Auctioneers

The auction process is a key part of the secondary art and antiques market.

Firms of auctioneers usually specialise in a number of fields such as jewellery, ceramics, paintings, Asian art or coins but many also hold general sales where the goods available are not defined by a particular genre and are usually lower in value.

Auctioneers often provide other services such as probate and insurance valuations.

Academic values fall as decorative ones rise

21 June 2001

UK: AS EVEN the upper echelons of the trade cannot afford to stick to academic standards at the expense of turning a profit in the market for the purely decorative, one finds increasingly serious sums of money paid out for amusing trifles of zero antiquity, such as a large pair of 20th century Continental jardinières, one of which is shown here.

Sir Stanley Matthews Royal Doulton Character jug

21 June 2001

UK: ONE of only three in existence, this Sir Stanley Matthews Royal Doulton Character jug shocked all in attendance at Louis Taylor in Stoke-in-Trent on June 11.

Majolica stands tall in Cotswolds

21 June 2001

UK: CERAMICS took the top spots at this 1650-lot Cotswolds sale in the form of a pair of mid-19th century Continental majolica stick stands.

Toys are the fastest movers at Birmingham

21 June 2001

UK: MEDALS took the top three slots in this toys, juvenilia and ephemera sale but there was a healthy take-up for toys from collectors and from a couple of Liverpool-based specialist dealers at this 537-lot auction that netted Biddle & Webb around £25,000.

Georgian chinoiserie framed mirror painting

21 June 2001

UK: THIS Georgian chinoiserie framed mirror painting of c.1760 took the top slot at Sotheby’s June 13 English furniture sale when it sold to an American private buyer for £280,000.

Christie’s ready to sell off Spink

18 June 2001

CHRISTIE’S are preparing to sell all subsidiary companies currently operating under the Spink name. PricewaterhouseCooper have been instructed to handle the disposal of their Spink assets, which are likely to fall into four separate entities.

Schenberg estate boosts sale

16 June 2001

AUSTRALIA: A COLLECTION of classic 18th century English and German porcelain gave a flying start to Christie’s Australia’s (17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) mammoth 575-lot, mixed-owner auction of Decorative Arts in Melbourne on May 28-29.

MacCaghwell's A Mirror of the Sacrament of Penance

16 June 2001

UK: A RARE example of Irish printing, this work by Hugh MacCaghwell, styled Aodh mac aingil, translates as A Mirror of the Sacrament of Penance and was printed at the Irish Franciscan College of St. Anthony of Padua at Louvain in 1618.

From fakes to educational aids

16 June 2001

A Passion for Pottery... Further Selections from the Henry H. Weldon Collection by Peter Williams and Pat Halfpenny, published by Sotheby’s Publications ISBN 0962258865, £225, hb in slipcase (limited edition of 1500 copies).

Dominic Winter Sports

16 June 2001

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are two items used to decorate the covers of the sale catalogue issued for by Dominic Winter for their May 17 Sports sale.

The prototype still holds sway

12 June 2001

UK: THE penultimate Doulton outing held by Phillips (15/10% buyer’s premium) on March 27 was the 263-lot offering of prototype figures from the Doulton archives, an event which proved highly successful for both auctioneer and vendor being a near sellout and almost doubling predictions at £425,570.

The irresistible rise of Italian table tops

12 June 2001

UK: Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) have been making something of a habit recently of successfully selling highly elaborate inlaid marble Italian table tops.

A giltwood settee of antique inspiration

12 June 2001

UK: This 3ft 81/2in (1.13m) wide giltwood settee of antique inspiration, based on a design in Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration of 1807, went under the hammer at Gorringes’ sale in Lewes on June 6.

A question of scale when it comes to ale

12 June 2001

If Hogarth had lived a little longer he might have bumped into the bibulous individual responsible for commissioning this c.1770 ale glass.With a capacity of nearly two pints, it is one of the largest of its kind on record. Drink the full measure, and the 14-ply spiral band in the opaque twist stem might begin to do just that, because ale in the 18th century was mighty strong compared to the milds and bitters of today.

Sotheby’s unveil Olympia plans

11 June 2001

SOTHEBY’S have announced that they will hold their first sale at their new Olympia salerooms on September 18. The dispersal of the single owner collection will mark the beginning of an annual programme of 80-85 sales aimed largely at the middle market in terms of value.

Battling over haunting mementos of Sarajevo

08 June 2001

Austria: This broken pane of glass formed a haunting reminder of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, which precipitated World War I.

£20,000 bid shows how prices for Hill are climbing...

08 June 2001

THE bulk of the 208-lot Irish sale held at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5% buyer’s premium) on May 17 was middle-to-low range material from the studio of the late painter, socialite and friend of the Prince of Wales Derek Hill (1916-2000) but it produced the busiest saleroom expert-in-charge William Porter had seen for a picture sale.

Flowing, but not freely…

08 June 2001

Apart from a few isolated surprises for cult rarities, Sotheby’s and Christie’s recent wine sales on both sides of the Atlantic bore out this sense of a market in a state of suspended animation.

Net sparks wide interest in ceramics

06 June 2001

UK: THE Internet has, so far, hardly lived up to the initial claims made for it in the auctioneering world, but it does have its merits, as the Staffordshire firm Wintertons will attest.

Quality in the Arcade

06 June 2001

UK: The Arcade series at Sotheby’s South (15/10% buyer’s premium) is where the lesser pieces that come into the Sussex rooms are offered, but there were some quality items among the 316 lots of Oriental ceramics and Eastern works of art of which 235 got away bringing a hammer total of £139,000 on April 11.

News

Categories