Auctioneers

A COPY of the Lawn Tennis Annual for 1882, compiled by L.S.F. Winslow, made £650 in a June 16-17 sale held in Ludlow by Mullock Madeley.

THE London coin auction is indeed evolving. We have the announcement by Stephen Fenton of the birth of St James’s Auctions. Their first sale is scheduled for Wednesday October 13 at the De Vere Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street. It seems that this promises to be a very prestigious sale.

A LOT from the Michael Wittock collection of important Renaissance bindings sold by Christie’s on July 7, this is one of the two vols. that make up an exceptional copy of the 1540, first Aldine edition of the works of Machiavelli and was one of a large number of books bound in Venice in 1547 for Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, the humanist Bishop of Arras, by a craftsman who came to be known as the Fugger Binder after one of his later patrons.

LONDON-based Comic Book Postal Auctions hold several auction highs for British comics including, earlier this year, a world record £12,100 for The Beano No. 1. However, that remarkable price could well be threatened by this copy of The Dandy No. 1.

THERE are local buyers aplenty for Cornish fare such as Newlyn copper and Troika pottery, but for the lion’s share of their sales Lays (15% buyer's premium) depend on a broader geographical spread of dealers and collectors whose participation tends to peter out during the height of the tourist season.

FOLLOWING the sale of a Charlotte Rhead wall plate for an unexpected £2900 in October last year, the Ilkley, West Yorkshire salerooms of Andrew Hartley received another rare design by the industrial ceramicist for their sale of August 11-12.

JACQUES Tajan is set to quit Tajan S.A., the firm he founded in 1994, over disagreements with the firm’s new owner Rodica Seward.

VINTAGE vehicles are generally the province of specialist auctions, but Tennants (15/10% buyer's premium) finished their July 22-23 sale with a number of such offerings, in particular this 1910 Star 15mph tourer, right.

WITH rising interest rates, a fluctuating stock market, selective bidding and increasing competition for quality private consignments, now may not be thought to be the most prudent time for expansion but Wotton Auction Rooms (15% buyer's premium) have gone ahead with plans to build a larger saleroom within their existing premises. It will open next month.

JUNE was a busy month for Wellers (15% buyer's premium) who hosted an 819-lot antique sale on June 12 in addition to a 4000-lot two-day architectural auction held off the premises at Enfield’s Reclaim Centre on June 11-12.

THE most expensive single football programme in a June 20-21 sale held by Knights was a 1921 FA Cup Final programme, right, for the game at Stamford Bridge in which Spurs beat Wolves 1-0. It sold for £2400.

WITH a turnover last year in excess of £5 million, Vectis, who are based in Stockton-on-Tees, are well known as the world’s largest auctioneers of toys. Perhaps less well known is the fact that the company also organise shows and, for some years, have put together the successful London Toy Soldier Show at The Royal National Hotel in London’s Bloomsbury.

The Parrot Pen-man, an ink and watercolour drawing by Quentin Blake that sold for £1200, was among 40 lots offered at Sotheby’s on July 8 on behalf of the Arvon Foundation, a literary charity that provides residential creative writing courses.

FIVE previously unknown photographic prints by Edgar Degas totalled €380,000 (£253,335) at Beaussant-Lefèvre (20.93/11.96% buyer’s premium) on July 2. All featured group portraits taken at the Paris home of Degas’s friend, the painter Henri Lerolle (1848-1929), and were consigned by Lerolle’s descendants.

LIKE other ex-Peralta-Ramos lots that have cropped up in recent weeks, this pair of 1934 firsts of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius the God bore a red inked Chinese ownership stamp, but both were inscribed by the author in 1958, at a time when he was giving a lecture in Detroit, and they sold for $5500 (£2990) in a Sotheby’s New York sale of June 17.

I HAVE often illustrated plates from the works of Maria Sibylla Merian, but never before a portrait of that remarkable lady herself.

THE June 11 Aguttes (20.33% buyer’s premium) sale was dominated by late 19th century pictures, including this 1891 Venetian Conversation, seen right, 2ft 5in x 3ft 4in (73 x 1.01m), by American artist Julius Leblanc Stewart (1855-1919), who often painted Venetian scenes – Kaiser Wilhelm II acquired his Sirocco Effects in 1895. The work here claimed a handsome €85,000 (£56,665).

THE most sought-after and best-performing English factory amongst the more select gatherings of English wares at Sotheby’s Bond Street sale was undoubtedly Chelsea. The auctioneers had 16 lots to offer, mostly consigned from one collection and of the currently fashionable Red Anchor period botanical type either in their painted decoration or shape.

ENGLISH and Continental glassware was also a feature of Sotheby’s June and July ceramics sales. It accounted for just over 30 per cent of the more affordable Olympia offering, where around two-thirds of the 115 lots changed hands, and just under a fifth of their Bond Street sale where around half the 33 lots found buyers.

PABLO Picasso’s Garçon à la pipe boosted Sotheby’s second quarter sales considerably, alone accounting for about 9.5 per cent of the total.