Art and antiques news from 2001

UK: One of the least prepossessing lots, but obviously rare and among the more sought after of the day’s offerings, was a small handbill recording the plague tally and burial record for the Cambridge colleges from Christmas Day 1666 to New Year’s Day 1667.

UK: BY the time you read this, the Kent and Medway Bills should have passed into law, with Royal Assent being given on Tuesday, April 10, although there will be a six-month delay until it can be enforced.

Toy soldiers and figures There was a larger than usual civilian element to the latest sale of toy soldiers and figures, held by Christie’s South Kensington on March 30.

BUILDING confidence in buying on the Web is an ongoing and lengthy process, but one that can be helped by the efforts of those on the sales side.

The growth of the Internet, and the reluctance of the biggest auctioneers to deal with low-value goods, has helped provincial auctioneers win more business.

The contents and joints are loose and the upper hinge is nearly detached, but the maroon cloth gilt binding of this 1890 first issue of what was only Conan Doyle’s second Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of Four, are pretty good and this copy sold at Dominic Winter for £3000 to Bromlea & Jonkers.

UK: THE market for Arts & Crafts furniture remains a buoyant one as was evident at the February 28 sale held by Dorking-based Crow’s Auction Gallery (10 per cent buyer’s premium), when a period 5ft 10in wide by 6ft high (1.78 x 1.83m) oak dresser with open arched back panel and central bubble glazed door led the way at £1300.

Greene & Greene, by Edward R. Bosley

Cornish Ware and Domestic Pottery by T.G. Green, by Paul Atterbury

UK: THE extent to which the decorators’ market has become a force to be catered for was illustrated at the 1200-lot Gloucestershire sale held by Wotton Auction Rooms (11.75 per cent buyer’s premium) February 20-21 when this relatively modern Queen Anne-style bureau bookcase led the bidding.

UK: SALES catering for specific collectors’ markets are steadily increasing in the provincial rooms with the Scottish arm of the LVMH empire.

UK: ANYONE thinking of doing a deal on a Turkish picture in the next few weeks would have been well advised to have kept an eye on Bonhams & Brooks (10/15 per cent buyer’s premium) March 28 Topographical & American Pictures Sale.

Eugène Gayot’s Atlas statistique de la production des chevaux en France. Documents pour servir a l’histoire naturelle-agricolle des race de chevalliers du pays of 1850 contains 27 coloured maps and 31 litho plates of horses, mostly with two views.

UK: DOUBTS over the authenticity of several paintings, including a ‘Picasso’, led to the cancellation of a whole sale last week.

UK: AT some auctioneers a sale total of £125,000 may not be a cause for breaking out the champagne, but at relative newcomers Diamond Mills it was a house record and the success rate of 91 per cent was one any firm in the land would relish.

UK: OFFERED at Phillips on March 30 was the former Houghton copy of the 1590 first edition of The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia.

UK: ONE of eight coloured aquatints, plus map and plan, from an 1816 first edition of Travels in Brazil by Henry Koster, who first went to Brazil in 1809, hoping that a change of climate might alleviate his TB, and eventually settled to the life of a sugar planter at Jaguaribe, near Recife in Pernambuco, where he died in 1820.

US: A Japanese cloisonné enamel vase usurped an 18th century Chinese jade brushwasher – expected to be the star lot – to take pride of place in Sloan’s (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) Asian Ceramics and Works of Art sale on April 2, Washington DC.

UK: THE first fortnight of March at Sotheby’s Sussex saw specialist sales in the ‘Arcade’ format of lower-priced pieces across the spectrum, where the trade achieved something like their old dominance when it came to higher value items – and were prepared to pay well over estimates to do so.

UK: WHEN people talk of antiques as a sure investment a word of advice is always ‘Remember stevengraphs, think about pot lids.’