Furniture

Highlight of the June 24-2 Neal Sons & Fletcher was this Regency green marble-topped table. With brass scroll supports decorated with swan heads and a trefoil base veneered in burr walnut, and with ebony stringing and mouldings, the 2ft 2in (66cm) diameter, 4ft 4in (1.32m) high table had been ensconced in a local country house for many years.

Originally belonging to the Dean family of Fareham House, Hampshire, this pair of Sheraton period mahogany folding card tables, right, was offered at the Cotswold Auction Company (15% buyer’s premium) on June 10.

David Rogers Jones has sold a lot of Welsh dressers in his 44 years as an auctioneer in the principality but only two of this rare form incorporating a grandfather clock. Peculiar to the mid-Wales county of Merionethshire, the form, c.1810, is well-known in the reference books but this is the first the auctioneer has seen since he sold another 15-20 years ago. And it’s a great example.

AN early 19th century bowfront chest of five over three drawers, mahogany strung with satinwood. Doesn’t sound too special does it? That’s until you realise that the description is of a fully fitted tea caddy measuring just 91/2in by 8in high (24 by 20cm). Lots of interest in this rare novelty saw it climb to take the top price of David Lay’s mammoth Penzance sale at £4400.

Every dealer has one – a painful story to relate about some rare and valuable object they let pass fleetingly through their hands at a knock-down price only to learn later of its true significance and value.

MID APRIL saw only the second sale held by Bamfords, the Derbyshire auctions firm (15% buyer's premium), but elated auctioneer James Lewis, talking from his mobile whilst filming a new episode of BBC TV’s Flog It!, felt it to be the best he had seen in Derby in at least five years.

WALES’S top dealer in things Welsh, Richard Bebb, holds his annual selling exhibition of vernacular crafts at his showrooms, Country Antiques, Castle Mill in Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire from May 28 to June 7.

A TIMELY debut for a garden and architectural items section at Andrew Hartley's April 9-10 sale (10% buyer's premium) brought in private buyers who usually fire this market but also a specialist who spotted a sleeper – a pair of carved oak corbels, each depicting the head of a cherub over an acanthus leaf and scroll base.

The regular specialist carpets and textiles sales at Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis (15% buyer’s premium) have shown what can be achieved in the provinces even in the most esoteric subjects, and the latest 560-lot event put together by June Barrett and Ian Bennett on April 10 underlined this. War in the Middle East seemed more likely than most to hit this market, but after a creditable 60 per cent turnover and a total just shy of £100,000, June Barrett was more than happy.

Black Forest Bear furniture is hugely popular and this late 19th/early 20th century stick stand in the form of a standing bear with outstretched arms, right, was one of the main attention grabbers at Clevedon Salerooms (15% buyer’s premium) on March 6.

Sourced from a small church in the West Country but apparently once part of the furniture at William Beckford’s splendid Fonthill Abbey, this George III pair of mahogany hall benches (one shown) were the highlight of Duke’s sale in Dorchester on April 17.

Netherhampton Salerooms (12.5% buyer’s premium) celebrated their first ever fine antiques sale in Salisbury on April 10 with quite a coup. The quality of this pair of 19th century Chinese lacquer cabinets, right, was such that they were always going to take a respectable price.

Coming up in SYDNEY: THIS table once graced the office of swashbuckling multi-millionaire Australian businessman Alan Bond, but its Australian connections go far deeper. English, and c.1810 it is a library table in the Greek Revival taste inlaid with English oak from HMS Resolution, Captain Cook’s final ship, and with ivory panels inscribed – Part of HMS Resolution – Sacred to the Memory of Captn. Cook – Deriving worth from Cook’s illustrious name – This ship shall live in rolls of endless fame.

Auctioneer Neil Freeman said that he could not remember a high price for multiple cased fish during his 20 years’ experience in the market for antique piscatoria. This 5ft 10in by 4ft 11in (1.78 x 1.50m) cabinet was one of a pair containing 15 brown trout caught by the ninth Earl of Coventry during a fruitful fly-fishing holiday in Ireland in 1879.

MAHOGANY is synonymous with the finest 18th century English furniture and its supreme place in English furniture history is celebrated from April 8 to 25 with a selling exhibition, Magnificent Mahogany – Two Centuries of English Furniture, at Mayfair’s Windsor House Antiques.

PIMLICO-based furniture designer David Linley pays homage to Art Deco with his latest furniture launch, the Salon Collection, comprising a console table, side table, coffee table, cabinet, sofa and mirror, all currently available from Linley, 60 Pimlico Road, London SW1.

The doom and gloom experienced in many provincial rooms prior to Christmas was nowhere to be seen in these Sussex rooms, who, despite the snowy conditions, took a respectable hammer total just shy of £170,000.

To date this year Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) have held five sales of furniture and carpets. These weekly sales are making a return to their Knightsbridge rooms for the first time in around 20 years after a recent peripatetic period of moving from Chelsea – their long time abode – to Bayswater and briefly back to Chelsea again.

It’s QUESTIONABLE how much influence a piece of furniture could have upon the writer using it, but certainly when the writer in question is Graham Greene, a writer of that fame can certainly influence the fate of a piece of furniture.

“SELECTIVE” can mean “poor” when auctioneers apply the word to bidding and the downward spiral of brown furniture prices has emphasised this. But it was an accurate enough description of bidding on furniture offered among the 1200 lots at the Clifton rooms, for when there was a piece of unusual quality it sold well.