Furniture

Celebrating 10 years of sales at Sworders’ (23% buyer’s premium) custom-built auction house (the firm has actually been going since 1782), chairman Guy Schooling was in a justifiably buoyant mood.

Entered from the same consignor, two c.1810 mahogany cellarettes were offered singly, rather than as a near pair by Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) at Abingdon. However, after two centuries, they will remain together after selling to the same private buyer on the phone.

“My granny used to say, if you get stuck sell the French table,” the vendor told Harrogate auctioneer Elizabeth Pepper-Darling.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Unmistakably the work of the Viennese avant-garde, this gem-set silver plated table clock sold for €205,000 (£186,000) at a recent sale held by the Rotterdam auctioneer Vendu Notarishuis.

An Edwardian Carlton House satinwood desk of the type which was once a best-seller at auction, but an early casualty of the furniture slump, was back in favour at the Hartleys (17.5% buyer’s premium) summer sale in Ilkley.

It was catalogued as 19th century, with a replaced plate, later back batons, small chips and wear, age cracks and the gilt painted surface was thick and not original.

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.

Thornton Kay, long-time organiser of the annual Salvo fair, has been in touch to say what he’s been doing on his year’s sabbatical from organising the event.

The Horlicks collection of Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson furniture will be sold at auction in Stansted Mountfitchet this autumn.

A c.1715 Queen Anne burr walnut secretaire kneehole desk was among the highlight sales at the recent 'Petworth Park Antiques Fair'.

MADAM – Like David Carter (ATG No 2345) I can remember the time when we auctioneers could make a living with only seller’s commission of 10%.

Catalogued as Anglo-Indian but probably Indo-Portuguese, this ivory, tortoiseshell and white metal casket, below, was a box of delight for the vendor.

The post-war industrial modernist designs of Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand remain firm sellers. Pieces from their best-documented commissions, like the furnishings created in the 1950s for the student residences of the Cité Universitaire in Paris, are particularly strong.

In the immediate post-war era the work of the French designer-decorator Jean Royère (1902-81) took a turn to embrace a more organic or ‘biomorphic’ style.