Chair

Last week’s on-the-premises sale at Athelhampton House in Dorset was a near sell-out with a hammer price of close to £1.2m.

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

The centenary of the influential design school provides a theme for the final Battersea Park fair of 2019

Early English oak and yew and ceramics from St Petersburg to Stoke-on-Trent were features of a 250-lot sale which left auctioneer Jeremy Lamond in a quietly upbeat mood after Halls’ (23% buyer’s premium) summer sale at Shrewsbury.

Better by a distance than nine similar items, a mid-17th century wainscot chair offered by Lawrences (25% buyer’s premium) in Crewkerne demonstrated the yawning price gap between the acceptable and the desirable in the early oak market.

This pair of c.1970s Italian Onda (Wave) lounge chairs in chrome and leather designed by Giovanni Offredi for Saporiti Italia will feature in the Downtown Los Angeles Collections and Estates auction to be held on Sunday, July 28, by the Andrew Jones auction house.

This pair of 19th century Arts & Crafts low oak chairs is available from Elaine Phillips Antiques at the next edition of The Pavilions of Harrogate Decorative Antiques & Fine Art Fair priced at £1150.

When it comes to 20th century furniture female designers are a rarity. Some folk still think ‘Ray’ Eames – real name Bernice – was a man.

This Empire-period gilt throne or ceremonial chair, measuring 3ft 11in (1.2m) high and 2ft 3in (76cm) wide, is one of the highlights of an April 7 sale of historic artefacts and memorabilia titled l’Empire à Fontainebleau.

After re-booting the moribund firm of Hutchinson Scott (20% buyer’s premium) in 2016, former dealers Michael Scott and Paul Hodson have now bought their premises at Embsay Mill at Skipton.

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

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.

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.

Even when the Cold War was at its height there were, admittedly rare, possibilities for commercial cooperation between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic.

Two early examples of Indo- Portuguese furniture sold for five-figure sums at auction this month.

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.