Furniture

SETTING a new auction high for English furniture, this commode of c.1770 was knocked down for £3.35m earlier this month.

ESTIMATED at £3000-4000, this 18th century mahogany decanter box retaining a pair of profusely cut double-magnum sized decanters c.1780, attracted multiple bidders at Suffolk saleroom Neal Sons & Fletcher of Woodbridge.

IN the week when dealer John Hobbs was due to meet his former restorer a London court, Dreweatts have announced they will be selling his stock at auction in December.

LIGHT has been shed on the £52,000 price tag awarded an oak and gilt-bronze coffer on stand at a Sworders Interiors sale.

THE unexpected highlight of a recent sale conducted by Surrey auctioneers Lawrences of Bletchingley was this Anglo-Indian rosewood and ivory inlaid butterfly form jewellery box entered for sale from a local private source.

IT measures over 11ft (3.4m) wide and stands 11ft 6in (3.5m) high, was built in Melbourne and is carved over the entire surface with figure and details emblematic of the foundation and history of the state of Victoria.

THIS George IV rosewood, parcel gilt and gilt metal mounted drum table, in the manner of Morel and Seddon, c.1825 topped Dreweatts latest furniture sale at Donnington Priory with a bid of £40,000.

BONHAMS withdrew 16 lots, with a combined top estimate in excess of £200,000, from last Wednesday’s Bond Street furniture sale after they had good reason to believe the consignor was connected with disgraced ex-BADA dealer John Hobbs.

An independent report has confirmed that antiques are environmentally friendly with a piece of antique furniture likely to have a carbon footprint 16 times lower than that of a newly manufactured item.

THE Viennese mahogany commode, pictured here at the top, has undergone a remarkable transformation since it sold along with its companion pair at auction in 1993 as part of the Thurn and Taxis sale.

POLICE in Surrey are seeking information about this man, pictured here, in connection with the theft of six paintings and Georgian writing desk worth total of around £25,000 from an antiques shop in Dorking earlier this month.

THE unexpected highlight of the sale conducted by Cheffins of Cambridge on June 9-10 came courtesy of this mahogany writing table. Estimated at £4000-6000, it sold at £68,000 (plus 17.5 per cent buyer's premium).

WINNER of the Country Life-LAPADA Object of the Year, announced last week at the London International Fine Art Fair at Olympia, was the so-called Hausburg cabinet belonging to Kensington Church Street dealers Butchoff Antiques.

THIS Regency mahogany Carlton House desk, embellished with barber's pole stringing and marquetry fleur-de-lys medallions, was consigned for sale at Moore Allen & Innocent of Cirencester and attracted seven phone lines and others in the room.

IN his day the work of the Lincolnshire woodcarver Thomas Wilkinson Wallis (1822-1903), who set up business in Louth in 1843, was favourably compared with that of the most famous English woodcarver of all, Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721).

John Parry’s collection of early English furniture and works of art had not been long in the making.

MANY people are content to put together one major collection in their lifetime. To assemble one, disperse it at a major saleroom, set about doing the same thing all over again and then hold a second auction within the space of just over a decade takes some doing.

WORCESTERSHIRE auctioneer Philip Serrell has been asked to sell, at short notice, Cotswolds School furniture from the dormitories of Hazelrigg Hall, now part of Loughborough University.

IT is in the nature of display cabinets not to stand out. By definition they are unobtrusive vehicles intended to take a back seat to their contents.

The Norwich dealer James Brett is to sell 300 pieces of his stock of English and Continental furniture and decorative items in a single-vendor sale at Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet on March 9.