Auctions

THE remarkable sums paid in London for high quality Islamic works of art arrived in the provinces in June.

THIS technical marvel of the ancient world, pictured right, known as a Roman glass diatretum or cage cup, was cut out of a single blank of glass to form two layers. The solid inner cup is linked to its outer cage only by a series of delicate struts.

TWENTIETH century and Contemporary art underlined their status as the key growth areas for the major auction houses when London’s June round of Part I Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales netted £120.4m. Six months ago the equivalent sales took £94m, while back in June 2003 – when war was raging in Iraq – they could only muster a relatively modest £81m.

THERE was scarcely a facet of numismatic endeavour which was not represented in Baldwin’s (15% buyer’s premium) sale of May 4 and 5 (2018 lots).

IT was amongst the shaded woodland of the Thames Valley that Windsor chairs are thought to have originated. The forerunners of their kind may have been merely a humble form of seating, but, as two lots in forthcoming English furniture sales show, it wasn’t long before the form began to branch out.

PROFESSOR Edward T. Hall (1924-2001) was a born collector, amassing over a million cigarette cards as a schoolboy at Eton College and later building a celebrated collection of clocks and scientific instruments that was sold at Christie’s King Street last July.

AN autograph sale held by Swanns on April 29 included 11 lots from the George Armstrong Custer collection formed by the late Dr. Elizabeth Atwood, a vet and well-known Custer buff. Seen right is a copy print of a larger image by Timothy O’Sullivan, inscribed “Truly yours G.A. Custer”, which sold for $14,000 (£7955).

IN the last three years Bonhams have bagged several large quality Chinese consignments such as the Cunliffe collection of blue and white and the De Boulay collection sold last November, but this June there were no such dispersals to spark bidding battles between dealers or collectors in their 465-lot auction on June 8. Although few entries flew, there was demand for the best-quality Chinese-taste works and entries with mainland Chinese appeal.

THE point is often made that so-called apprentice pieces or miniatures will command more than their lifesize equivalents. This was certainly the case with the diminutive oak bureau pictured right, a meticulously made and finely-preserved 16 1/2in (42cm) wide 18th century replica of an otherwise standard Georgian form. Estimated at £3000-4000, it proved the winner on an otherwise difficult day at the Netherhampton Salerooms (15% buyer’s premium) on April 28 when it sold at £6000.

FOSSILS, whose decorative qualities in either antique or contemporary settings, have made them a regular feature of Sotheby’s garden sales at Billingshurst, opened the May event with 100 lots. Although dealers have become interested in the genre (there are, for example, now stands selling natural history at Olympia), private buyers took the top offerings including the best seller, a detail of which is shown right.

THE very earliest English porcelain has long held sway in the market, but one feature of Part I of the mammoth Zorensky Worcester collection sold by Bonhams in March was the high prices paid for some of the late 1760s and early 1770s underglaze blue ground tablewares.

HIGHLIGHT of the Collectors’ Sale conducted by Keys (10% buyer’s premium) in Aylsham was this silver-mounted ivory flute by Monzani.

VALUED at £1000-1500 in a June 29 sale at Bonhams is a bound manuscript entitled ‘Hieroglyphica Mexicana, or, an Introduction into the Origin, Nature and Meaning of the Ancient Paintings by the Semi-Civilized Nations of America, with Sketches of their Languages, History, Arts & Sciences’.

A TYPED first draft of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in which he uses real names of characters and places, not the pseudonyms of the finished book, carried a $100,000-150,000 estimate in a May 27 modern literature sale held in San Francisco by PBA Galleries but it joined a long list of unsold lots.

THE 463 lots that made up the first portion of science books from the Earl of Macclesfield’s library at Shirburn Castle, sold by Sotheby’s on June 10, covered just the letters A-C, but the contents of this extraordinary library, virtually untouched since the 18th century, are such that even this starter helping raised a premium-inclusive total of £3.57m.

AUCTIONS are often the best way of settling whether a work is genuine or not. Of the speculative entries in Christie’s South Kensington’s 584-lot sale on June 11, most were contested by Hong Kong and mainland Chinese dealers. Before the sale, trade and auction specialist opinion was divided as to whether this 10 1/2in (27cm) high blue and white vase (shown right) was a Yongzheng (1723-35) mark and period vessel or a 19th/20th century copy as catalogued.

IT was amongst the shaded woodland of the Thames Valley that Windsor chairs are thought to have originated. The forerunners of their kind may have been merely a humble form of seating, but, as two lots in forthcoming English furniture sales show, it wasn’t long before the form began to branch out.

SEVERAL times a year Teutoburger Münzauktion have a long sale, mostly containing fairly low-priced items of great diversity. Much of it is of Germanic interest. On May 21 and 22 they offered 4921 lots.

GLASGOW in the 18th century was a shadow of the powerhouse it was to become during the Industrial Revolution. In the mid-18th century, when the primary source of wealth on the Clyde was trade in tobacco, rum and sugar from the New World, the population stood at a modest 17,500, enough to support only a handful of goldsmiths and silversmiths.

WHILE recent months have seen some softening in the majolica market as a whole, scarce pieces by good makers continue to attract bids close to those they did three or four years ago. Pictured right is one of George Jones’ best-known Stilton dish designs, modelled as a thatched bee skep on a rustic base of mottled greens and browns that also includes a registration lozenge for 1872.