Table

The tripod table is among the selection of Early Mahogany furniture that contributes to the ACC Antique Furniture Price Index. The sector recorded a 6% fall in 2005 – with tripod tables of routine quality dropping in price – but better examples of any form will buck the general trend.

Classic English furniture continues to bring good prices at auction providing the quality is there – and this Regency sofa table, right, certainly filled that requirement when it was offered at the March 3 sale in Cornwall held by Bonhams Par (17.5% buyer’s premium).

A named designer and good provenance sent this oak refectory table and benches, right, to the highest price at Woolley & Wallis’ sale on March 2.

Clarke Gammon Wellers, Guildford, December 14. Buyer’s premium: 15 per centTHE current demand for decorative furniture was underscored at this 710-lot Surrey auction by a pair of hybrid, George III, satinwood marquetry and parcel gilt side tables which stole the limelight.

The two best-selling pieces of furniture offered outside London in 2004 were sold during one of the very first and one of the last sales of the year.

THIS unusual metamorphic George III mahogany dressing table, right, goes under the Charterhouse gavel on Friday October 15.

THE focus of the furniture trade’s attention in Bamfords' (15% buyer's premium) 1025-lot Derbyshire outing on September 8 was a c.1835 mahogany, triple-pedestal dining table with a top formed from two D-sections and a central Pembroke drop leaf.

JULY may now seem like ancient history but it is worth putting on record the wholly unexpected performance of a late Regency period circular dining table offered by Mallams (15% buyer’s premium) from their Cheltenham rooms on July 22.

Furniture from Hills House, Denham, the property of Sir John and Lady Mills, will be sold at auction by Hamptons of Godalming on October 20.

LEADING specialist in early country furniture and distinctive period objects Robert Hirschhorn holds his fifth annual At Home selling exhibition at his Georgian house and showrooms in London’s Camberwell from September 16 to 19.

THE ups and, more depressingly, the downs of the market this year make the results of a steady day’s selling of material put together by Nigel Papworth at Diamond Mills’ (11.75% buyer's premium) Felixstowe rooms at the end of June look positively encouraging.

WITH its prevalence of antiques shops and auctioneers, one might imagine a degree of difficulty in locating a member of Cotswolds society untouched by the world of antiques.

SPEAKING after a combined-operation sale at Edinburgh on June 10-11 which offered jewellery, silver and furniture, Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer's premium) specialist Bruce Anderson said: “Ultimately trade buying underpins a sale so if the trade is finding business tricky this affects us.

PERIOD if possible, but, above all, practical – this seems to be the current code among furniture buyers in the experience of Amersham Auction Rooms (15% buyer's premium) over the past couple of years.

GOOD-quality mahogany and oak furniture took most of the better prices in Mitchells' (15% buyer's premium) 1566-lot May 13-14 auction which totalled £325,000.

MANY of the top lots among the 725 offered at Clarke Gammon Wellers' (15% buyer's premium) April 20 sale came from the owner of an elegant local flat – including a William IV mahogany longcase.

THE quality-guaranteeing stamp of London cabinet-makers and retailers Edwards & Roberts was the key to the top seller at the 890-lot March 25-26 sale at Scarborough Perry Fine Arts (15% buyer's premium) that totalled £89,000.

The perennial and international popularity of the radially expanding dining table was underlined in South Africa when Stephan Welz & Co (in association with Sotheby’s) sold this William IV circular extending dining table by Johnstone, Jupe and Co for R950,000 (£84,820), plus 10 per cent premium, in Cape Town on March 30.

THE strength of this Bearne’s (15/10% buyer's premium) March 2 & 3 Devon outing lay in the 72-lot furniture section, although the fairly routine ceramic selection was also notable for a high take-up by lot and some healthy prices. What turned out to be the two star furniture lots were given cautious catalogue entries and estimates which reflected a knowledge of the current wariness among specialists about the numbers of altered, or overly restored, pieces of furniture peppering the market.

The 20in (52cm) high dinanderie vase by Jean Dunand, pictured, right, with original black patina and sleek Art Deco outlines belying its early date of 1913, zoomed to €60,000 (£40,000), five times the estimate, at the Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) sale of 20th century decorative arts on March 4.