Auction Reports

Underlined by a £65,000 bid for a table cabinet, the attraction of Indo-Portuguese furniture – that combines familiar European forms with the exotic lure of the East – is as strong today as it was in centuries past.

Some buyers regard sales of dealers’ stock as a minus on the grounds that the lots have been ‘seen’. Others view them as a plus, reckoning the material has already been the choice of an expert.

The wealth of material brought back to Britain from the days of the East India Company was illustrated at John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) sale when four Indo-Portuguese or Anglo-Indian tortoiseshell and ivory works were consigned by different vendors.

Silver across five centuries caught the eye at provincial sales in February.

Never wholly out of demand since top Victorian upholsterer Howard & Sons began producing furniture from its Soho premises, these built-for-comfort sofas and armchairs continue to excel whenever offered at auction.

This early 18th century walnut chest of drawers offered at Rowley’s (22.5% buyer’s premium) Ely rooms on February 16 had plenty going for it including small size at 2ft 8in (81cm) wide, a crossbanded top and a brushing slide.

Rather sparsely catalogued, this unusual 14in (36cm) Lalique glass dish with a lovebirds design had emerged from a local unpaid storage unit into Hannam’s (23% buyer’s premium) February 18-20 sale in Selborne. Given a here-to-sell estimate of £150-200, it took £4200.

The plethora of single-collection sales at the start of the year was not at the expense of old-fashioned auctions offering good-quality offerings across the range of dealing and collecting – such as the Winter Fine Arts sale at Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) of Dorchester.

What seems to have been an overdue clear-out at Monmouth Trading Standards department led to half a dozen lots of imperial weights and measures being consigned to Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium).

Regarded in their time as examples of the finest cabinet-making rather than simply reproductions, good 19th century French revivalist furniture remains in demand.

Two Victorian stained-glass and leaded window panels entered by the same vendor trebled the estimates in selling to the same UK online bidder at Special Auction Services (17.5% buyer’s premium) on February 5.

Travelling from Glasgow to the south of England courtesy of a commission bid, this Hornby-Dublo train EDG 7 tank goods set, right, went at 10 times the lower estimate at McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) sale on February 1.

Precisely four months on from a flood inundating its saleroom, Carmarthen auction house Peter Francis (20% buyer’s premium) enjoyed a literal and metaphorical day in the sunshine on February 13.

Following the fall of Louis-Philippe in the 1848 revolution, the French royal sculptor Henri Joseph Francois, Baron de Triqueti (1804-74) was obliged to cast his net further afield for new patrons.

The sale at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (plus 21% buyer’s premium) on January 29 – an event dominated by the multi-estimate performance of a Qianlong mark vase in the Ming taste sold at £460,000 (see ATG No 2378) – also included a hardwood (probably olivewood), bone and mother-of-pearl inlaid model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Billed as a private London collection, the February 5 sale at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) betrayed a single owner with a good eye and wide-ranging enthusiasms.

The best Egyptian antiquities now engender much more than mere scholastic fervour but, for the most part, humbler objects remain eminently affordable.

Two single-owner collections built up over lifetimes were well received at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on February 5-6.

Good times at the Oxford rooms of Mallams (20% buyer’s premium), when all bar one of 56 clocks got away almost all going comfortably above estimates.

Out-sold by the 100-times estimate £22,000 Japanese vase featured on last week’s News pages (ATG No 2380), this gold and silver-gilt chalice, right, offered at Lytham St Annes auction house Gerrards (18% buyer’s premium) on February 7 was a more predictable five-figure star.