Christie's

There was healthy competition for the most unusual or best quality entries in London’s December round of five toy sales at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) and Bonhams Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) and some of the highlights are pictured right.

Even if the buying power of Americans is not so much in evidence in Europe in some quarters these days, they appear much less reluctant to flex their financial muscles in their own back yard. This seems to be particularly true when it comes to decorative arts.

The Continental Furniture sale at Sotheby’s Bond Street on December 10 proved something of a struggle, just like the furniture elements offered the following day by their King Street competitors. Only half the 241 lots got away, with demand focussed more than ever on the rarest top quality.

BY family tradition, this pair of steel handcuffs, right, were used to shackle Lissadell’s best known inhabitant, Constance Gore-Booth (then Countess Markievicz) shortly after her prominent role in the 1916 rebellion. Having fought with the insurgents, she was imprisoned as Dublin came under military rule and an effort was made to execute her for both treason and murder for her part in the action at The College of Surgeons, Saint Stephens Green.

A MATTER of days before the Christie's and Hamilton Osbourne King sale on 25 November, Lissadell House regained some of its most spectacular furnishings – although it probably cost Christie’s and HOK more than €200,000 (£140,000) in additional revenue.

IN common with a number of recent Irish house sales, Christie’s/Hamilton Osborne King’s (19.5% buyer’s premium) November 25 on-the-premises sale of the contents of Lissadell House, Ballinfull, County Sligo, had more than a touch of controversy.

TWO nations, two auctions, one plane. The French and English charity auctions of Concorde parts and memorabilia, held by Christie’s and Bonhams in Paris and London respectively, both attracted audiences of over 1000 and passed off as complete sell-outs, with no shortage of estimate-crushing prices for components and souvenirs from the now retired iconic aeroplane.

While Sotheby’s incorporated their best objects of vertu into their silver sale on November 20, Christie’s offered theirs in tandem with portrait miniatures in a 264-lot sale the following month on December 9. The vertu side of the sale performed particularly well, with hardly any failures, most of the 55 unsold lots coming from the miniatures.

The object on which the keenest attention in the works of art world was focused this month was this 161/2in (42cm) diameter, 15th century parcel-gilt and silvered bronze roundel depicting Mars, Venus, Cupid and Vulcan.

THE secret of great art is supposed to be not what’s put in, but what’s left out, but unfortunately the same doesn’t apply to art sales. The star lot of Christie’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) November 26 auction of Important British & Irish Art was meant to be this impressively decorative Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) portrait, right, of the celebrated exotic Georgian beauty, Mrs Baldwin.

Halphen’s array of pre-Colombian feather textiles from Peru dated back to 100AD. Such textiles continued to be made until the Spanish invasion, and were often used as currency by the Incas; the conquistadors, though, suspected them of having mystical powers, and destroyed them whenever they could.

François Linke 1855-1946: The Belle Epoque of French Furniture by Christopher Payne, published by the Antique Collectors’ Club. ISBN 1851494405 £75hb

Christie’s Rock and Roll Memorabilia by Peter Doggett and Sarah Hodgson, published by Pavilion Books/Chrysalis Books. ISBN 1862055386 £25hb

SILVER, VERTU AND RUSSIAN WORKS OF ART £1 = $1.67: Christie’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) New York silver department has reasons to be cheerful: their October 21 sale, which saw selling rates of 78 per cent by lot and 82 by value for a premium-inclusive total of $5.95m (£3.56m) was boosted further when New York dealers Shrubsole bought the magnificent Charles II silver-gilt toilet service once in the collection of J.P. Morgan for a low-estimate $450,000 (£269,460) after the sale.

Gone are the days when collectors could afford to ignore anything but the finest quality early 18th century imperial porcelain in mint condition. The burgeoning of interest in this field from Far Eastern collectors has ensured that when such pieces come under the hammer, the prices realised are out of the reach of all but the seriously wealthy.

Dealers and collectors with money in their pockets at the end of Asia week were rewarded with a trip to Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on November 14. The room was full for this 478-lot auction, with mainland Chinese and Far Eastern buyers interested in two conservatively estimated, market-fresh, non-European collections of Chinese calligraphy brushes and archaic jades.

Christie’s King Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) were the only major house not to offer a single-owner sale in addition to their 163-lot mixed owner outing on November 11, but they managed to find buyers for the best quality private entries that sold well.

This impressive and highly finished late Queen Anne model of a 40/44 gun 5th rate ship, right, created a huge splash in Christie’s South Kensington’s 554-lot sale of Maritime models and marine paintings on November 19 when it sold for £600,000 (plus 17.5/10% premium), single-handedly providing over a third of the sale’s £1.36m total.

Just as Concorde was an Anglo-French initiative, so the entente cordiale continues with its dismantling. Two auctioneers on either side of the Channel: Christie’s in Paris and Bonhams in London, are holding Concorde souvenir auctions devoted to technical elements and mementoes from the iconic aircraft. In both cases the sales will benefit the respective airlines’ chosen charities.

A quarter of a century ago, Christie’s sold an amazing doll’s house known as Titania’s Palace. This truly palatial mansion, more miniature museum than dolls’ house, was designed by Sir Nevile Wilkinson over 15 years from 1907-22, when it was opened by Queen Mary. Initially intended for Sir Nevile’s daughter, as the house and project grew it turned into a fund-raising publicity exercise for children’s charities.