Furniture

Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) were pulling out all the stops for their first full week of the month.

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.

BK Art & Antiques, Gloucester, November 11Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent

Humberts, inc. Tayler & FletcherBourton-on-the-Water, October 26Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent

Breaking its own record as the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold at auction, this massive, 12ft 8in (3.86m) high, 18th century Florentine ebony, ormolu and pietra dura architectural display piece known as The Badminton Cabinet brought Christie’s December 9 sale of European furniture to a dramatic climax last week when it sold for £17m (£19,045,250 including premium).

ATTRACTING dealers from both sides of the Border to McTear's (15% buyer's premium) September 24 sale was a Regency figured maple and parcel gilt breakfast table.

FURNITURE in Bonhams' (17.5/10% buyer's premium) Par sale on September 2 was given a considerable boost by a contingent of Irish dealers who between them secured around 20 of the more standard entries in the 104-lot section.

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.

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

AS is often the case at regular provincial auctions these days, proceedings at Abbotts Auction Rooms' (12% buyer's premium) otherwise fairly routine, 438-lot September 8 sale were enlivened by a couple of novel entries.

FOLLOWING the Antiques Trade Gazette’s coverage of the sale of a micromosaic table signed by Michelangelo Barberi for £250,000 at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory rooms in January – still the highest price achieved for an item of furniture in a UK saleroom so far this year – the Newbury firm received a call from a gentleman in Scotland.

AFTER 93 years trading in the West End, celebrated English furniture dealers Stair & Company Ltd closed their doors last month.

WITH the autumn season well underway, it’s good to see a number of dealers promoting business with selling exhibitions which, apart from anything else, present a confident looking trade to the world. Second generation West Sussex furniture dealer Frank Wilson, owner of Wilsons Antiques, has held such an exhibition in Worthing every year since the early 1990s and this autumn’s event will run from September 28 to October 2 at his showrooms at 45-47 New Broadway, Tarring Road.

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.

JUST shy of their bicentenary, Whytock and Reid, the Edinburgh furniture makers, were forced into liquidation earlier this year. Foreign competition put paid to a company established in 1807 by Richard Whytock and John Reid that, in its 19th and early 20th century glory days, furnished the great houses and castles of Scotland, often working in partnership with the architect Robert Lorimer.

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.

MONMOUTH dealer Nick Wheatley – a specialist in Arts & Crafts, as the name of his shop Our House 1860-1925, at 6-8 St. James Street, implies – has also beeen building up for a show.

BULKY Victorian brown furniture may be the least attractive subject at many sales, but the most expensive entry at Keys (10% buyer's premium) 1386-lot Norfolk outing on August 3-4 was a 9ft square (2.74m) mahogany library breakfront bookcase.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE dealer Mike Golding, whose business Huntington Antiques in Stow on the Wold is known for early furniture, works of art and tapestries, has just sent out his latest catalogue of recent acquisitions, which will comprise his exhibition next month as part of the Cotswold Antique Dealers Association’s annual series of autumn selling shows.

WITH only eight of the 300 lots bringing four-figure sums, the Mallams (15% buyer's premium) sale on August 25 was a fairly sleepy summer affair by usual standards at Oxford, but there were pieces of interest throughout for budget-conscious bidders.