Auctions

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

HE HAS suffered a few knocks to his character in his 110-year history, but when Golly’s life began over a century ago, it was hard to find anything not to love about him.

In 2001 international connoisseurial interest and commercial hype accompanied a major exhibition and accompanying book on the Belgian ceramicist Charles Catteau (1880-1966). There are signs that the market is now beginning to mature – minor Boch Frères works by Catteau were very soft at Bonhams in London on March 1 – but Brussels auctioneers Horta were able to offer a major signed studio piece by the artist on March 21-22.

IT is every auctioneer’s dream to find a treasure in a box of odds and ends. How much more exciting it must be when that treasure also proves to be of academic importance, a candidate for the title of the earliest figure in English blue and white porcelain.

According to Brunet, Giulio Ferrario’s monumental study of Le Costume Ancien et Moderne ou Histoire de Gouvernement, de la Milice, de la Réligion, des Arts, Sciences et usages de tous les Peuples anciens et Modernes, was originally published in Milan in 143 parts between 1816 and 1834 – simultaneously in French and Italian.

History is the new ‘cookery’ on TV, and the adventures of Rifleman Sharpe have brought the Peninsular War to more general notice, but that is hardly enough to explain why military medals, for all their echoes of glory, have become a real boom area in the antiques and collectables market.