Auctioneers

Oak and other vernacular and country furniture formed a large slice of Sotheby’s Gwynn Collection and had some input into their R. A. Lee collection.

Jewellery is a classic Christmas seller and, combined with the current demand for Art Nouveau this hallmarked silver Charles Horner pendant, right, was always a likely seller.

Christie’s will launch a new series of sales in the New Year aimed at creating a “one stop shopping experience” for dealers, decorators and particularly private buyers.

Sotheby’s board of directors has told its managers to meet with representatives of Alfred Taubman to discuss the possible sale of his controlling stake in the company.

This unrecorded, William Billingsley painted campana vase appeared at Woolley and Wallis’s sale in Salisbury on November 28, and not without great controversy.

George Jones majolica continues to be extraordinarily popular with buyers, both trade and private. Some damage to a George Jones cheese dish and cover offered in Birmingham at Biddle & Webb saw it estimated at £300-500 so it came as rather a surprise when it soared above this.

The earliest book in English on the subject, and described by H.D. Molesworth in his introduction to a 1960 reprint as “a work of art in its own right... as readily accepted for its literary content as for its technical information”, George Parker and John Stalker’s Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing... was the book that effectively introduced the process to Western craftsmen and one that had, as a consequence, a dramatic effect on decorative styles and fashions.

The book section of a general antiques sale held by Cheffins of Cambridge on November 1 ran to only 58 lots, but this saleroom produces impressive, colour illustrated catalogues and no fewer that a dozen of those lots were illustrated, some of them at full page.

THE best seller at Tennants’ sale on November 22-23 in the Yorkshire Dales was consigned by a Yorkshire family with connections to the famous silversmith who made it.

Contemporary Decorative Arts, Sotheby’s selling showcase of work by European designers, has become a popular annual fixture in the auctioneers’ calendar.

Less than a week after Sotheby’s became the first foreign auctioneers to sell in France, Christie’s brought down the hammer on their inaugural French sale – the first session of the Charles-Otto Zieseniss collection.

Robert Brooks, who is in the middle of negotiations concerning the restructuring of Bonhams, says he is working to a target date of February 1 to complete his plans.

Pending appeals leave compensation in limbo: With the conviction of Sotheby’s chief shareholder, Alfred Taubman, on price-fixing charges, attention now turns to the outstanding matters concerning compensation.

Whitbread archives provide Knowle with a trophy consignment: The Midlands branch of the Bonhams empire, the former Phillips salerooms at Knowle, has not previously been known for regular breweriana sales but their reputation for selling collectables saw them win a 356-lot consignment from the Whitbread archives.

Collectors from Lancashire arrived at the Edinburgh sale of Decorative Arts held by Lyon and Turnbull (15/10% buyer’s premium) on November 7, excited by this silhouette, right, of their favourite ceramic factory.

“There was a certain amount of watching. People were there to see what was happening, which was why it was slightly less active than last year, particularly for the nice, but less fashionable 19th century watercolours.”

Two weeks after Christie’s and Bonhams’ Knightsbridge sales, Bonhams’ (15/10% buyer’s premium) offered a small 110-lot selection of antiquities along with a dozen lots of icons in their Bond Street rooms on November 27.

When Sotheby’s sold Joan Stephens’ collection of samplers and needlework in New York in 1997, the second most expensive lot, at $90,000, was an English needlework picture initialled EP, and dated 1746.

A new world auction record for Sir Joshua Reynolds was achieved at Sotheby’s on November 29 when the oil on canvas Portrait of Omai sold for £9,400,500 (plus 20/15/10 per cent buyer’s premium).

Former Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman fell asleep during board meetings and was more concerned with getting his lunch than running his company, a New York jury was told last week.