What we did not know was that the previous day North Yorkshire auctioneer David Duggleby was offering an identical example of this seemingly rare early 20th century design, bringing down the hammer at £720 (estimate £150-250).
Coincidence? Well, let’s hope so but it may be telling that Duggleby’s were reluctant to date their example in the catalogue.
John Atkinson Grimshaw (see Art Market, Gazette No.1588, May 10) helped make this the second-best sale David Duggleby had held since he set up on his own in the mid-1990s, but a strong supporting cast included a Moorcroft pottery cylindrical vase, 121/2in (31cm) high discovered in the course of a local house clearance. One of the later (1920s) landscape designs, this variation on the Eventide pattern was decorated in sandy shades of cream and brown. Estimated at up to £2000, it was bought by a Manchester phone bidder for £4100.
Another fine example of Staffordshire early 20th century design was a Foley Intarsio Gallé-style seated cat with green glass eyes and bold yellow fleur-de-lis painted on a blue ground, 91/2in (24.5cm) high. It had a crack and some damage to the ear but it sold at £320.
Both eagerly competed were a scrimshaw bodkin holder and a late Georgian pocket watch. The 19th century ivory bodkin holder was carved with entwined ropework and a compass and had and incised illustration of a three-masted sailing vessel and a whale in a choppy sea.
It sold at £620 followed at £460 by the silver pair-cased watch (London 1819) whose charms lay in a circular white enamel dial painted to the centre with a ploughing scene and a village.
David Duggleby Fine Art,
Scarborough, April 7
Buyer’s Premium: 12.5%
A mystery light as Eventide falls at £4100
It seems that in terms of arriving in numbers after none has been seen for ages, novelty lighthouse cocktail shakers are to Yorkshire what No. 9 buses are to central London. In Antiques Trade Gazette No.1589 dated May 17 we illustrated just such a silver-plated shaker which took £1250 at Andrew Hartley’s Ilkley, West Yorkshire sale on April 9-10.
