Perhaps they would not have been an unusual sight in the London rooms, but it was quite a coup for the Bournemouth rooms to feature on the front cover of their catalogue a pair of five light candelabra, 261/2in (67cm) high and weighing in at approximately 360oz.
Both were superbly modelled in the 18th century taste with scrolling branches of acanthus and floral buds and decorated to the columns with busts depicting notable English literary figures such as Chaucer and Shakespeare.
And would they be allowed to slip though close to their £5000 estimate? No way. An American buyer outbid some familiar names among the London trade and faces a bill of £39,000 plus premium – the highest single bid taken in these rooms.
Not forgetting the sale at a treble estimate £1780 paid of a George III oval engraved tea caddy with hinged lid, London 1783, William Vincent, the other highlights at this sale emerged during the opening session of pottery and porcelain.
An eleventh hour entry to the catalogue (rushed through on the wishes of the vendor without catalogue illustrations) was a selection of Meiji period Japanese works of art. They included both a Satsuma bottle form vase, 4in (10cm) high decorated with bands of flowering blooms and a ‘hundred bird’ design (estimate £400-600) and a Satsuma square shaped tea caddy, cover and stopper, 41/2in (12cm), decorated on a blue ground with flowers and four cartouches of garden scenes, flowers in bloom and mountain landscapes (estimate £500-700).
Both bore unidentified seal marks but were clearly by one or more of the major workshops: they sold for £1850 and £3300 respectively.
From the same vendor (a private client from one of the smarter areas of Poole), the same buyer (a London dealer) bought a pair of moriage enamel vases, 12in (30cm) high, on silver inlaid to a green/grey ground with birds feeding on a flowering hibiscus branch. Marked for the Ando Cloisonné Co., they sold at the lower end of a £1500-2000 estimate.
Choice entry to the furniture – which included an Art Nouveau inlaid mahogany standing corner cupboard by Schoolbred & Co., sold at £1250 – was provided by a Victorian rosewood games/work table. Its main selling point was a Tunbridge vignette of a castle and a geometric border set to the top, enough to persuade one member of the trade to part with the top estimate of £2000.
US candelabra bid sets a £39,000 house record
UK: ROBERT Garrard is a heavyweight in the Victorian silver market, renown for large and imposing tablewares produced for the great and the good of mid-late 19th century society. And a fine example of the Garrard output was on offer at the Bournemouth Auction Galleries in March.
