Chiswick Auctions

The month of March produced an unusually large number of awakened sleepers across the UK’s regional auction rooms – from an Old Master drawing to a rare Marklin tinplate train.

Weekly clearance sales are increasingly being replaced by newly branded formats as auction houses are responding to fresh consumer trends.

Signed to the front cover by all four members of the group, a 1963 ‘Star Special’ (No 12) issue of the fan magazine Meet the Beatles sold for £4200 at Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) on March 6. It also bore the name of a former owner, one RC Zebedee of Bournemouth.

In the wake of record auction prices – the first £1m bottle of whisky and a $500,000 bottle of wine – four auction specialists discuss the lively market for fine and rare wines and whisky. A potted history of wine-related antiques follows. First up: Richard Brierley of Forum Auctions and Sam Hellyer of Chiswick Auctions on the wine market.

Ornithological books and artworks have played their part in the success of two recent sales and a selection of just a few of those lots begins with books from the Ladwell library.

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (1906-96) was one of those artists who took little pleasure in selling their work. Indeed, Motesiczky’s obituary in The Independent described her “aristocratic disdain for the marketplace” and stated that “while she half welcomed exhibitions, they remained uncomfortable experiences… she never needed to sell her paintings, indeed she preferred to keep them around her.”

Two previously unpublished ink sketches by John Constable (1776 -1837) excelled at Chiswick Auctions’ latest British & European Fine Art sale.

Helped by conservatively pitched estimates, a clutch of middle-market Orientalist pictures achieved some modest growth in value on their first return to auction in three decades.

Billed as a private London collection, the February 5 sale at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) betrayed a single owner with a good eye and wide-ranging enthusiasms.

Chiswick Auctions has hired former Bonhams auctioneer Bruce Addison to head a new Scottish office.

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.

Dated 1536 and printed in Antwerp, a defective copy of what is known as the ‘mole’ edition of Tyndale’s Newe Testament – so called from the mole (or perhaps hedgehog) depicted on a stone on which St Paul’s foot is resting in one of the many woodcut illustrations – made £30,000 in a recent London sale.