Furniture

Oli Barling began as a collector and is now a dealer from his base in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and trades as Boula. He focuses on 18th to 20th century decorative antiques, rustic furnishings, curios and folk art from the UK and across Europe.

Eight phone bidders competed for this splendid ebony and pietra dura table casket offered at a recent auction at Claydon Auctioneers in Middle Claydon, Buckinghamshire.

After just three weeks of trading in July at their newly opened showroom in the Grade II-listed Corn Exchange in Tunbridge Wells, dealers Chrissie and John Masters of the Design Gallery have made brisk sales to new customers for their Art Deco pieces.

The dictum that class is permanent was borne out in a Newbury saleroom by prices for damaged pieces

An unusual feature of a large fragment of an Ushak carpet which was sold by Rippon Boswell (24% buyer’s premium) in Wiesbaden on May 29 was the alliance coat of arms of two powerful Genovese aristocratic families, the Doria and the Centurione, in the top corner.

Richard Whittle founded Whittle Antik in Oxfordshire earlier this year and offers a range of objects from 18th century oak to naïve folk art, Mid-century furniture, taxidermy and Contemporary art.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

Leading the Summer Fine Sale at Tennants in Leyburn was this pair of French ormolu-mounted, white marble and porphyry candelabra.

After more than 18 months, 'The Cotswolds Decorative, Antiques & Art Fair' is ready to open its doors again.

The top-priced lot in a Prunier Auctions’ (27% buyer’s premium) sale of Haute Epoque or early works of art held proved to be the 14th century ivory casket pictured here.

Ornate piece of c.1780 furniture from sheikh’s collection heads a sell-out auction

A sale at Wilson55 (22% buyer’s premium) in Nantwich this month was topped at £22,000 by an 18th century Flemish ebony and tortoiseshell veneered cabinet.

Prize examples of French 18th century furniture were on offer at Drouot when Hughes Taquet of the auction house Hôtel des Ventes de Mantes-La-Jolie (26.4% buyer’s premium inc VAT) offered the collection of René Siméoni.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

The price gulf that once existed between good 18th century French furniture and very good late 19th century revivalism is no longer visible at auction. A quality reproduction can often outsell its period exemplar.

Owen Pacey is the founder of Renaissance London in Shoreditch, specialising in antique fireplaces and architectural salvage, launched over 30 years ago.

The vast majority of cushion-moulded mirrors from the late 17th century have lost their original cresting, which was both flamboyant and fragile.

Smaller decorative pieces by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson (1876-1955) continue to excel in the saleroom.

What auctioneer Michael Callan called “a modest mid terrace town house in Irvine, Ayrshire” was the source of one of the star lots of a recent Thomas R Callan (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Ayr.