Auctions

THIS spring season Spink’s have had some hard-hitting sales and it has to be said that the market for the best British material has become very buoyant over the last year or so.

One of the more dramatic results seen at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer's premium) English Country House sale on April 7 in New York was the $130,000 (£70,650) paid by a private collector for this English needlework portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, c.1580, 4 3/4 x 4 1/2in (12 x 11.4cm), which had been estimated at a modest $8000-12,000.

THE Bonhams empire has embraced the notion of niche markets in pragmatic fashion, each of the various outposts having its own speciality – while the Scottish branch, which sells across the range of the market, breaks its sales into single specialist offerings. On March 18 Bonhams Edinburgh (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) offered 375 pieces of jewellery and silver with the following day’s sale comprising 198 items of Asian art, ceramics and glass.

THIS fine Nantgarw porcelain plate, right, once thought to be painted by Thomas Baxter and traditionally known as the ‘Three Graces’, is part of a collection of porcelain to be offered by Worcestershire auctioneers Philip Serrell on May 20.

ONE might not have thought that a Glaswegian enamelled devotional triptych was the easiest of items to estimate, but Lyon & Turnbull (17.5/10% buyer's premium) specialist John Mackie had a number of reference points when cataloguing the piece shown right for the decorative arts sale in Edinburgh on April 21.

IN the centennial year of his birth in 1904, a provenance to George Formby came with the sale of a ukelele which sold for £1750 (estimate £100-150) at Gorringes Lewes sale on April 27. The C.F. Martin & Co. 3K lte ukelele was bought by Bernard Dyke, a past president of the George Formby Society. The uke came to sale via the vendor’s father, an Arthur Rank chairman in the late 30s/early 40s to whom George presented it at a film preview at a Rank cinema in Essex.

AS USUAL at the March 18-19 sale held by Neales (15% buyer's premium), the spring event was led in price terms by furniture – but in terms of selling rates and the degree of competition in the room, the Nottingham event was more notable for the smalls and collectables.

RUSSIAN interest in their own heritage propelled the prices of two Imperial Russian subjects in the Albion collection, sold at Bonhams' (19.5/10% buyer's premium) New Bond Street rooms on April 22, to very high levels.

STUDIES of children tend to be one of the most popular subjects for miniature collectors, and there was plenty of choice in the Albion collection sold at Bonhams' (19.5/10% buyer's premium) New Bond Street rooms on April 22, enough indeed for the room to demonstrate some distinct preference.

VOLUME sales have their value but the conscious decision of Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins (15% buyer's premium) to go for quality rather than quantity – relegating lower-end consignments to fortnightly general outings and keeping the best for five well-promoted annual sales – has proved a winning format.

SMALL items in the form of a 100-lot silver and jewellery section were the backbone to the April 1 outing at Martel Maides Auctions (15% buyer's premium), in particular nine pieces of scarce Channel Island silver from a Jersey collection, all of which sold and most well above estimate.

THERE may be a long-established tradition of collecting Chinese ceramics and works of art in the West, but the highly specialist knowledge of the language and culture required to appreciate Chinese painting from anything more than a decorative point of view means most serious collectors and dealers are based in the Far East.

AUCTION history was duly made at Sotheby’s New York on the evening of Wednesday, May 5 when Picasso’s iconic 1905 Rose Period canvas, Garçon à la Pipe, was knocked down for a hammer price of $93m (£54.7m), making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

WOOLLEY & Wallis sold the first tranche of the caddy spoon collection assembled over the past half century by John Norie on April 20.

HAVE we just had a glimpse of the Jack Vettriano market in 100 years’ time? Any connection between the Walter Dendy Sadler (1854-1923) painting of three top-hatted Regency gentlemen being served a bottle of port in an inn garden which made £50,000 at the Cambridge rooms of Cheffins (15% buyer’s premium) on April 22, and the £660,000 Singing Butler might seem tenuous in the extreme.

WHEN a small, unattributed Old Master painting sells at £30,000 in the provinces the S-word usually gets plenty of use.

As in other markets, that of samplers has its peculiarities. While condition and craftsmanship – or rather craftsgirlship – are important they are not always paramount.

ALDRIDGE’S (15% buyer's premium) are yet to be convinced of the marketing powers of the Internet (they have no website and no e-mail) but specialist Ivan Street’s belief that “on-line sale catalogues do not improve prices” was given weight when a collector tendered a punchy £7100 for a large Victorian doll’s house with pre-sale hopes of £2000-3000 at their March 30 outing.

ANOTHER 19th century doll’s house was among the more collectable entries at Mallams Cheltenham's (15% buyer's premium) March 25 sale. Previously relegated to the outbuilding of a Welsh house, the Victorian “brick” villa, complete with its original stand, was a large size at 3ft 5in by 4ft 10in (1.04m x1.47m).

INTENSE competition between three bidders on the telephone and two in the room pushed the watercolours of Edward Bawden (1903-1989) into new financial territory when this signed and dated, 1956 composition, right, House at Ironbridge, fetched £10,500 at the Sudbury, Suffolk rooms of Olivers (12.5% buyer’s premium) on April 1.