Auctioneers

The Yorkshire Dales, have proved a happy hunting ground for Tennants when it comes to selling classic cars and motorbikes.

PERHAPS the rarest of all Beswick’s ouput is the Spirit of Whitfield.

The specialist British sale held by Spink (15% buyer’s premium) on May 5 consisted exclusively of the collection formed by Samuel King.

Christie’s New York are selling the Bibliotheca Bibliographica Breslaueriana in three portions.

RACEHORSE trainers may be used to a photo finish but a battle between two famous breeders went right to the wire on May 17 when Graham Budd (17.5% buyer’s premium) in association with Sotheby’s Olympia offered a selection of chattels from Ascot Racecourse.

Following the decision of Thames Valley estate agents Simmons and Son to concentrate upon their core business, a new firm of fine art auctioneers and valuers has been established in Watlington.

AFTER the mixed response to the Christopher Dresser material offered at Lyon & Turnbull (Buyers Premium 17.5%), it was left to the catalogue of decorative arts, consigned by various vendors, to provide the auctioneers with their biggest number of the day.

Christie’s South Kensington (20/12% buyer’s premium) : Art Nouveau and Art DecoThis two-day, all-Continental offering really was a sale of two halves.

THE reputation established by Gardiner Houlgate over the last ten years for Clarice Cliff pottery has resulted in two specialist sales each year of around 200 lots.

Sotheby’s sale of a sizeable slice of the contents Easton Neston, the English Baroque country house that has been home of the Fermor-Hesketh family since it was built in 1699, raised a premium-inclusive £8.7m last week when the auctioneers offered 1472 lots over two days in a marquee on the grounds from May 17-19.

François Pinault, the French business tycoon who owns Christie’s, has abandoned his plans to build a £100m museum near Paris to house his Contemporary art collection.

François Tajan, who quit as chairman of Tajan SA, the firm founded by his father Jacques, at the end of March, has joined Paris rivals ArtCurial.

Andrew Hartley, Ilkley. Buyer’s premium: 10 per centSOME high individual prices but, for West Yorkshire auctioneers Andrew Hartley, an unusually high casualty rate of 29 per cent… “It was a very patchy market,” said Mr Hartley summing up what so many auctioneers are finding.

Classic English furniture continues to bring good prices at auction providing the quality is there – and this Regency sofa table, right, certainly filled that requirement when it was offered at the March 3 sale in Cornwall held by Bonhams Par (17.5% buyer’s premium).

THE scientific tests stacked up. The catalogue description was fair. The buyer got what she paid for. But somehow Christie’s still managed to lose the High Court action brought by special client Taylor Lynne Thomson.

Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull have secured one of Scotland’s key art collections for sale in January 2006.

Regular readers of ATG saleroom reports will be all too aware of the recent price explosion of Minton’s pâte sur pâte ceramics. This highly distinctive, almost cameo-like form of carved slip decoration was perfected by Louis-Marc Solon who had his own special iconography of nymphs and putti engaged in a bewildering array of quirky pursuits.

SOTHEBY’S auction and related revenues rose by more than 20 per cent, year on year, for the first quarter of 2005, coming in at $72.2m.

Bird in Space, right, an unrecorded marble version of one of Constantin Brancusi’s most celebrated and iconic subjects, was the toast of Christie’s $126.8m Impressionist and Modern art sale last week in New York.

A SNATCHED moment frozen in time thanks to the lucky presence of a camera... or was it?