Auction Reports

The story of Cornish care worker Jordan Rogers, who proved he was the illegitimate son and legitimate heir to a £50m Penrose mansion, made national headlines in May. It also had a knock-on effect in the auctioneering world.

In market terms, ecclesiastical gates are not the subject of mass appeal but examples by major 19th century designers certainly had their devotees at two June sales.

Catalogued as a ‘tin glazed hand painted Chinese vase – 17in (42cm) tall’ and estimated at £50-80, a late 17th century Kangxi period famille verte porcelain vase of waisted trumpet form sold on June 22 for a healthier £12,000 – 150 times the top estimate.

This silver tennis bangle, below, triggered a classic singles match at auction.

Scantily catalogued as a Georgian/Victorian micro-mosaic plaque depicting a dove, a classic example of the pieces produced by Italian craftsmen and beloved by wealthy Britons on the Grand Tour was equally appreciated by bidders at Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium).

Top-seller at Richard Edmonds’ (20% buyer’s premium) latest specialist motoring accessories sale was a hanging lightbox proclaiming the virtues of Pratt’s Perfection Spirit.

No good library of British art pottery literature is complete without a copy of Paul Atterbury’s 'Moorcroft'. The jacket illustration alone with its myriad tube-lined miniatures in a bewildering range of forms and patterns is particularly memorable. More than one collector has attempted to emulate the beguiling display.

A sale with multinational appeal – and a baroque revival cabinet spared from Rentokil.

Italy – or more specifically Sicily – came up trumps for Stamford auction house Batemans (20% buyer’s premium) in the form of this 4½in (11cm) carved coral and copper-gilt urn and cover.

In the 1950s French designer Raymond Cohen and his firm Cohray were producing a range of ultra-modern furniture that – although made for the machine age – were all put together by hand.

Topping by some way an offering of 300 pieces of jewellery at Lyon & Turnbull’s (25% buyer’s premium) Edinburgh sale was a Persian gold and niello decorated Esther Scroll holder.

Ceramics commemorating the coronation of Edward VIII are less rare than often supposed, having been produced in abundance before the coronation was aborted. Most bring relatively small sums.

Other than davenports, few pieces of functional antique furniture fell farther down the price ladder during the slump than sofa tables but the examples here bucked the fashion at Moore Allen & Innocent (20% buyer’s premium) of Cirencester.

Featuring in the same two-day auction as a £7000 cache of Beatrix Potter ephemera found in a Cumbrian Victorian villa which had made national headlines, this less-heralded sofa impressed at 1818 Auctioneers (17.5% buyer’s premium).

The fitted interior of this William & Mary casket, below, was later but its fine brass-bound marquetry exterior with hidden lock mechanism made it the most eye-catching lot at Mallams’ (22.5% buyer’s premium) auction in Cheltenham on June 6.

The resurgent interest in quality Japanese material and the slower revival of English furniture were both evident in a cabinet on stand sold at West Sussex auction house Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium).

A consignment of furniture from the medieval Eastington Hall, Worcestershire, boosted Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) latest sale in Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire.

The sale of a remarkable gramophone collection two years ago at the Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium), in which an EMG gramophone took £6500, prompted the consignment of another large collection to the June 4 sale at the Cheltenham rooms.

Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) offered 12 impeccably provenanced pieces by Peter Waals (1870-1937) at Oxford on May 23.

More of a curiosity than a clock but a decorator’s dream, a life-size caricature of a smiling Chinese man clutching a willow-pattern plate with gilt dragon hands emerged in the Ayr rooms of Thomas R Callan (17.5% buyer’s premium).