Auctions

Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) offered buyers two sporting sales last month, on July 18 and 19, with the first day devoted to a large golfing section plus a mix of other sports, while the subsequent session comprised 200 lots of pictures, objects and ephemera devoted to equestrian sports.

Today’s national cricket teams jet around the world to their Test series by plane, but back in the early 20th century the cruise liner was the chosen mode of transport.

Minton’s majolica is currently riding high with collectors who appreciate its bright colours and distinctive, often quirkily clever designs. But there is much more to Minton than its majolica, as a loan exhibition currently on show at Phillips New Bond Street rooms aims to show.

FRANCE: THE make-up of the Conseil des Ventes, the new auction watchdog to vet all companies wishing to stage auctions in France, has been announced far quicker than expected.

June saw the fourth and final episode in the dispersal of the Ken Smith Collection of Staffordshire pot lids and Prattware by Reading auctioneers Special Auction Services (15% buyer’s premium inc. vat). The 240 lots from the collection, mainly four items per lot, formed part of the 1000-lot event over the weekend of June 9 & 10 and contributed £47,400 to the hammer total of £207,500 for the whole collection of which only a remarkable 23 lots failed to get away.

Illustrated right are three of the 215 lots that made up the collection formed by Bob Scoales, a member of the Japan Society sold at Dominic Winter, Swindon on June 20-21. • Though many of the books naturally refer to Japan’s earlier history, most were written in the wake of Perry’s US naval expedition of 1850-52 and the opening up of the country to foreigners, but one notable exception was a Narrative of My Captivity in Japan in the Years 1811-13 by Captain V.M. Golownin.

The demand for the best of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studio glass continued apace at Christie’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) 86-lot Important 20th century Decorative Arts including Works by Tiffany Studios, June 7.

ARMS and toys are specialities of Lewes auctioneers Wallis & Wallis (15% buyer’s premium) and on June 11 their 285 lots of toys included die-cast tinplate toys, toy soldiers and the Mirylees Collection of Dolls’ Houses and dolls.

ESSEX organiser Robert Bailey holds his main South of England summer fair at, appropriately, Sotheby’s South, one mile north of Billingshurst in West Sussex, from August 17 to 19.

Tiffany Favrile glass brought the biggest money at Sotheby’s (20/15/10% buyer’s premium) 407-lot 20th Century Works of Art, June 5. Foremost was a privately consigned Favrile glass and bronze dogwood cone chandelier, 3ft 4in (1m), with chains, ceiling cap and verdigris patina.

UK: Sotheby’s horological sales always incorporate a section on mechanical music. Their latest event featured material from a well known, leading figure in this trade: the late Jack Donovan, the Portobello Road dealer in tinplate toys, automata and musical boxes, who died in 1998.

UK: The rarity of an object such as this 18th century mahogany candlestand usually points to a high estimate, but the £1000-1500 range put on this example by Henry Adams of Chichester at their sale on July 25 had the desired effect of encouraging healthy competition among bidders.

“It is hard to source good quality fresh to market goods these days,” said auctioneer Guy Schwinge after a monthly sale in Dorset, echoing the hardships faced by many other auctioneers around the country.

One would expect to see a Winchester 1873 ‘repeater’ holding up a bank in Santa Fe, not aimed at a tiger in the Indian Raj, but strangely enough it appears that Edward, Prince of Wales had more in common with outlaws like Angelo and Jesse James than previously realised.

Not quite in the same league as Dutch Old Master fish stalls, Victorian butchers’ models still elicit the same puzzled question in our squeamish age – why did anyone go to elaborate lengths to compose such a gris(t)ly display?

One of the great names of 17th-century Spanish still life painting is undoubtedly that of Juan van der Hamen, whose brief career as a court painter in Madrid spanned the decade of the 1620s.

THERE WAS no competing with Harry Potter in the Sotheby’s sale of July 10, and bidding rose to £75,000 for Thomas Taylor’s original illustration for the the book that launched those wizard tales in 1997, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, but Beatrix Potter did her bit too, as did Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, W. Heath Robinson, E.H. Shepard, Lawson Wood, Ronald Searle, Dr Seuss and others.

UK: SIR Alfred James Munnings proved as great a magnet as ever at Sotheby’s South’s Billingshurst rooms on July 18 when a watercolour sketch for one of his oil paintings fetched a hammer price of £62,000, more than double the low estimate.

A previously unknown and early draft of one of the key closing chapters of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the Eumaeus episode, was offered at Sotheby’s on July 10, and it was one of two committed private buyers who took the lot to £780,000, just short of the low estimate.

FRIDAY 13th proved a long day at Glendining’s (15 per cent buyer’s premium) with 735 lots – not that this was unlucky. It was, as usual, a general sale but there is plenty of general interest to write about.