Auctioneers

FRANCE: Etude Tajan, France’s premier commissaires-priseurs, are to be known from now on as just plain TAJAN. The firm, run by Jacques Tajan and his son François, has been known as Etude Tajan since Jacques Tajan went independent from former partner Antoine Ader in 1995.

SPECIALIST collectors and dealers don’t seem to have a closed season, certainly not in the arms and armour world and they turned up in strength at Weller & Dufty in Birmingham on 25 July.

DAVID Lay’s trawls through Cornwall to mount regular sales like this 2000-lot marathon on 16-17 July usually throw up something special but here it was a case of piling ’em high and selling ’em reasonable.

THE two-day Staffordshire sale at Wintertons on 25-26 July was, at just under 800 lots, not perhaps quite a giant sale but it certainly covered the range of lower and middle-priced antiques.

ONE of the top lots in the Thomson Roddick & Medcalf sale of July 18 was a privately printed volume of 1890 containing works by Dante, illustrated by Phoebe Traquair and supplied with notes by J.S. Black.

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.

FOUR small deceased estates formed the basis of the 711-lot sale held by David Duggleby (10% buyer’s premium) at Scarborough, on July 30. Most of the best furniture came from the contents of Rillington, Malton – the highlight being this 8ft 3in (2.52m) tall George III mahogany standing corner cabinet, right. Its condition,colour and quality prompted a £6400 local private bid.

THE 2186 lots offered at Gorringes, (buyer’s premium 10 per cent) at Lewes on July 17, 18 and 19 had the touches of quality and variety that buyers demand but specialist Nick Muston noted the resistance to lower-value items.

SOTHEBY’S launch their new saleroom at Olympia in West London on September 18 with the auction of the Ian Grant Collection, removed from 41 Ladbroke Square.

UK: PAINTINGS were the main strength of the 422-lot sale at Phillips, Knowle (15/10% buyer’s premium) on July 18, but furniture and works of art also boosted the £236,800 total.

There are some who think that the people who collect the cat paintings of Louis Wain (1860-1939) are as mentally unbalanced as the artistic imagination that created them, but there is no gainsaying the extraordinary prices that Wain continues to fetch in the salerooms.

A MIX of modest standard furniture and collectable ceramics hardly seemed a formula for success in mid-summer but the mix at Fellows (buyer’s premium 15%) attracted a full house at Birmingham on July 10.

Horology topped the July 24-25 519-lot sale at the Bournemouth rooms of House & Son (15% buyer’s premium) when an 18th century longcase, being sold on the behalf of a local storage company where it had been left uncollected for years, was a specialist target.

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).

GENERAL silver remains a quiet market but novelty material is booming as shown when this 51/2in (14cm) silver-encased desk bell by Gy & Co,in the form of a tortoise, was offered at the July 17,18 sale held at Aylsham, by Keys (10% buyer’s premium).

A continued demand for good quality Georgian and early Victorian jewellery at Phillips (15/10% buyer’s premium), Bayswater, 415-lot antique and modern jewellery auction, August 7, saw this gem set heart-shaped locket pendant, c.1830, steal the top slot.

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.

AS Sotheby’s announced their plans for Billingshurst, they also revealed disappointing worldwide results for the second quarter of the year that showed profits halved ($14.3m compared to $30m for 2000). They predicted a loss for the year as a whole.

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.