Art and antiques news from 2001

EIRE: WHYTES of Dublin held their spring coin sale on February 23. Their regular sale results are very useful for gauging the market in Irish material and with the enhancement of the Irish economy in recent years there is much interest in it. This is made manifest by the fact that most of the buyers reported by Whytes are resident in Ireland.

UK: THIS elaborately gilt violet cloth binding on an 1861 first edition of Mrs Henry Wood’s East Lynne was identified by Sotheby’s as Carter’s B ‘Presentation Binding’ but their view on the value of this copy – which had all edges gilt but was fragile at the hinges and partially split in Vol. III – was a modest £600-800.

A highly unusual set of five life-size canvases of Javanese princes and courtiers, attracted a deluge of international trade enquiries when they came up for sale at the Copenhagen rooms of Museumsbygningen (25% buyer’s premium) on March 1.

UK: WHEN diplomat’s widow Elsa Elizabeth Bowker died last September, her obituary in The Times quoted the saying that “people came to London for Harrods, Buckingham Palace and Lady Bowker”.

FRANCE: THE largest hoard ever of gold Celtic coins – the French call them Gauloise – is being offered at auction in Paris on March 27. The expert is Alain Weil (54 rue de Richelieu). There are 145 of them and they were issued by the Gaulish tribes of the Cenomanes, who bequeathed their name to present-day le Mans, and the Venetes who dominated the area round Vannes on the south coast of Brittany.

UK: I THINK I am right in saying that no James Bond book, at least no uninscribed copy, has ever before reached five figures at auction, but the Dominic Winter sale of March 7 added that required extra nought when an absolutely splendid copy of Ian Fleming’s first Bond spy story, Casino Royale of 1953, was bid up to £11,400. There was stiff competition from several London dealers, but in the end it went to Bromlea & Jonkers.

TEFAF Maastricht closed on Sunday with museum-quality goods having sold well – particularly Old Masters, Contemporary art and Oriental – but business was being achieved from the opening party on March 9, when collectors converged on this showstopping pottery model of a recumbent Bactrian camel, 101/2in (27cm) high, on the stand of London specialist Ben Janssens.

A MAJOR cataloguing project at the Museum of Cincinnati in Ohio has authenticated up to 15 very important and hitherto unrecorded portrait miniatures by the likes of Nicholas Hilliard.

UK: THIS quarterly sale of ceramics, glass, and works of art at Phillips’ Midlands branch included private collections of cameo glass, Meissen and Royal Worcestershire, plus a smattering of Oriental entries which contributed to the £111,000 sale tally that was nearly 90 per cent sold by lot.

UK: WRITTEN in Daniel Defoe’s characteristically neat hand, this is one of only nine recorded examples of his autograph verse, and though small creatures have nibbled into this copy of his poem, Of resignation, seven of those other verse specimens are in the celebrated Defoe notebook in the Huntington Library and the other is in the Portland Collection at the University of Nottingham, leaving this as the only example still in private hands.

UK: A 1632 MANUSCRIPT plan by Johan Williams of the Maniera de Monk Lytons, alias Kentwell... in the Suffolk parish of Melford, executed in ink and watercolours and including details of Kentwell Hall and Melford church, sold for £2000, in this East Anglian sale, and other local lots included a three-year run of the Norwich Mercury (1801-04) at £500 and A.H. Patterson’s Broadland Scribblings of 1892, at £480.

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are three more selections from the recent sale of the Ronald Segal Collection at Sotheby's English Literature & History sale held on December 14.

UK: THE net surrounding the UK’s illicit art and antiquities trade has tightened with the Government signing up to an international convention to return stolen artefacts to their rightful owners.

In a recent issue some attempt was made to get away from only reporting past auction sales by noting coins from trade fixed price lists. To develop this theme further we return to auction sales but with a difference, this time to preview a few lots from Spink’s sale of April 11 in London.

UK: THE FORMER Arpad Plesch copy of Sir Joseph Hooker’s 1855, first edition of Illustrations of Himalayan Plants which was sold for £19,500 in this Nottingham sale was featured in last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette (Issue No. 1480), but there were a few other interesting results in the natural history section.

UK: Early spoons seem to be one of the most buoyant sectors of the silver collectors’ market at present, which is fortunate given the rate with which collections are landing at the rostrum.

UK: Wellington chests remain a steady favourite in the middle-price range of furniture, particularly when they come as a pair as at this Bedford sale.

UK: THE downward spiral of the euro against sterling since the single currency was launched has been a problem for auctioneers, particularly in the South, who could once count on French, Italian and Spanish dealers keeping the lower and middle ranges of the market buoyant, so there was naturally some satisfaction for these Devon auctioneers to see a little of the old peseta power in February.

UK: A TYPICAL mammoth offering of 1463 lots at the Norfolk rooms’ collectors’ sale included something for just about anyone buying on a modest budget – and, as usual, a few unexpected bidding battles.

UK: CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown’s change in VAT policy for museums should safeguard free entry where it already exists.