Dreweatts

Establishing a new landmark for a picture lot sold at auction outside London, two portraits by Jean Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805) took £900,000 at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory salerooms last week.

The tripod table is among the selection of Early Mahogany furniture that contributes to the ACC Antique Furniture Price Index. The sector recorded a 6% fall in 2005 – with tripod tables of routine quality dropping in price – but better examples of any form will buck the general trend.

PAUL Barthaud, who has just stepped down as executive director of Spink, is the new chief operating officer for the Fine Art Auction Group.

Bloomsbury Auctions report that their new departments have helped them achieve a 60 per cent rise in turnover year on year for the first half of 2005.

Thanks to a lively book trade and the introduction of new departments, turnover at Bloomsbury Auctions has increased by 38 per cent in the first quarter of 2005 compared to the same period in 2004.

by Ian McKayLAST summer, when a large Biggles collection was put up for sale in Swindon, results were a little disappointing – at least for some of those titles offered individually, where some reserves proved too strong for collectors and trade alike – and around half of the 100 lots were bought in – but W.E. Johns’ famous creation certainly does not lack admirers and in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of February, a much smaller group of Biggles books, mostly from one source, brought good prices.

The Fine Art Auction Group, parent company of Dreweatt Neate Fine Art and Neales of Nottingham, will be the major sponsor of the Art of Dealing conference at the Earls Court Conference Centre in London on May 16.

Hamptons Fine Art Auctioneers have become the latest regional auction business to join The Fine Art Auction Group, parent company of Dreweatt Neate Fine Art and Neales of Nottingham.

The two best-selling pieces of furniture offered outside London in 2004 were sold during one of the very first and one of the last sales of the year.

By Kate Hunt WHILE large dispersals of clocks have always been rarities outside of the major London rooms, the West Country is becoming a new spot on the dial. Like Bath-based Gardiner Houlgate (see last week’s ATG), the auctioneers formerly known as The Bristol Auction Galleries, who now operate under the Dreweatt Neate banner, have built a good private as well as a trade following for the triannual specialist clock sections included in their antique sales.

IN September 1878, as it became clear that the Newbury Borough Fire Brigade was suffering from a lack of men and equipment, around 20 determined tradesmen decided to take matters into their own hands and to form a volunteer fire brigade. After some debate by the town’s Watch Committee, the auxiliary brigade won a majority approval.

AN early 20th century Tiffany Favrile ten-light lamp was an unusual consignment for a provincial auction house. The market for Tiffany is largely based in America and even the major London rooms tend to sell their best consignments through their New York rooms. However, the family of the late Peter Grant, former manager of the legendary rock group Led Zeppelin, live locally and put his lamp into Dreweatt Neate Tunbridge Wells Saleroom's (15% buyer's premium) September 3 sale.

THE sale of a Shakespeare First Folio is a rare event, but the sale of a copy that emerged out of nowhere is something that comes around only once in a generation.

BEING part of a large company such as The Fine Art Auction Group has its benefits when it comes to sourcing consignments and sharing expertise, but, on a day-to-day basis, it does not always make the specialist’s life any easier when it comes to spotting sleepers.

“EVERY auction house’s dream” is how Rupert Powell, managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, described the discovery of a Shakespeare First Folio that will provide a fitting centrepiece for the company’s 500th sale on Thursday October 7.

FOLLOWING the Antiques Trade Gazette’s coverage of the sale of a micromosaic table signed by Michelangelo Barberi for £250,000 at Dreweatt Neate’s Donnington Priory rooms in January – still the highest price achieved for an item of furniture in a UK saleroom so far this year – the Newbury firm received a call from a gentleman in Scotland.

SOLD for £2200 (C.R. Johnson) at Bloomsbury Auctions on August 19 was a Batchelor’s Directory.., a work. of 1694, which goes on to describe itself as ...a treatise on the excellence of marriage; of its necessity, and the means to live happy in it: together with an apology for the women against the calumnies of the men. Bound in contemporary red morocco gilt, this first edition was catalogued as “a dedication copy from the author”, but to whom, we are not told.

IT was a third edition of 1799, slightly foxed and browned and lacking the half titles, but the copy of George Walker’s novel The Vagabond seen in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of August 19 was in a contemporary calf gilt binding and it sold at £400 (C.R. Johnson).

INSCRIBED in both volumes “with the author’s love” to an Edith Barnes, presentation firsts of Lewis Carroll’s over-long children’s story Sylvie and Bruno of 1889 and its continuation or conclusion of 1893, the original red cloth bindings now uniformly faded to the spines, dampstained to the front of Vol. II and showing repairs to the spine ends of the first volume, was sold for £1400 in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of July 15.

THE Rates of Merchandise, that is to say, Subsidy of Tonnage, ...Poundage and ...Woollen Clothes, or Old-Drapery, as they are Rated and Agreed on by the Commons House of Parliament..., a 1660 copy in rebacked contemporary calf of the book of rates required by the passing of that year’s Act of Tonnage and Poundage, was sold for £1000 in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of June 17.