Furniture

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.

“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.

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.

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.

The Horlicks collection of Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson furniture will be sold at auction in Stansted Mountfitchet this autumn.

Catalogued as Anglo-Indian but probably Indo-Portuguese, this ivory, tortoiseshell and white metal casket, below, was a box of delight for the vendor.

The post-war industrial modernist designs of Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand remain firm sellers. Pieces from their best-documented commissions, like the furnishings created in the 1950s for the student residences of the Cité Universitaire in Paris, are particularly strong.