Auctions

Wedgwood, famous as it is, is not the leading name for majolica collectors and this mid 19th century matchbox modelled as a fly, right, was something of a puzzle to Paul Goodley, specialist at Aylsham auctioneers Keys (10% buyer’s premium) when it was entered for the March 15-16 Norfolk sale.

NEXT month The Country Seat turn the spotlight for the second time on fin de siècle pioneering lighting designer W.A.S. Benson, when they mount an exhibition, The Talented Mr Benson, at their picturesque medieval tithe barn at Huntercombe off the A4130 near Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire.

DREWEATT Neate’s sale on 23rd March at Donnington Priory offered a 100-lot section of coins, banknotes and medals which produced a 100 per cent take-up.

LAST week’s ATG included a short piece on a 1566 poem by Patrick Adamson, giving thanks for the birth of a son to Mary Queen of Scots, that made £3100 in a Dominic Winter sale of April 6.

ON what was a mixed day for furniture sales at Lyon & Turnbull when one or two very elegant pieces failed to get away, there was a deal of interest at the Edinburgh salerooms in this rather unprepossessing George III mahogany writing cabinet on stand, right.

ENTERPRISING Essex organiser Robert Bailey seldom seems to stop moving round the country and this holiday weekend sees him in the heart of the Potteries.

On his way to join the QE2 for a Mediterranean cruise on April 16, John Sullivan knew there was something he must do.

Thanks to a lively book trade and the introduction of new departments, turnover at Bloomsbury Auctions has increased by 38 per cent in the first quarter of 2005 compared to the same period in 2004.

Capping a sell-out sale of the first instalment of a private collection of nutmeg graters at Woolley and Wallis on April 20 was this unusual Victorian novelty specimen fashioned as a hinged strawberry, which sold for £8200.

In November 1933, the Queen Mother (then Duchess of York) wrote to Charles Edmund Brock (1870-1938), a noted illustrator and society painter, commissioning a family portrait.

TRADITIONAL British pictures have not been one of the strongest areas of the art market in the last couple of years, with sporting paintings being particularly stuck in the doldrums.

Dreweatt Neate (Buyer's premium: 17.5 per cent)SOMETIMES one could be forgiven for thinking that the words ‘Oriental work of art sleeper’, as, for instance, ‘English middle order collapse’ don’t require spaces between them and that, German-style, they are all one word.

Expertise rewarded, a surprise (and happy) ending and just a touch of regret... the story of an unassuming set of four late 19th/early 20th century chairs, one shown right, offered by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) at Taunton on March 15, was the very stuff of auctioneering romance.

IT was a matter of success breeding success for Oxfordshire auctioneers Holloway’s in March. Late last year they sold an 18th century ivory bust, possibly of Handel, for £29,000, and when the owner of a tiny medieval ivory panel read of it in ATG No 1671, January 8, he decided to offer it in the Banbury rooms.

The regular sales of costume and textiles at Christie’s South Kensington (20/12% buyer’s premium) occasionally produce surprises. What seemed to be a sleeper in their March 15 sale was the mid-late 18th century linen court petticoat shown here. It was made from four oval split cane wooden hoops and half hoops on the hips for extra width, suggesting that it was intended for the most formal occasions.

CERAMICS SALES IN FRANCE £1 = €1.44A collection of drink-related objects and another devoted to Italian Renaissance maiolica were two very different single-owner properties on offer on the same day at the Paris auction house ArtCurial (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) last month.

“Perhaps the last collection from a commissioning family that is likely to come onto the market” was how Berkshire auctioneer Mark Law of Law Fine Art described the remarkable sale of the Andrew Keith Collection conducted at Littlecote House, Hungerford on April 5.

Maryland auction house Hantman’s will sell personal artefacts and archival material relating to Pierre August Renoir at auction on May 14.

For obvious reasons the Royal Doulton 'Norfolk' pattern is avidly collected in East Anglia.

Right: this handsome reticulated porcelain vase and cover by George Owen was the highlight of a private and local collection of Royal Worcester porcelain sold by Glasgow auctioneers McTear’s on March 25.