Auctioneers

PROFESSOR Edward T. Hall (1924-2001) was a born collector, amassing over a million cigarette cards as a schoolboy at Eton College and later building a celebrated collection of clocks and scientific instruments that was sold at Christie’s King Street last July.

IN the last three years Bonhams have bagged several large quality Chinese consignments such as the Cunliffe collection of blue and white and the De Boulay collection sold last November, but this June there were no such dispersals to spark bidding battles between dealers or collectors in their 465-lot auction on June 8. Although few entries flew, there was demand for the best-quality Chinese-taste works and entries with mainland Chinese appeal.

THE quality of the Salisbury sales held by Woolley & Wallis (15% buyer’s premium) has been previously mentioned in these pages of late and the 470-lot May 10 event was a case in point. Billed as a furniture, clocks and works of art sale, there were highlights across the sections, including a William IV rosewood chaise longue with a wonderful scroll end at £3200 and a 10 1/2in (27cm) blue john urn with re-gilded ormolu mounts at £2600.

THE Financial Services Authority’s imminent regulation of insurance mediation activity could affect UK auctioneers and fine art shippers who charge for, or help arrange, insurance.

PICTURES in a May 19 sale held by Doyles of New York included a very large (6ft 4 1/2in x 4ft 1in (1.93 x 125m) oil on panel after Andrea del Sarto's Porta Pinti Madonna.

IN the 18th century, it was widely believed that meteorites found on Earth were pieces of the moon that had been blasted into space by volcanic eruption. We now know that almost all meteorites come from the asteroid belt and that it was the pummelling that the moon received in the early years of the formation of our solar system that allowed some chunks of moon rock to escape the moon’s gravitational influence and, periodically, find their way to Earth.

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.

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.

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.