Furniture

While five-figure sums for top-end 20th century design furniture are familiar in the international centres of New York, Paris and London, fewer pieces appear in the UK regional market.

Organiser launches Malvern fair to run alongside existing venues.

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.

The Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair takes place at Battersea Evolution in the new year, offering a wealth of objects from early oak furniture to fine art to 20th century design.

While the market shows increasingly discerning tastes, quality definitely counts at auction.

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.

Selection of contents from landmark French inter-war modernist building resurface after 1985 dispersal.

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 new destination for antiques shopping in Arundel has opened at Merchants Hall.

Italy, like many European countries whose economies were ravaged during the war, had to face the challenge of picking itself up and starting afresh once hostilities were over.

Born partly out of necessity and partly out of a reaction to austerity, British design in the immediate post-war era underwent a flowering of innovation with new styles, new materials and a fresh impetus that resulted in a very different class of furniture.

It is the quirky designs of husband-and-wife team François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne that populate the top echelons of so much French design in the salerooms these days.

Admirers of American neoclassical decorative arts have been treated to a wealth of exhibitions in recent years, and now even more is available to discover and acquire.

IACF is expecting a buoyant antique and collectors’ fair at Alexandra Palace on Sunday, December 2, including items sourced from shipwrecks.

The French dealer François Laffanour, whose Galerie Downtown is on the rue de Seine in Paris, has specialised for 25 years in furnishings by post-war architects and designers.