Auctions

MUCH of the saleroom activity in London over the past month has been of a fairly low key nature – routine sales of furnishings and objects. However, routine needn’t mean unsuccessful. Sales held at this traditionally thinly served period of the auction year can yield strong results, as customers home in on what little is around in the Capital. In the middle of the month, from January 13-15, Christie’s South Kensington held the first of their At Home weeks for 2004.

FRANCE: THE centenary of the Wiener Werkstätte, founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1903, was commemorated in Vienna with various museum and gallery exhibitions, and two specialist auctions at the city’s main auction houses – the Dorotheum and Wiener Kunst.

The pre-Christmas horological sales were lower key than those traditionally seen in the London rooms at this time of year. With the continuing problem of sourcing enough good material, few top names were on offer to tempt the serious collector, and the general mixed sales which resulted provided some good-value purchases for buyers further down the scale.

EXCEPTING the Norwich Union (one-day) cup that the team picked up a couple of seasons back, trophies for Kent County Cricket Club have been a bit thin on the ground in recent years. By today’s county standards, a St Lawrence (Canterbury) gate of 4000 is considered a good one and – though Sussex picked up the county title last year – today it is Surrey that remain the side to beat.

The highlight of the month’s auction calendar, this remarkable Italian micromosaic and ormolu mounted centre table shot to £250,000 (plus 15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) at Dreweatt Neate of Donnington Priory, Newbury on January 21.

POSTERS provide instant wall power to any interior, and carefully chosen they can prove a most effective (and cost-effective) device in any decorating scheme. Look out for two interesting poster auctions next month on either side of the Atlantic.

Whether your penchant is for Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco or later 20th century design, and whether you are looking for examples in ceramic, glass, metallic, furnishing or sculptural form, Sotheby’s Olympia’s first Decorative Arts sale of 2004 promises its usual broad mix.

PARIS: A PLETHORA of picture sales in Paris in December yielded some unexpectedly high prices but an erratic overall response, with an average take-up (by lot) of around 60 per cent. Results were stronger for Old Masters than for Modern Art, while the presence of buyers from across Europe helped offset the absence of Americans, deterred by the weak dollar.

Although he remains a somewhat shadowy figure, during the last 25 years George Bullock (1777/8-1818) has emerged as perhaps the foremost English designer and cabinet maker of the early 19th century. Amongst many questions still remaining unanswered about Bullock’s life are how much he actually designed himself (no records of his firm survive) just who was his partner Colonel Charles Fraser, which country houses commissions did he undertake, and did he commit suicide?

One of the more unusual lots offered by Felixstowe auctioneers Diamond Mills (10% buyer’s premium) on December 16-17 was this framed and glazed Sutton & Sons educational display, right, entitled Analyses of Natural Grasses by Dr J. Augustus Voelcker.

A new record for a European coin was set in New York on January 15 at a sale held jointly by Baldwin (London), Markov (N.Y.) and M&M Numismatics (Washington DC). The subject of this excitement was a Russian silver rouble.  Boldly estimated at $500,000, after spirited bidding it reached $525,000 (£308,823), selling to a Japanese dealer on behalf of a client.

There was healthy competition for the most unusual or best quality entries in London’s December round of five toy sales at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) and Bonhams Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) and some of the highlights are pictured right.

Even if the buying power of Americans is not so much in evidence in Europe in some quarters these days, they appear much less reluctant to flex their financial muscles in their own back yard. This seems to be particularly true when it comes to decorative arts.

Using the incentive of financial guarantees, Sotheby’s have secured two spectacular consignments for the New York spring auction calendar: the Forbes collection of Fabergé and pictures from the Whitney collection.

This impressive Victorian tortoiseshell and ormolu mantel table clock with three dials for GMT, Paris and New York time, each inscribed Viner London, sold for £26,000 at Woolley and Wallis’s first furniture sale of the year on January 13.

After years of regular sales at all the major auction houses, marine painting is an area in which top quality works by the most desirable names are in increasingly short supply.

Sold at $26,000 (£15,570) as part of the $3.82m (£2.28m) sale of the H.P. Kraus inventory held by Sotheby’s New York on December 4 and 5 was a lavishly illustrated manuscript of 1661 dealing with fireworks, ballistic design and construction.

Clock dealers spot under-catalogued rarities as regulators continue to set the pace in an otherwise stagnant market: ONE of the few elements of the clock trade to see significant forward strides in recent years is the regulator – the name given to those technically interesting and accurate timekeepers used to set the time of the watches and domestic clocks of Regency and Victorian Britain.

Sotheby’s, who have continued the tradition of separate works of art sales rather than combining them with Continental furniture, were actually able to serve up a double helping in December. Their usual mixed-owner offering on the 12th was preceded by a separately catalogued single-owner sale, called Treasures from the Rothschild Collection, of cameos and other antique jewels, gold boxes, silver-gilt, Limoges enamels and other objects made of precious materials.

Until recently, only three Italian micromosaic Chronological Rome round tables with ebony and ormolu bases by the renowned craftsman Michelangelo Barberi (1787-1867) were known. One is in London’s Somerset House Gilbert Collection (purchased from Sotheby’s New York in 1980), one is in St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum and a third is thought to have been commissioned by Baron Broderick, 6th Viscount Midleton (1791-1863) but its whereabouts remains unknown.