Auction Reports

Considering retiring and selling up, the owner of a Cornish B&B owner consigned the George III, japanned chest on stand, below, to Honiton saleroom Chilcotts (19.5% buyer’s premium) to test the market.

Deep snowdrifts accompanied the March 2 sale at Chippenham Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in Wiltshire.

Collecting traditional English ceramics is still a popular pursuit on both sides of the Atlantic – but one where purchases are always tailored to fit the purse strings of the core collecting audience.

The name of the late Bill Coysh is instantly recognisable to enthusiasts of transfer printed pottery.

Multi-estimate results greeted the Joyce Paretti collection of perfume bottles sold by John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) of Fernhurst in two instalments before and after the new year.

The contents of a country house near Tetbury yielded many of the better lots in a Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Prinknash Abbey which included a garniture of three Pinxton porcelain bough pots.

The ceramics and glass offering at a recent Chiswick Auctions' (25% buyer’s premium) sale included a particularly fine Raeren salt-glazed jug c.1600.

Despite their small size and often unsophisticated appearance, Lowestoft models of animals are highly collectable.

It was in keeping with a Salisbury sale dominated by the remarkable £460,000 bid for a teapot made at Cain Hoy, South Carolina by John Bartlam c.1765 (see ATG 2331), that the same Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) ceramics sale included a group of three rare enamel boxes made for the American market.

As a general rule late Victorian ceramics are at a low ebb, and teasets in particular. Bucking that trend was the extraordinary bid for this Wileman Shelley six-place tea set offered by Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium) Martlesham, near Ipswich.

On a lesser scale than the exceptional £35,000 George II chairs at Holloway’s sale, but standing out from the general run of brown furniture, were other encouraging results across the country in February.

With Bonhams the only one of the ‘big three’ in this market, other salerooms carve out a role...

The Asian art sale at Chiswick confirmed that many of the better pieces of Chinese art are now well beyond the budget of the average western collector.

Widely exported during the Meiji period to a Western market newly awake to the skills of Japanese craftsmen, okimono now often appear at provincial salerooms.

Two stand-out collections containing Old Master and traditional British works on paper were offered within 24 hours of each other in Oxfordshire.

A small soapstone figure of a grinning, reclining Buddha stole the show at Thomas Watson (24% buyer’s premium) of Darlington when it smashed its estimate of £80-120 to sell for £16,500.

Flash from the past at the Diss rooms of TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium).

A likely candidate as highlight of the year for Exeter auction house Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium) will be the £305,000 Hans Coper vase (ATG last week, No 2332).

Dwarfed as they were by the £440,000 oil of St John the Evangelist (see ATG last week, No 2332), a number of other lots helped to make Holloway’s (20% buyer’s premium) first major sale of the year in Banbury on February 27 an event to remember.

With most English furniture still underperforming at auction, it is French 19th century cabinetmaking that is providing the soundest base of furniture sales in England.