Greenslade Taylor Hunt

IS there currently a better performing area of the ceramics market than Beswick farm animals? Aided by a proliferation of books and guides and an enviably large collecting base that includes a loyal following within a nostalgic farming community, prices have seen some dramatic acceleration in recent years.

THERE were few head-turners at Greenslade Taylor Hunt's (15% buyer's premium) 738-lot specialist book and clock sale on May 13, with dealers and collectors bidding selectively for the best quality works.

PROBABLY the best-known and the most coveted of the novelty table lighters made by the Ronson Lighter Co. is the 1936 patent Touch-Tip Bartender.

THE jacket was torn with loss and four of the five paintbox pictures had been partly coloured, but a copy of The New Adventures of Rupert, the 1936, first Rupert annual, was sold at £580 in a May 13 sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt.

A DRAWING by E.H. Shepard of Winnie the Pooh playing a balalaika raised bidding on a third edition of The House at Pooh Corner to £7000 in the Greenslade Taylor Hunt sale of November 13 – and although nothing else in the 825-lot Taunton catalogue came remotely close to that in financial terms, a few other lots deserve mention.

THE Somerset auctioneersGreenslade Taylor Hunt were taking a bullish view about August sales. A month of “traditionally smaller sales and fewer buyers but not in Taunton” was the official line after a two-day event of more than 2100 lots on 28-29 August.

AT OVER 1000 lots, the May 22 sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt of Taunton was certainly one of the bigger sales of that week, but only a single lot topped the £1000 mark – a disbound, incomplete and defective English Bible. Apparently a 1540 reissue in smaller format of the Great Bible that Thomas Cromwell ordered to be placed in the country’s churches so that “parishioners may moste commodiously resorte to the same”, it was bid up to £1250.

THE highlight of the wide-ranging 1400-lot collectors’ sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) at Taunton on July 20, was a Morris Minor 1000, from the Matchbox series, crucially painted in pale brown.

CYPRESS wood was more commonly used for coffins than coffers in medieval times, but this Charles I example, right, showed why the Mediterranean hardwood was a popular medium for domestic furnishings.

THE Taunton rooms of Greenslade Taylor Hunt (10 per cent buyer’s premium) were graced with the presence of a “minor media celebrity”, on St. Valentine’s day when this rare Steiff rod-jointed teddy bear, right, known as Percy, made an appearance.

THE COPY of Colonel William Fitzpatrick’s Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul... that sold for £380 in this Somerset sale at Greenslade Taylor Hunt on 13 December was not a great one.

Brown furniture may not be at a premium at present but walnut is still capable of springing some surprises, as was seen at the Taunton sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) on July 26 and the July 21 sale held by Altrincham auctioneers Patrick Cheyne (12% buyer’s premium).

UK: ONE rarely gets the chance to auction an auctioneer’s advertisement, at least in ceramic form, but this is what happened when Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15 per cent buyer's premium) offered this matched pair of early 19th century Derby figures, right, at their Taunton salerooms on May 31.

UK: AS with spoons, silver takes on an extra glow in the currently buoyant market for tea caddies an example of which came up at the April 26/27 sale at Taunton held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt’s (15% buyer’s premium).

F&M notwithstanding, the latest West Country Sporting sale to be held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt, the Somerset saleroom on March 30 saw its best ever attendance.

UK: COINCIDING with the recent recovery of Donald Campbell’s boat from Coniston Water, photographs and ephemera relating to Campbell’s famous father Sir Malcolm attracted extra interest at this Devon sale.

UK: A heart-shaped London delft pill slab of c.1660-70, 12 x 10in (30 x 25cm), painted in blue, ochre and turquoise with the arms of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

UK: DURING the industrial revolution, speed of production in the workplace was matched only by the consumption of beverage in the public house, and so far as the thirsty labourers were concerned one of the greatest mechanical inventions of the late 19th century was the so-called 'bar-screw'.

UK: TOP LOT in this sale was a 1668 edition of Gervase Markham’s A Way to get Wealth, a ‘nonce’ collection, first issued in 1623, which incorporates half a dozen works by this important but prolific and commercially inventive writer on agriculture, who was not averse to putting different titles to what were essentially the same works or to re-issuing unsold copies of new books under new titles.