Furniture

GOOD standard furniture sold well enough at Mitchell's (15% buyer's premium) July 15-16 sale and included a locally made Jacobean piece.

A QUALITY furniture grouping and a small, but strong, Oriental section contributed to the upbeat performance of Halls (15% buyer's premium) 258-lot sale on July 14, the top lot of which, a £24,000 George III mahogany longcase, was illustrated on the front cover of Antiques Trade Gazette No. 1650 dated July 31 and August 7.

KNOWN for her stock of top-quality, early furniture with character, Lucy Johnson holds a special selling exhibition this weekend from September 3 to 5 at her showroom, a 17th century stone barn just outside Burford on the Cotswold Wildlife Park Estate, Oxfordshire.

Originality and patina are key factors in the price of oak furniture. Accordingly, it was no surprise to see the trade chase this austere George III elm cricket table at Richard Winterton (12.5% buyer’s premium) of Burton-on-Trent on July 28. Entered by a Birmingham client, the table, with its galleried undertier was in fine original condition with no later adaptations and the timber had acquired a good rich patina. It doubled the pre-sale estimate to bring £950.

THE Victoria and Albert Museum’s main autumn exhibition, opening this month, is devoted to a retrospective of Christopher Dresser, the pioneering designer who anticipated many of the major design styles of the 20th century. It is timed to coincide with the centenary of his death in 1904.

SPECIALIST auctioneers, Ocean Liner Auctions have been instructed to sell what they consider to be the largest and finest collection of fixtures and fittings from RMS Olympic since the vessel was broken up almost 69 years ago.

JUNE was a busy month for Wellers (15% buyer's premium) who hosted an 819-lot antique sale on June 12 in addition to a 4000-lot two-day architectural auction held off the premises at Enfield’s Reclaim Centre on June 11-12.

WITH rising interest rates, a fluctuating stock market, selective bidding and increasing competition for quality private consignments, now may not be thought to be the most prudent time for expansion but Wotton Auction Rooms (15% buyer's premium) have gone ahead with plans to build a larger saleroom within their existing premises. It will open next month.

AN auction first for specialist Gordon Patrick, the vastly experienced specialist at Clarke Gammon Wellers (15% buyer's premium), was the sleeper and undisputed highlight of the Surrey sale on July 27 – a 2ft (61cm) wide kingwood, rosewood and satinwood inlaid envelope card table entered with a £200-300 estimate.

A HEALTHY take-up for the 170 lots entered without reserve from a period farmhouse in Shropshire provided the backbone of Humberts' (10% buyer's premium) 602-lot Gloucestershire outing on June 29, but it was an early 18th century upholstered walnut wingback armchair consigned from a different private source that proved the star turn.

DEALERS are, traditionally, very secretive about their restorers, whose services are probably the most vital of any to the trade, and seldom do top restorers cross over and become dealers.

SOME steady selling of material which has been hard to shift of late provided some encouragement for the trade generally at Lawrences of Bletchingley's (12.5 buyer's premium) July 20-22 sale and among the 2000 lots – which totalled nearly £200,000 – there were enough of those quirky offerings which make provincial British auctions the fascinating events they can be.

IT is frequently the unusual and the decorative that the market craves today. The ‘peach’ of the sale conducted by Kidson-Trigg (15% buyer’s premium) of Highworth, near Swindon on July 22 was certainly both, a group of 14 painted and carved wood and gesso models of fruit, pictured right.

IN 1851 it wowed the world when it won the Council Medal at the Great Exhibition, but for decades its whereabouts have been a mystery. Now, after years of research, Jeremy Lamond, a director of Halls Fine Art, of Shrewsbury, has solved the puzzle of what happened to the first ever exhibition sideboard.

THOMAS Tompion may be England’s most celebrated 18th century horologist, but he is less widely known for his exquisitely crafted sundials, a signed example of which furnished Sotheby’s Bond Street (20/12% buyer's premium) with their undisputed highlight on June 15.

CHRISTIE’S have won leave to appeal against the High Court judgment that found them liable to pay damages to Taylor Lynne Thomson in the dispute over the £1.75m Houghton urns.

SMALL, original and honest – these classic qualities took a 2ft 5in x 2ft 6 1/2in (74x 77cm) George I walnut chest to the top of the sales chart at Aldridges’ (15% buyer's premium) 344-lot May 25 sale where it took £3100.

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.

EVERY country house sale should have at least one sleeper and at Christie's (19.5/12% buyer's premium) Chirk Castle sale this honour went to a sandstone grave slab.

ROUNDING off the European furniture, carpets and works of art sale at Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) on June 15 was a 78-lot collection of hall stands, mostly made in cast iron.