News topics

ANYONE who thought that Yahoo’s decision to ban the promotion of Nazi memorabilia from its site would spell the end of legal wranglings over the issue were mistaken.

IT APPEARS that simple economics may be catching up with eBay sellers, at least in the antiques and collectibles sector. Everyone knows the law of supply and demand: if supply is low and demand high, prices go up. If supply is high and demand doesn’t increase accordingly, prices go down.

More selections from the early summer auctions.

Furniture in country house is eclipsed by piece found in a drawer UK: PAPERWEIGHTS have not hit any sort of headlines in years and anyone outside the coterie of (mostly American) collectors may have assumed they had been relegated to the status of murder weapons in Thirties whodunits – but not so. One became the totally unexpected star of the contents of The Thorne, a country house at Bethsersden which were removed to the salerooms at Canterbury.

UK: CORNISHWARE may be at the lower-priced end of the ceramics market but there is no shortage of enthusiasm as was evident when this 71/4in (18.5cm) jar, illustrated here, sold at £600 at the ‘Kitchenalia’ sale held by niche-market specialist BBR (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 20.

UK: EARLY German drinking vessels captured all the attention and big money in Christie’s June 13 sale of silver.

FRANCE: TOULOUSE-Lautrec’s famous 1893 poster of Jane Avril (printed by Chaix), in a five-coloured lithograph version with the rare text addition Jardin de Paris beneath the dancer’s name, spearheaded the Le Mouel poster sale of May 18 with Fr415,000 (£38,400).

UK: FURTHER evidence that it is the strong abstract designs that are most popular in the Clarice Cliff market could be seen last week at Bonhams & Brooks (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) on June 12. Leading their 104-lot sale at £3600 was an 11-piece coffee service decorated in the Mondrian pattern while the preceding lot – two coffee cans and saucers decorated in the sought after Football pattern – easily left behind a modest £200-300 estimate to sell for £1150.

UK: ONE of numerous full-page woodcut illustrations of bridles, bits, etc. to be found in a 1602 Naples first of Piero Antonio Ferraro’s Cavallo Frenato..., bound in contemporary limp vellum, that sold at £1950 (Traylen) in the Dominic Winter, Swindon (buyer's premium 12.5 per cent) sale.

UK: TOPPING Christie’s June 14 English furniture sale at £420,000 was this pair of marble-topped side tables attributed to the Cobb and Vile partnership.

UK: STILL relatively new to the auctioneering world as independent auctioneers, the husband and wife team of S.J. Hales (15 per cent buyer’s premium) have already built up a nationwide reputation for Staffordshire and one that was enhanced at their May 30 sale when they could offer this rare early Samuel Alcock porcellaneous pair of leopard groups.

There will be much more to come on the £2m Lewis Carroll’s Alice at Sotheby’s on June 6, but this week just one of ten recorded prints of Dodgson’s 1858 portrait of Alice Liddell as ‘The Beggar Maid’, which sold for £160,000.

UK: AS EVEN the upper echelons of the trade cannot afford to stick to academic standards at the expense of turning a profit in the market for the purely decorative, one finds increasingly serious sums of money paid out for amusing trifles of zero antiquity, such as a large pair of 20th century Continental jardinières, one of which is shown here.

UK: ALTHOUGH there were no huge prices among the 416 lots at these Devon rooms, there was success across the wide range of offerings.

HOLLAND: Amsterdam is geographically well placed to hold tribal art sales for which there is an enthusiastic community of specialist dealers and collectors in Europe – in particular France and Belgium – as well as in America.

UK: ONE of only three in existence, this Sir Stanley Matthews Royal Doulton Character jug shocked all in attendance at Louis Taylor in Stoke-in-Trent on June 11.

UK: CERAMICS took the top spots at this 1650-lot Cotswolds sale in the form of a pair of mid-19th century Continental majolica stick stands.

UK: MEDALS took the top three slots in this toys, juvenilia and ephemera sale but there was a healthy take-up for toys from collectors and from a couple of Liverpool-based specialist dealers at this 537-lot auction that netted Biddle & Webb around £25,000.

Pictured here is a selection of books sold in auctions in London and New York.

UK: THIS Georgian chinoiserie framed mirror painting of c.1760 took the top slot at Sotheby’s June 13 English furniture sale when it sold to an American private buyer for £280,000.