Art and antiques news from 2004

CONTENTS sales dominated the early May auction action in Belgium, and there were two more held in France later in the month. These were very different affairs – one offering an array of recently acquired furniture and objets d’art, the other being more in the “family heirloom” category.

DECORATED manuscripts known as fraktur, made in various parts of America but primarily associated with Pennsylvania’s German communities, are something very little known in Britain, but on the home auction scene they are big money spinners indeed, as the example from an April 24 Americana sale held by Freemans of Philadelphia shows.

FOUND in a box of aviation books that was brought into the salerooms of Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet following a North London house clearance was a little pamphlet entitled Experiments and Observations in Soaring Flight.

A VERITABLE feast awaits lovers of early bindings at Christie’s on July 7, when they present the first part of the Michel Wittock collection, a 118-lot sale of Renaissance bindings, but seen right is something rather special from their sale of June 2.

OVER the weekend of May 15-16, the Annapolis (Maryland) doll specialists, Theriault’s, sold $3m worth of dolls and automata in a Las Vegas sale that for the first time introduced live Internet bidding.

AT a sale of modernist posters held by Swanns on May 10, the New York cataloguers drew attention to the influence on Ludwig Hohlwein of the work of the Beggarstaffs.

IN a May 18 sale held by Tennants of Leyburn, a copy of the 1902, first trade edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, bearing a neat inscription that was added 90 years later, was lotted with a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk in English hexameters by Hallam Tennyson and illustrated by Randolph Caldecott [1886?] and sold for £1000.

TWO BOX files of Ford manufacturers’ catalogues, advertising material and other ephemera of 1920s and ’30s motoring interest brought a bid of £1550 in a May 19 sale held by Thomson Roddick & Medcalf and the only other lot to reach four figures was a collection of some 370 postcards relating almost entirely to Ulverston and Furness.

OVER 600 lots of ‘Old Master through Contemporary Prints’ were offered by Swanns on May 6 and in the former category, Dürer and Rembrandt figured prominently among the higher priced lots.

TWO of the more successful lots from a May 14 sale of American and European pictures held in Boston by Skinners are seen here.

OVER a period of 30 years, the late Sir Charles Clarke of Broadhurst Manor in Sussex built up a remarkable collection of engravings, drawings and other material by Edouard Travies. He came to be recognised as the leading authority on the artist and his collection of Travies lithographs of La Chasse and other similar suites of plates is perhaps the finest ever to have come onto the market.

DECORATIVE pâte-sur-pâte has been selling well recently and an example of the work produced by Louis Marc Emmanuel Solon for Mintons was featured on the cover of the catalogue produced by Freemans of Philadelphia for their March 20-21 sale of English and Continental furniture and works of art, and it duly produced one of this special Spring sale’s better results.

AUCTIONEERS David Lay (15% buyer's premium) of Penzance can rely on strong local demand for home-grown collectables such as Newlyn copper and Troika pottery at the bi-monthly sales.

BONHAMS Chester hosted a 484-lot collectable ceramics and applied arts sale on April 27.

GOOD-quality mahogany and oak furniture took most of the better prices in Mitchells' (15% buyer's premium) 1566-lot May 13-14 auction which totalled £325,000.

FAIR organisers Clarion Events are negotiating a management buyout from Earls Court Olympia, the group just bought by private property fund St James Capital in a £245m takeover.

THE controversial ‘Anglo Saxon’ cross shaft, once hailed as a major discovery by London dealer Rupert Wace, but now blighted by academic opinion, failed to attract a bid when offered by Sotheby’s New York on June 9 with a $30,000-50,000 estimate.

GAZETTE journalist Scott Reyburn will find himself the subject of scrutiny rather than being the scrutineer for a change thanks to his contribution to So This Is London, an exhibition that forms part of Art Fortnight London.

DR Kaspar J Stock’s interest in chess sets was kindled when he received a traditional red and white chess set as a wedding present in 1960. He spent the next 40 years building up his collection, first hunting around the flea markets and antique shops of Northern Europe and Italy then extending his catchment area further afield to St Petersburg, New York and the Far East.

BIDDING was noticeably selective at Adam's (15/12.5% buyer's premium) May 19 outing, with an unusually high unsold rate by lot and relatively little to tempt buyers in the pictures, silver and ceramics sections. Furniture, and particularly Irish furniture, was a different matter, with wealthy Irish private buyers battling with both the home and London trade for a handful of high-quality pieces, coming fresh to market from different local sources.