Auctioneers

Two notable single-owner collections, augmented by items from the round of Oriental art sales, made spring a bumper crop in the specialist world of fans.

MADAM – Like David Carter (ATG No 2345) I can remember the time when we auctioneers could make a living with only seller’s commission of 10%.

Advertising and souvenir fans from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries received a mixed reception at the April 10 Special Auction Services sale at Newbury devoted to works collected by the late Martin Willcocks.

As regimental silver, the Victorian centrepiece shown below qualified to be part of the Militaria, Coins & Medals sale at Lawrences (22% buyer’s premium) of Crewkerne and, as a memento of the gallant 9th (The Queen’s Royal) Lancers, it swept the field.

Catalogued as Anglo-Indian but probably Indo-Portuguese, this ivory, tortoiseshell and white metal casket, below, was a box of delight for the vendor.

Consisting of just two autograph leaves, but catalogued as “one of the most important fragments still in private hands”, a manuscript dating from the last years of Mozart’s short life topped a recent London music sale.

The post-war industrial modernist designs of Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand remain firm sellers. Pieces from their best-documented commissions, like the furnishings created in the 1950s for the student residences of the Cité Universitaire in Paris, are particularly strong.

“It was totally unexpected – as the best finds always are,” Derbyshire auctioneer Charles Hanson told ATG. “A client came along to our office in East Molesey carrying a cardboard box. Inside, wrapped in an old tea towel, was not one, but two, Fabergé flowers.”

In the immediate post-war era the work of the French designer-decorator Jean Royère (1902-81) took a turn to embrace a more organic or ‘biomorphic’ style.

Early manuscript compilations for medical and culinary recipes feature quite regularly and successfully at auction, but an example in a recent London sale was one with a morbid statistical addition that achieved a treble-estimate £15,000.

St Augustine of Hippo’s De civitate Dei (below) was penned to counter pagan claims that what had prompted the Visigoth sacking of Rome in 410 was the adoption of Christianity by its emperors. The book was first printed around a thousand years later in the 1460s, but it was 150 years before a first English language edition appeared.

The Federalist…, a collection of essays first published in New York newspapers in the years immediately following independence, is today recognised as a seminal work on American political theory and a cornerstone of constitutional governance.

Post-war material is attracting growing interest across all sectors of the art market. A pioneer was the Design sale that championed the creations of designers and taste makers from the second half of the 20th century and beyond.

“The open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows, the rolling downs!”

A plaster plaque of a mother and child drew multiple bids when it was offered at Hutchinson Scott (20% buyer’s premium) in Skipton, North Yorkshire.

Most high-flying ‘design’ is made in multiples. These can be limited editions in short runs but, as some of the most iconic pieces have been produced in their millions, their commercial value is typically vested in early examples or prototypes.