Auctions

WELSH organisers Amulet Fairs are at Deeside on Sunday February 27 and then, on March 6, at Llangollen. Remember to bring your euros.

JUST a couple of years ago, specialist glass fairs were proliferating. That frenzy seems to have settled down of late, probably because the serious glass dealers understandably are getting choosy. But one that increasingly is making its mark is the Cambridge Glass Fair, organised by Paul Bishop under the name Oxbridge Fairs, which will be held for the fifth time this Sunday (February 20) at Chilford Hall Vineyard, Linton, Cambridgeshire.

A remarkable array of art and antiques seized by the High Court from an Austrian businessman convicted of fraud were sold by a small-scale Buckinghamshire auctioneer last week.

Fine Art Auctioneer Dr. Jürgen Fischer in Heilbronn, Germany has announced an important forthcoming sale of European and Studio Glass to be held on 11th and 12th March 2005.

The Simon Hall collection of cookery books, to which were added lots from other sources, was offered by Dominic Winter on January 27.

SEVEN-figure prices are rare in continental Europe, so there was jubilation in Cologne when a work by Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) climbed to €1.2m (£857,000) at Lempertz (22.04% buyer’s premium) on December 4.

Appearing at Frank R. Marshall’s (15% buyer’s premium) sale at Knutsford, Cheshire on January 11 and selling at £720, was this 10 x 7in (25 x 18cm) oil-on-canvas, right, by Augustus Edwin Mulready (fl1863-1880 d.1886). Framed, mounted and indistinctly signed, it showed a characteristic subject for the artist, and was estimated at £200-300.

AFTER almost five years in the heart of London’s West End, one of our top dealers, Kevin Smith of Windsor House Antiques, has decided Mayfair is not for him.

Preview: One of the classic images of the Victorian era is the picture of the resolute monarch on horseback with her trusted servant and confidant John Brown. This photograph, taken in 1864, is to be found in a remarkable album of memorabilia that the auctioneers Sebök (17.24% buyer’s premium) in the Bavarian city of Bamberg are offering on March 5.

With Sir Walter Scott setting the tone and Victoria and Albert in the vanguard, 19th century followers of fashion developed a highly romanticised passion for all things Scottish.

At first glance, this 7ft 6in x 5ft 7in (2.28 x 1.70m) canvas, right, of the Temptation of Adam by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Santerre (1651-1717) might seem to be a fairly standard, if unusually large, depiction of one of the most hackneyed religious themes in Western art.

This pair of Hanoverian pattern tablespoons offered at Woolley & Wallis, right, is of interest not just for the unascribed and possibly Scottish marks but for the scratched initials RP and the lightly engraved iconography of a crown, a cardinal’s hat and the name Henry Stuart.

At Sandown Park Antiques Fair on February 15, Paul Braithwaite on stand HW5 is offering this early 20th century surgeons’ fitted box, made by Mayer & Meltzer, surgical instrument makers in London, for £385.

The final Dix Noonan Webb (15% buyer’s premium) 2004 sale in London, on December 14, was a massive 1610-lot affair with a diversity of offerings. The total hammer take was £282,905.

THE first afternoon session of a January 20-21 antiques sale held by Lawrences of Crewkerne presented more than 400 lots of books, amongst them a good collection of private press books featuring the wood-engraved illustrations of David Jones.

Christie's King Street, 20 January, Buyer's Premium: 20/12%.The most expensive piece from the 26 lots offered from Endsleigh, the Devon cottage designed for the 6th Duke of Bedford was this 6ft (1.8m) wide carved oak side table designed c.1801-14 by Jeffry Wyatt, the architect responsible for the main decorative scheme at Endsleigh, and made by local cabinetmaker John Williams of Exeter.

Charterhouse, Sherborne, December 10, Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent TWO fine timepieces led this Dorset sale. Top price by a long way was the £21,000 bid for an unusual brass skeleton clock designed for a Victorian railway industrialist.

Thomson Roddick & Medcalf. Buyer’s premium: 15 per centTWO large private consignments accounted for half the lots at Thomson Roddick & Medcalf’s Edinburgh sale and had the predictable effect of pulling in bidders from south of the Border.

TO the non-specialist, a cracked and chipped blue and white 18th century delft plate might have seemed reasonably estimated at £60-100 in the January 5 sale held by Brightwells (15% buyer’s premium).

Back in the late 1920s, during the height of the so-called Etching Boom, prints by Scottish contemporary artists such as Muirhead Bone, David Young Cameron and James McBey were the subject of the sort of feverish speculation which now characterises the market for cutting-edge names like Damien Hirst, Richard Prince and Maurizio Cattelan.