Auctioneers

Specialist sales of Irish material are so few and far between that they are worth enumerating. The celebrated Lockett collec-tion was sold at Glendinings in 1956 and Whytes of Dublin held a landmark sale in April 2000.

This 19th century George Jones majolica game pie dish and cover led the way at Lawrences (11% buyer’s premium) three-day event, held at their rooms in Bletchingley between February 4 and 6.

FAMILY deaths and property downsizings still account for the majority of goods sold at auction, but lifestyle options are increasingly a factor. At Andrew Hartley’s sale the decision by a local vendor to part with her Chiparus figure to pay for an extension on her new home was almost as cutting edge as the Yorkshire man who ditched this collection of modern glass, some shown left, by Lancashire master blower John Ditchfield to pay for a holiday in the Far East.

The doom and gloom experienced in many provincial rooms prior to Christmas was nowhere to be seen in these Sussex rooms, who, despite the snowy conditions, took a respectable hammer total just shy of £170,000.

LAST month, 14 notebooks containing the gruesome diaries of Anatole Deibler, France’s last public executioner, were sold in Paris at Beaussant-Lefèvre (17.94% buyer’s premium) for €85,000 (£55,600).

Christie’s have announced two appointments to their tribal art department as they refocus their international programme of sales in this field. Tim Teuten, formerly head of Christie’s tribal art in New York and London, but more recently an independent consultant to the auctioneers, is to head the department. It will be based in Paris where he will oversee the organisation of sales and hold auctions twice a year.

Film poster vendor adds to exclusivity of sale by destroying second copy: COLLECTORS have reacted with outrage and disbelief to a statement from the vendors of an apparently unique film poster that a second copy had been deliberately destroyed to protect the sale’s exclusivity.

A Ptolemaic world map from the Nuremburg Chronicle was sold for £12,000 (£7500) as part of a December 12 sale of maps and prints held by Swann, while bid to $6000 (£3750) was the Map to illustrate Prince Maximilien of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America reproduced right.

Inspired by the catacombs of Somerset House, the street lighting of Pall Mall and, above all, the Babylonian splendour of the new Houses of Parliament, artist John Martin’s 1841 oil on canvas Pandemonium was an apocalyptic vision of Victorian London that played well to the post-September 11 sensibilities of the US picture trade at Christie’s King Street sale of the Forbes collection on February 19-20.

The now-defunct firm of Hedges & Butler (est.1667) was one of the oldest wine merchants in England, originally based by the Thames on a site now occupied by Charing Cross Station. The name of the company has now disappeared, but what its own publicity described as “our very interesting collection of old Viniana” provided an eye-catching highlight for Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) otherwise fairly routine mixed sale of art and antiques in Knowle.

If, as a recent opinion poll has suggested, Sir Winston Churchill was voted the greatest-ever Briton, and Mouton-Rothschild’s 1945 vintage is, as Michael Broadbent described it in his Great Vintage Wine Book, “a Churchill of a wine”, is Mouton-Rothschild ’45, ergo, the Greatest Ever Wine?

The annual ski poster sale at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium), timed as usual to coincide with the winter sports season, jumped into action earlier this month. The auctioneers’ 273-lot offering on February 13 took in all the main long-established European resorts plus some from further afield, and attracted its usual crowd of aficionados in person or on the phone.

Baldwin, Markov and M&M Numismatics is a bit of a mouthful, but this troika held their sale also in New York on January 16. It consisted mostly of classical coins. The antics of the Roman Circus would have given modern hunt protesters something to think about.

Decorative arts from 1870s Gothic Revival to 1960s Murano glass and everything in between is on offer at Sotheby’s Olympia this month. Their sizeable gathering of over 230 lots, which goes under the hammer on February 27, takes in examples of all the major design movements of the 20th century (and the latter end of the 19th): Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, Wiener Werkstätte, Deco and Modernism.

When it comes to wall power there is nothing like a poster to add presence and focus to an interior, and for iconic or cult status, a film poster is hard to beat.

SOTHEBY’S have announced that they have given up trying to find a buyer for the controlling stake of disgraced former chairman A. Alfred Taubman.

PRIVATE pictures with reasonable estimates proved a recipe for success at Bonhams (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on February 3 where 75 of the 101 lots found buyers at the £823,130 sale.

IF THERE is one objet d’art that best characterises the antiques market at present it is the curate’s egg – good in parts, but bad overall. The flawed ovum’s brighter regions encompass most low-value collectables – ceramics included.

FOLLOWING the tragic death of John Ball in an accident last year, the future of his auction firm Heathcote Ball has been secured in a deal with Tennants.

SOTHEBY’S have started a new staff review and admit that further redundancies are likely.