Auctions

Silver spirit labels (‘Holland’ refers to Dutch Gin) are not quite two a penny, but they are among the cheapest drinking trinkets available.

Having dispersed the collection of Sir John Gielgud early last month Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) went on to offer that of his good friend, fellow thespian and fellow knight of the realm, the late Sir Ralph Richardson, on April 27.

UK: A dozen telephone lines led to the Tithe Barn salerooms of Bruton Knowles, near Cheltenham on April 26, all contesting the finest lot of period satinwood in the provinces this year.

UK: This elegant 4ft 3in (1.3m) wide early Georgian mahogany two-door commode stole the show at Phillips’ furniture sale in London on Tuesday, April 24, when it sold for £500,000 to London dealers Jeremy Ltd.

UK: An ancient Celtic gold ornament provided the high point of Christie’s South Kensington’s Antiquities sale last week when it was purchased for £1m by London’s British Museum, to whom it was on loan from 1993 to 2000.

Every sector of the auction market has been feeling jittery about the prospect of economic slowdown in the US. Wine sales have already had to re-adjust to more sober trading conditions after the binge of sales that led up to Millennium and auctioneers on both sides of the Atlantic have been understandably nervous about rich clients thinking that $5000 cases of wine have become an unjustifiable luxury.

LONDON-based Haughton International Fairs have changed the name of their International 20th Century Arts Fair to The International Art + Design Fair 1900-2001.

“IT’S a British phenomenon,” said Sheffield Railwayana’s specialist Ian Wright of the wealthy private collectors who regularly pay thousands of pounds for locomotive nameplates, cabsides, posters and railway ephemera in Sheffield Railwayana's quarterly sales.

Heavy snow across Staffordshire on the morning of this 800-lot dispersal did not deter buyers, with the auctioneers noticing a marked increase in the usual number of phone bids.

GOOD stock furniture was the strength of this 289-lot, £130,000 Halls Shropshire sale on March 9 where the top price was taken by a c.1775 two-tier mahogany dumbwaiter.

UK: This Urbino majolica istoriato dish, depicting the cutting of Samson’s hair and attributed to Francesco Xanto Avelli di Rovigo, was discovered in a box of effects following a clearance at a Fenland farmhouse and entered for sale at Golding Young & Co. of Grantham on April 11.

F&M notwithstanding, the latest West Country Sporting sale to be held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt, the Somerset saleroom on March 30 saw its best ever attendance.

The second foray to Mayfair from their custom-built rooms near Bath fell short of an unqualified success for Gardiner Houlgate (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) but the March 18 specialist musical instruments sale at the Westbury Hotel, where some 380 lots took about £178,000, attracted enough top-level interest to put it on the map as a bi-annual event with a third planned for November.

With Sunderland greengrocers being prosecuted for selling bananas in pounds and ounces rather than grammes, the British Trading Standards Association is naturally keen to be rid of its vast stocks of Imperial weights.

UK: Some fishermen claim that pike have an appetite for human flesh – the elderly members of a crown green bowling club in Warrington say this stuffed and mounted 201b monster has been responsible for several fatalities among their anoraked colleagues in recent years.

UK: A key feature of the Bloomsbury Book Auctions sale of April 5 was a private collection of the works of A.A. Milne.

UK: Mouseman – the name resounds beyond the world of arts and crafts furniture.

UK: One of this year’s most stunning finds, a group of four rare Sèvres Etruscan red ground dessert plates from the Prince Napoleon Service, 1854-6, offered at Mellors and Kirk, Nottingham, on April 5.

UK: Sworders, Stansted: A mammoth 1200 lots made up the March dispersal by the Essex auctioneers and there were some real quality pieces among them, both in the ceramics and the furniture.

UK: MARCH was a busy month in London and successful with it. On the 15th, Spink (15 per cent buyer’s premium) sold the definitive collection of Tudor silver coins formed over several decades by Roger Shuttlewood.