Art and antiques news from 2003

AN early 19th century bowfront chest of five over three drawers, mahogany strung with satinwood. Doesn’t sound too special does it? That’s until you realise that the description is of a fully fitted tea caddy measuring just 91/2in by 8in high (24 by 20cm). Lots of interest in this rare novelty saw it climb to take the top price of David Lay’s mammoth Penzance sale at £4400.

BRITISH pottery specialist John Howard, whose particular enthusiasm is Staffordshire, is a familiar figure at quality fairs and when I caught up with him last week on his stand at Olympia he told me that there had been some changes on the home front.

AT OVER 1000 lots, the May 22 sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt of Taunton was certainly one of the bigger sales of that week, but only a single lot topped the £1000 mark – a disbound, incomplete and defective English Bible. Apparently a 1540 reissue in smaller format of the Great Bible that Thomas Cromwell ordered to be placed in the country’s churches so that “parishioners may moste commodiously resorte to the same”, it was bid up to £1250.

Highest bid among the 158 lots of Impressionist & Expressionist works on paper in the Tremmel collection auctioned by Ketterer Kunst on May 5-6 was the €130,000 (£89,700), just over top-estimate, paid in the room by a Rhineland dealer against six telephone bidders for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Fränzi am Wasser Liegend (Fränzi Reclining at the Waterside, c.1910) in gouache, watercolour and chalk, 13 x 17in (33 x 43.5cm).

Miety Heiden, Sotheby’s Amsterdam (22% buyer’s premium) picture specialist had a sneaking suspicion that Schelde Roeier, an oil on canvas by Belgian Expressionist Constant Permeke (1886-1952), would do well when it was offered in the 170-lot May 27 sale of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Dutch capital. But no-one was prepared for the record breaking sum.

THOUGH the May 21 sale held by Dominic Winter was a collectors’ sale that also included motoring, maritime and railway models, photographs, prints, etc., it was the aviation material that had star billing. There was yet another selection from the Amédée Gauthier collection of photographs, arranged as before in thematic lots.

Sotheby’s wait for a change of climate to see prices grow after statuary sale falters: Sotheby's specialist-in-charge of the Sussex garden statuary sales, Rupert van der Werff, believes the most reliable barometer for this area is the housing market. Certainly the well-publicised recession in that overheated area has had a hugely detrimental effect on statuary.

Greg Martin is a name synonymous with the finest and the most spectacularly expensive of American firearms. In this respect the June 16 Greg Martin Auctions sale will live up to expectations with a rare 1849 Colt revolver, but most British attention will be focused on a group of Nelson memorabilia which includes Vice Admiral Collingwood’s copy of Nelson’s standing orders for battle, drawn up on the Victory on October 9-10, 1805 and signed Nelson & Brontë.

Included among the fountains, wellheads and lead figures at Sotheby’s Sussex on 20-21 May were 18 watering cans from the collection built up over 15 years by John Massey, a senior director of the famous Haws Watering Can Company for over 25 years.

Christie’s South Kensington : May 15 was a crowded day in the Decorative Arts calendar. Both Christie’s South Kensington and Bonhams’ Bond Street rooms fielded sizeable decorative arts selections, much of it of crossover interest, which presumably presented potential buyers with something of a dilemma when it came to deciding which sale to attend in person.

Christie’s have helped negotiate the sale to the Victoria and Albert Museum of the Castlereagh gold inkstand created by Paul Storr and Philip Rundell for the British diplomat Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822) in 1818.

Canadian-based eBay seller gstark didn’t need to include the words “extremely rare” in his auction listing for a jade green Sony TR-55 transistor radio. Fifteen ardent bidders already knew that.

Among the highlights of the collection of the late John Stewart Parry sold by Bruton Knowles at the Tithe Barn, Southam from May 19-23 was this carved and painted wood armorial figure of a greyhound. Standing 211/2in (55cm) high and retaining its original paintwork, the 19th century piece received plenty of interest from the trade before it was knocked down to a London dealer for £3600 (plus 15% buyer’s premium).

US: DATES of October 14 to 20 have been fixed for the second annual New York Fall Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York, and the opening night preview party will benefit the Frick Collection, one of Manhattan’s most celebrated museums.

The second birthday of the Gazette’s web site (it was officially launched in May 2001) saw its usage rise to new heights with over 2 million hits and nearly 300,000 pages viewed in a single week.

A rare Joseph Wright of Derby mezzotint valued at £9500 was stolen from prints and maps dealer Sanders of Oxford on June 3. At around 4.00pm two white men entered the shop. Both were in their late 40s, one 5ft 7in high of stocky build with short, dark grey hair, the other slightly taller with balding, brown, short hair.

LAPADA has issued some valuable guidelines to the recipients of cheques relating to the Sotheby’s and Christie’s price-fixing settlement in the USA. As the cheques began to arrive by post last week many were surprised to see that the US Federal Government had deducted a withholding tax from the awards.

Christie’s are to relocate their education arm from King Street to new premises in the Fitzrovia area of London. The current building, number 5 King Street that was the former Spink premises, will undergo refurbishment in the summer. While the upper floors are expected to remain Christie’s offices, a decision will be made in the near future as to the use of the prime retail space below.

Every dealer has one – a painful story to relate about some rare and valuable object they let pass fleetingly through their hands at a knock-down price only to learn later of its true significance and value.

NOT for nothing is the antiques market known for being unpredictable, nay, almost perverse. In the middle of the worst recession that many dealers have experienced, the worst drought that many salerooms have ever had to endure, auctioneer Nigel Kirk of Mellors and Kirk recorded his best sale in the brief (ten-year) history of his business on 10-11 April. He could not quite believe it, especially as half of the furniture lots failed to sell, but the statistics bore out the remarkable reality.