Furniture

It’s a rare sale these days at which an English furniture standard challenges quality Chinese pieces for price, but the top end of the trade certainly rated a 6ft 3in (1.9m) William and Mary walnut and featherbanded bureau cabinet offered by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

Just as fine English mahogany is selling below par, Chinese furniture, particularly in the desirable huanghuali hardwood, is booming.

Simplicity and geometry are key to the works of Eugène Printz, one of the Parisian practitioners of Art Deco design.

Private bidders were overtaken as dealers found warmth in the best traditional furniture and chattels offered at auction.

Ivory frames to this 18th century wooden box, below, with tortoiseshell panels, did nothing to hold back bidding on currently hugely popular Indo-Portuguese material.

Celebrating 10 years of sales at Sworders’ (23% buyer’s premium) custom-built auction house (the firm has actually been going since 1782), chairman Guy Schooling was in a justifiably buoyant mood.

“My granny used to say, if you get stuck sell the French table,” the vendor told Harrogate auctioneer Elizabeth Pepper-Darling.

Entered from the same consignor, two c.1810 mahogany cellarettes were offered singly, rather than as a near pair by Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) at Abingdon. However, after two centuries, they will remain together after selling to the same private buyer on the phone.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Unmistakably the work of the Viennese avant-garde, this gem-set silver plated table clock sold for €205,000 (£186,000) at a recent sale held by the Rotterdam auctioneer Vendu Notarishuis.

An Edwardian Carlton House satinwood desk of the type which was once a best-seller at auction, but an early casualty of the furniture slump, was back in favour at the Hartleys (17.5% buyer’s premium) summer sale in Ilkley.

Thornton Kay, long-time organiser of the annual Salvo fair, has been in touch to say what he’s been doing on his year’s sabbatical from organising the event.

It was catalogued as 19th century, with a replaced plate, later back batons, small chips and wear, age cracks and the gilt painted surface was thick and not original.

Stuttgart auction house Nagel (33% buyer’s premium) held its summer sale of Asian art in Salzburg having acquired an impressive array of quality pieces from European and other collections.