s April 7 antiques sale when, after generating considerable pre-sale attention from the London silver trade, it far outstripped the saleroom’s unpublished expectations of around £3000-5000, selling to one of their number for £28,000 (plus 12.5% premium).

AS ATG went to press, the price of silver appeared to be steadying following the dramatic fall seen late last week.

A magnificent Charles II silver fluted fruit sideboard dish saved from export in 2005 is now on display at the Royal College of Physicians. It will be displayed alongside their existing collection of memorabilia relating to Sir Francis Prujean, the President of the Royal College of Physicians (1650-1654) whose life-saving cures were recorded in Pepys’ diaries.

AFfter three auctions and more than 1200 lots devoted to porcelain from one factory one might have thought there was a chance buyers would have tired of the Zorensky collection of Worcester porcelain. Not so.

Platinum was the talk of the commodities world last week after mining company Lonmin, the world’s third largest producer of platinum, was touted as the target of a possible takeover bid.

This medieval bronze jug was the talking point of Sotheby’s sale of the contents of Easton Neston last year when it was bought by London dealer Daniel Katz for a premium-inclusive £568,000 against expectations of £60,00-80,000. The rare jug is cast with a slew of insignia including the Royal arms as used between 1340 and 1405, a maker’s mark and the inscription To My Lord Wenlok.

The London Assay Office is advising extra caution when buying antique silver following the assessment of spoons bearing forged marks submitted by four auctioneers last year.

Alongside the Americana offered in the New York salerooms earlier this month, there was a strong representation of early English ceramics. Sotheby’s January 20 sale of the pottery collection of Harriet Carlton Goldweitz was followed the next day by Christie’s auction of the Mrs J. Insley Blair collection, which included some key Staffordshire productions alongside its blue chip American furnishings.

A Susie Cooper vase sold for £3850 on eBay on January 13. The vase, which measures just over 12in (30cm) high, is decorated with a hunter in a loin cloth stalking two deer or ibex close to a stylised tree – an unrecorded design of around 1931 or ’32. Similar pieces are known from a publicity shot taken in the 1930s although most were thought to have been destroyed during a hit on the factory during the Blitz.

A funding package worth £7m has been agreed allowing construction to begin on a new Wedgwood Museum in the heart of the Potteries at the company’s Barlaston headquarters.