Furniture

THE strength of this Bearne’s (15/10% buyer's premium) March 2 & 3 Devon outing lay in the 72-lot furniture section, although the fairly routine ceramic selection was also notable for a high take-up by lot and some healthy prices. What turned out to be the two star furniture lots were given cautious catalogue entries and estimates which reflected a knowledge of the current wariness among specialists about the numbers of altered, or overly restored, pieces of furniture peppering the market.

The 20in (52cm) high dinanderie vase by Jean Dunand, pictured, right, with original black patina and sleek Art Deco outlines belying its early date of 1913, zoomed to €60,000 (£40,000), five times the estimate, at the Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) sale of 20th century decorative arts on March 4.

THREE large Art Deco plaster panels, two details shown right, which had lain unseen and unloved in the basement of a London property for years, had an extraordinary appeal which eluded both their owners and cataloguers judging by their reception at Wotton Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium).

WEEKLY antique valuation days at their recently opened estate agency in Welshpool have begun to pay dividends for Shrewsbury-based auctioneers Halls (15% buyer's premium), and specialist Jeremy Lamond hopes that the firm’s presence there will help broaden their Welsh client base.

THE market for 19th century mahogany furniture remains, as Gloucestershire auctioneer Martin Lambert observed after Taylor & Fletcher, Humberts (10% buyer's premium) successful 455-lot mixed February 24 sale, extremely selective. But that is not a euphemism for moribund.

KIDSON-Trigg (15% buyer's premium) reported a healthy turnout for their 725-lot February 26 sale with steady interest for collectable ceramics such as Beswick and the better-quality furniture attracting a mixture of local and UK private and trade buyers.

BUYERS may have been thin on the ground for the more routine furniture in this 712-lot Crow's, Dorking (10% buyer's premium) sale on February 25, but the four telephone lines booked for a Georgian Chippendale rectangular tilt-top occasional table ensured this would be a hotly contested entry.

ARE there any corners of Britain where the trade can enjoy an old-fashioned auction without the intrusion of confident private buyers? If so, Abergavenny is no longer one of them.

THE final 130 or so offerings in Abbotts (10% buyer's premium) 675-lot Suffolk sale on March 10 showed that good examples of standard late Georgian and Victorian furniture can still find buyers if the price is right.

HELPED by both the input of new collectors and the appearance on the market of some good pieces, Troika pottery certainly experienced renewed interest in 2003.

Setting a new house record at Carmarthen auctioneers Peter Francis on March 9 was this 18th century Coromandel Coast marquetry inlaid padouk, ebony and ivory chest of five short and two long drawers.

THE first day of a Belle Epoque sale held by Doyle of New York on February 25-26 awoke what one might, with greater reason than most, term a sleeper – the remarkable piece of furniture, catalogued as “An Italian Baroque style Mahogany Bed”, seen right. The bed was part of the Woodruff collection, comprising stock from a former Hollywood business that from 1922-60 was a popular rental source for the film studios, but stock that for the past 40 or more years has been in storage in Oklahoma.

ALTAR surrounds and other architectural elements from a 19th century Belgian church proved one of the bigger attractions at a February 8 sale held by in Los Angeles by Bonhams & Butterfields – a sale titled ‘Revival of the Centuries’.

INITIAL arguments in the £1.75m High Court dispute between Christie’s and Taylor Lynne Thomson over a pair of porphyry urns indicate that both parties intend to fight their corner vigorously.

AT 1620 lots, the January 27-28 sale held by Keys (10% buyer’s premium) at Aylsham, was a little smaller than many of the Norfolk rooms’ mammoth events but it followed a familiar pattern. Speedy selling of two- and three-figure pieces was supported by a handful of better offerings selling into four figures.

DEALERS are always looking out for a seriously undercatalogued lot and at Amersham Auction Rooms (15% buyer’s premium) on February 5 they found one.

NONE of the February auctions in Brussels were timed to coincide with the Foire des Antiquaires de Belgique (Belgian Antique Dealers’ Fair), staged from February 6-15, perhaps because this was the first year that the new-look fair had attracted such international attention.

ALONG with most examples of standard furniture, 18th and 19th century bureaux are not bringing the prices they were a couple of years back and vendors are having to adjust expectations in order to find buyers. Nevertheless, more unusual examples, or those with an extra degree of quality, still meet enthusiastic reactions and it was interesting to see two 18th century Continental walnut bureaux among the higher sellers at Lawrences' (12.5% buyer's premium) February 3-5 sale.

This pair of early 19th century mahogany and brass-bound peat buckets soared to £68,000 plus 19.5% premium – six times their estimate – at Bonhams’ March 2 fine English and Continental furniture sale in Bond Street.

Furniture activity in London has been fairly low-key so far this year, but two mid-February furniture sales not only looked a step above the rest but were also fairly similar in their scope. Christie’s South Kensington’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) 502-lot sale on February 11 was one of their five annual sales of more select, varied and decorative content.