News topics

THE way Bonhams’ (17.5% buyer's premium) empire has adapted to the received wisdom that specialisation is a key to today’s macro auction environment is to have niche markets catered for at different outposts. Among the areas catered for at the Midlands branch at Knowle are such widely known ones as mechanical music and railwayana and, in ascending degree of arcane nature, wireless sets, optical instruments, firemarks, truncheons and tipstaffs.

THE catalogue at Hampton and Littlewood’s (15% buyer's premium) April 28-29 sale may have been a model of its kind but even Homer nods… and Mr Hampton did so while “late-night cataloguing” this sentimental little group, right.

SCATTERED amongst the colourfully decorated but fairly routine European-taste 18th century famille verte and famille rose bowls, plates and tea services that comprised the bulk of Christie’s King Street’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) 214-lot European collection of Chinese Export ceramics on May 11 was a handful of more unusual entries for which buyers paid a premium.

THERE is nothing like a modestly estimated, old English collection of Chinese art to lure London’s specialist trade to the provinces.

ONE of the most unusual disputes concerning an item sold at auction comes full circle on Wednesday, with the object being put up for sale once more.

SOTHEBY’S Bond Street (20/12% buyer’s premium) took their first tentative step into the world of 20th century Asian art on May 6 with a 173-lot mixed-owner dispersal of Chinese, Japanese and Korean paintings, prints, posters, sculpture and ceramics on May 6.

For 30 years, the props that have given authenticity to many of viewers’ beloved TV and movie costume dramas, have been supplied by West London specialists Period Props & Lighting.

MANY of the top lots among the 725 offered at Clarke Gammon Wellers' (15% buyer's premium) April 20 sale came from the owner of an elegant local flat – including a William IV mahogany longcase.

THE West Midlands auctioneers Fieldings (12.5% buyer’s premium) are making something of a habit of getting impressive prices for market-fresh watercolours by the Newlyn School painter Walter Langley (1852-1922).

Auctioneer Richard Bromell of Charterhouse Auctions (15% buyer’s premium), Sherborne had listened with reserved interest to a client who described a gilt blue glass decanter in his possession “almost identical” to a pair catalogued as in the manner of James Giles c.1770 that had featured in a 1968 edition of Country Life.

MAYFAIR antiquities dealer Rupert Wace is mounting possibly the most captivating June selling exhibition when, as one of the participants of the first London Sculpture Week, he presents Pharaoh’s Creatures: Animals from Ancient Egypt, at 14 Old Bond Street, London W1.

IN Amsterdam, if you pay close attention to the silver sales, you occasionally find a British-made object tucked away beneath the massing foliage of prized Dutch cutlery and tableware. It normally sits quietly, not causing much of a stir.

THE market’s mood for the earliest English porcelain was in evidence at the April 27 sale held by Brettells (12% buyer’s premium) of Newport. The Shropshire firm offered a 16-lot private collection of mainly Worcester wares.

DESPITE the well-documented vagaries of the silver and electroplate market, if vendors can forget the price history of the previous two decades it is still possible to hold a successful sale of country house tablewares.

GIVEN the bob-a-long prices for run-of-the-mill furniture at auction, the fact that 917 offerings at Lawrences of Bletchingley's (12.5% buyer's premium) 2861-lot April 27-29 sale were furniture didn’t bode well for the three-day outing.

I CAN almost hear the grinding as dozens of art critics hone their sabres – it must be time for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition!

FOLLOWING relegation, the on-running saga of Leeds United’s finances no doubt will mean that the club will end up selling more of their players over the summer. However, spare a thought for Crouch End Vampires F.C., one of the longest established amateur football clubs, that literally ended up selling the family silver at Bonhams Bath (17.5% buyer premium) back on March 15.

LONG before Heineken, Allsopp & Sons’ Burton ale had a claim to be the beer which reached the parts other beers could not reach – bottles of it accompanied Sir George Strong Nares’ expedition attempting to reach the South Pole in 1875.

EXPECTED to sell for £1m or more at Sotheby’s on June 22 is the Macclesfield Psalter, an unrecorded illuminated manuscript, made in England in the early 14th century, that came to light only when the saleroom was asked to sell the contents of the 18th century library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle.

A children’s and illustrated sale held by Pacific Book Auctions of San Francisco on May 13 included a collection of Oz books by L. Frank Baum.