Furniture

The continued interest in Victorian music boxes in this age of Spotify and streaming was evident when three were among the 1500-lot sale held by Unique Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium) to launch the new year.

Topped by the 17th century Dutch bottles at £30,000 (see ATG No 2375), the year’s first sale at Hannam’s (23% buyer’s premium) had other treasures among the 2000 lots including the French bronze figural torchères, right.

Organiser launches Malvern fair to run alongside existing venues.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.