Christie's

The September 20 auction of Doulton, Poole and Carlton ware at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) was a three-part sale that gave two distinctly different performances.

One unexpected result enlivened an otherwise unexceptional sale of Continental decorative arts held by Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on September 13.

Themed series are all the rage in the salerooms these days. September 25-28 has been designated Travel Week by Christie’s King Street rooms and will be given over to a series of sales devoted to voyages, exploration and discovery.

After a quiet August Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) sprang into action in September with two sales packed into the afternoon of Monday the 4th: 321 lots of street fashion, accessories and other items of costume and 388 lots of vintage film posters.

USA: Christie’s New York are relocating and restructuring a number of their departments in preparation for the assimilation of Christie’s East into the company’s Rockefeller headquarters.

August may be an unlikely month to find unusual Asian entries in London’s salerooms, but Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) regular Asian Decorative Arts sale, August 16, threw up two quirky 19th century Chinese blue and white bottle vases and covers, 121/4in (31cm) high, made for the Tibetan market.

CHRISTIE’S kept ahead of Sotheby’s in worldwide sales, recording a total of £681m ($974m) for the first six months compared to Sotheby’s £659m ($942.9m) – a gap of three per cent.

UK: One of the highlights of Christie’s South Kensington’s antique arms and armour sale on July 19 was this interesting Indian-made group, comprising pistols and a sporting gun from the Lucknow Arsenal.

The mixed medley that constitutes Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) periodic sales of mechanical music and technical apparatus can regularly be expected to include a selection of sewing machines, typewriters, phonographs, gramophones and various incarnations of musical boxes.

Members of the trade still looking for a suitable holiday destination could do worse than consider Pirate’s Cove on Cocos Island, the subject of this Montague Dawson oil on canvas, 3ft 4in by 4ft 2in, which appeared at Christie’s Maritime sale in New York on July 31.

A sporting treble of Cricket, Boxing and Tennis made up the 311-lot sale held at Christie’s South Kensington back on June 22. This early tilt- headed lawn tennis racket which made one of the highest prices in the tennis section had the double distinction of being an early piece of equipment with a provenance to a pioneer champion of the sport.

The demand for the best of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studio glass continued apace at Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) 86-lot Important 20th century Decorative Arts including Works by Tiffany Studios, June 7.

A well-wrapped and padded pair of boxing gloves are essential, one would think, for victory in the ring. But arguably it was the defective nature of the left hand glove, pictured here, which gave Cassius Clay his win over Henry Cooper in 1963, after letting him off the hook.

UK: Christie’s Continental Furniture sale on July 4 (17.5/10% buyer's premium) included a small nine-lot section devoted to Neapolitan piqué work: tortoiseshell objects inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver, which proved decidedly popular.

UK: A week of exhibitions and sales of Old Master drawings reached its zenith on July 10 when this miniature silverpoint sketch by Leonardo da Vinci appeared at Christie’s King Street.

UK: Sold for £48,000 to Quaritch at Christie’s on June 4& 6 was a recently rediscovered manuscript of William Gilpin’s book on Forest Scenery... (first published in 1791) that fills four volumes and contains 25 full and 20 half-page watercolour drawings by Gilpin, plus three pencil and wash drawings of animals by his brother Sawrey.

An incomplete copy of one of the masterpieces of English botanical illustration of the 19th century, Mrs Edward Berry’s Selection of Hexandrian Plants (1831-34), offered at Christie’s on June 4 & 6 contained only 45 (of 51) of the younger Robert Havell’s partially colour-printed and hand-finished engraved and aquatinted plates, but it brought a bid of £60,000 from the Oppenheimer Gallery.

Now that we cannot take what is left of our public services for granted, it is worth remembering that municipal fire brigades have only existed nationwide since 1938. When private brigades were the norm, the residents of towns and cities had to rely on firemen employed by private insurance companies, resulting in the bizarre sight of Commercial Union/Sun Life/Phoenix firemen idling in front of a blazing building insured by a rival company.

This dramatic theatrical costume for a warrior in yellow satin with gilt thread and silk embroidery took the top price in a sale of Asian Costume and Textiles held by Christie’s South Kensington on June 21.

For last November’s Asia series Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) switched from holding mammoth mixed Oriental offerings to more specialised separate Chinese and Japanese sales – an arrangement they continued for the summer Asian sales last month.