Auctions
News and previews of art and antiques sold at auctions throughout the UK and overseas, from multi-million-pound blockbusters to affordable collectables.
Vanity has lasting appeal at auction
29 June 2004AN airheaded and insubstantial vice it might be, but plainly vanity has lasting appeal at auction, judging by the success of the coromandel veneered lady’s box, top right, and the gentleman’s hide toilet case, bottom right, offered at Amersham Auctions Rooms (15% buyer's premium) on June 6.
Chocolate box to Hungarian taste – for now
29 June 2004THE 19th century European Paintings sales at Sotheby’s are divided into a number of regionally-themed sections which are enjoying varying degrees of health. Although they continue to have their occasional moments, the formerly booming markets for Orientalist, German and Scandinavian pictures continue to be pale reflections of their former selves.
A Rowlandson revolution? Drawing conclusions as major-name works come up for sale again
29 June 2004BACK in July 1984, Christie’s took £75,000 (£81,000 with premium) for Thomas Rowlandson’s (1756-1827) pièce de résistance watercolour of Box-lobby loungers.
The maritime climate
29 June 2004LEADING the sale conducted by John Taylors (12% buyer’s premium) in Louth on June 1 was a marine barometer by Rodgerson & Co.
Holmes and the Sussex Vampire
29 June 2004AS a follow-up to last week’s report on the Conan Doyle collection sold at King Street in May, I bring belated news of The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.
Panels share £500,000 provincial record
28 June 2004THE remarkable sums paid in London for high quality Islamic works of art arrived in the provinces in June.
Time for this marvel of the ancient world to strut its stuff once more
28 June 2004THIS 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.
Post-1900 works take the honours at London sales
28 June 2004TWENTIETH 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.
Georgia on my mind at Baldwin’s
22 June 2004THERE 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).
PREVIEW
22 June 2004IT 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.
Chinese-taste wares still dominate, with quality and rarity overcoming any shortcomings over condition
22 June 2004PROFESSOR 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.
A true treat for Custer buffs...
22 June 2004AN 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).
Chinese-taste wares dominate at Bonhams
22 June 2004IN 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.
Why small is beautiful for brown
22 June 2004THE 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.
The up-to-date appeal of fossils
22 June 2004FOSSILS, 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.
Worcester blue now scales the heights
22 June 2004THE 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.
Monzani flute plays £2200
22 June 2004HIGHLIGHT of the Collectors’ Sale conducted by Keys (10% buyer’s premium) in Aylsham was this silver-mounted ivory flute by Monzani.
Whose Hieroglyphica Mexicana?
22 June 2004VALUED 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’.
Frankenstein and the fireproof book
22 June 2004A 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 John Greaves connection encourages a £520,000 bid for Copernicus
22 June 2004THE 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.
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