Auctions

UK: THE 900-lot sale held at Ambrose (12.5% buyer’s premium) at Loughton, Essex, on May 10-11 was an event for bidders on budgets, with only three lots going into four figures. But there was active bidding, with a 75 per cent success rate, and the best sellers were all of interest.

UK: THE Shropshire auctioneers Walker Barnett & Hill marked a first with their sale on May 1 by giving it a fully illustrated catalogue that was also posted on the Web.

UK: A TAKE-UP of 70 per cent at this Locke & England Midlands sale on May 3 was evidence of the selectivity of buyers when it comes to furniture in the lower price ranges but there were some sound enough individual sales.

After a long delay due to Foot and Mouth restrictions the Herefordshire auctioneers’ Morris Bricknell mammoth 1200-lot sale went ahead at the local village hall.

UK: With a sale total of £30,256 for 442 lots of ‘breweriana’, Alan Blakeman of BBR Auctions chalked up yet another niche market success on May 13.

UK: THE penultimate Doulton outing held by Phillips (15/10% buyer’s premium) on March 27 was the 263-lot offering of prototype figures from the Doulton archives, an event which proved highly successful for both auctioneer and vendor being a near sellout and almost doubling predictions at £425,570.

UK: Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) have been making something of a habit recently of successfully selling highly elaborate inlaid marble Italian table tops.

UK: This 3ft 81/2in (1.13m) wide giltwood settee of antique inspiration, based on a design in Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration of 1807, went under the hammer at Gorringes’ sale in Lewes on June 6.

If Hogarth had lived a little longer he might have bumped into the bibulous individual responsible for commissioning this c.1770 ale glass.With a capacity of nearly two pints, it is one of the largest of its kind on record. Drink the full measure, and the 14-ply spiral band in the opaque twist stem might begin to do just that, because ale in the 18th century was mighty strong compared to the milds and bitters of today.

Austria: This broken pane of glass formed a haunting reminder of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, which precipitated World War I.

THE bulk of the 208-lot Irish sale held at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5% buyer’s premium) on May 17 was middle-to-low range material from the studio of the late painter, socialite and friend of the Prince of Wales Derek Hill (1916-2000) but it produced the busiest saleroom expert-in-charge William Porter had seen for a picture sale.

Apart from a few isolated surprises for cult rarities, Sotheby’s and Christie’s recent wine sales on both sides of the Atlantic bore out this sense of a market in a state of suspended animation.

FRANCE: This early 18th century, barrel-shaped vinaigrier in blue-and-white Rouen grand feu faïence (c.1700), pictured, used for vinegar made from wine or cider, was the most eye-catching offering in the Louviers saleroom of Prunier on May 13.

UK: THE Internet has, so far, hardly lived up to the initial claims made for it in the auctioneering world, but it does have its merits, as the Staffordshire firm Wintertons will attest.

UK: The Arcade series at Sotheby’s South (15/10% buyer’s premium) is where the lesser pieces that come into the Sussex rooms are offered, but there were some quality items among the 316 lots of Oriental ceramics and Eastern works of art of which 235 got away bringing a hammer total of £139,000 on April 11.

USA: Star turn at Sotheby’s May 15 Contemporary sale in New York was Jeff Koons’ outrageously kitsch ceramic sculpture Michael Jackson and Bubbles.

A classic entry in Christie's South Kensington's Classic Arts and Crafts sale on May 2 provided one of the day’s top results – £6800 for this pair of 2ft x 12in (61 x 31cm) c.1900 stained glass panels decorated with mediaeval landscapes and a text inscription.

UK: A striking amalgam of European form and Oriental decoration, this Meissen derived Kakiemon tankard was a rare hybrid, apparently one of only four in public record, and it consequently attracted worldwide interest at Woolley and Wallis’s sale in Salisbury on May 23.

UK: MAINLY operating as a consultant these days, Robert Finan holds just two sales a year at The Old Ship Hotel in Mere, Wiltshire, giving him the time to assemble events which not only sell well – the 376 lots in April enjoyed a 91 per cent success rate and a hammer total of £187,325 – but are guaranteed to bring specialist bidders across a wide range of interests.

It may look like a cross between an ancient rolodex and a tinpot bandstand but this is actually a rather stylish piece of late Victorian heavy industrial equipment.