Furniture

This Aesthetic movement X-frame armchair took £11,000 against an estimate of just £100-150 at Lawrences of Crewkerne.

The sale of a family collection of British and American art and antiques assembled by three successive generations of South Carolina enthusiasts will go under the hammer through Childress Gaffney auctions in Greenville on February 9.

The traditionally ‘dead’ period between Christmas and New Year was enlivened by the December 28 sale at Wotton Auction Rooms (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Gloucestershire – to the extent that more than 20,000 people suffering withdrawal symptoms worldwide viewed it online and 1360 of them registered to bid.

Since the early 1990s Wolfgang Thillmann, a German and philosophy teacher, has devoted himself to collecting Thonet bentwood furniture and become an internationally acknowledged expert in the process.

“Every specialist has an object that they dream of having in their sales,” says Matthew Rubinger, Christie’s head of handbags and accessories. “For me, it’s the aluminium Explorer trunk by Louis Vuitton. The market is full of silver-coloured metal trunks, but this piece is their inspiration.”

Never out of fashion, the best furniture by Robert Thompson is going through one of its periodic surges – as evident at Wilkinson’s Doncaster rooms last month (ATG No 2369) and at Sworders of Stansted Mountfichet (ATG No 2363) in October.

A table designed by a teenaged Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52) for Windsor Castle sold for £23,500 (plus 21% buyer’s premium) at Gorringe’s of Lewes on December 4.

Capping a vintage year for prime-period Mouseman furniture, a dining suite attracted huge interest when offered for sale in Yorkshire recently.

In a specialist maritime and scientific instruments auction there were only three furniture lots at Charles Miller (24% buyer’s premium), but one of them led the day.

A unique, high-quality specimen table fitted with Rockingham porcelain plaques is on offer at the next Galloway Fair, which runs from November 23-25 at Wentworth Woodhouse in South Yorkshire.

Mirrors in a variety of styles and types found new homes at the recent Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair (October 2-7) in Battersea, reinforcing the event as a destination for private buyers and decorators on the hunt for interesting and unusual home furnishings.

Two Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairs made for Glasgow’s Argyle Street Tea Rooms starred at Lyon & Turnbull’s Decorative Arts sale in Edinburgh last week.

“It was a great deal of work,” said Adam’s (20% buyer’s premium) managing director James O’Halloran of the operation involving the removal of 700 lots – including the ‘Armada Table’ and other massive pieces – to the Drogheda stately home venue of Townley Hall for sale.

The name of the Russian Arctic circle riverine port of Kholmogory derives ultimately from the Finnish Kalmomäki for ‘corpse hill’ or ‘cemetery’, but this is regarded as coincidental to its reputation for carved bonework.

Included in the Important Design sale at Phillips in London on October 18 was an unusual mantel clock designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869- 1944).

The Horlicks collection of Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson furniture was sold at Sworders’ auction for £236,000.