Charterhouse

In the resilient Beswick market, collectors paid high prices for some rarities – even modern prototypes – at autumn sales.

Estimated at £100-150, this mid-20th century portrait of a fashionably dressed young woman attracted a flurry of bids at Sherborne saleroom Charterhouse (25% buyer’s premium).

Our weekly selection from salerooms.

Landscape painter Sidney Richard Percy (1821-86) is described in Christopher Wood’s Dictionary of Victorian Painters as “a prolific and variable painter, and his prices vary accordingly”.

Works by Namikawa Yasuyuki underline how buyers are aiming at the very best when it comes to the Japanese market ahead of a series of UK sales.

This inter-war ‘English school’ portrait of a seated gentleman wearing a bow tie, bought for around £150 three decades ago, sold for an unexpected £7600 at Charterhouse (21% buyer’s premium) on January 17. The unfinished 4ft 2in x 3ft 4in (1.27 x 1.01m) oil was dated 1922 but unsigned.

Topping a number of good pre-Christmas clock sales was a rare table/bracket clock, among the last made by London ‘Golden Age’ name Daniel Quare (1649-1724) with Stephen Horseman, who became his partner at the Exchange Alley workshop in 1721.

Serendipity had it that three early pieces of European pottery and glass – two of them dated – were offered for sale across a trio of English regional auctions in a matter of days in December.

The Charterhouse two-day November 15-16 auction in Sherborne includes a substantial selection of jewellery and watches.

His daring organic sculptural designs re-energised the British jewellery scene in post-war Britain. Now Andrew Grima’s (1921-2007) creations are leading the revival of 1960s and ‘70s designer jewellery on the secondary market.

This Old Master painting, above, of The Adoration of the Magi in the manner of Italian painter Vincenzo Carducci (c.1576-1638) led a recent Dorset sale.