County Durham

MADAM – With visitor numbers growing steadily, above expectations despite the pandemic, and a successful reopening under its belt, The Bowes Museum is now looking for new trustees to help reshape it, to ensure its continued success.

Estimated at £100-200 but sold for £2800 at Thomas Watson (25% buyer’s premium) in Darlington on August was a set of four Worcester parian menu holders.

As we mentioned in ATG No 2443, David Harper has been busy fitting out his antiques shop in Barnard Castle, a town that hit the headlines recently for other reasons, as you have probably noticed.

As if opening a shop right now weren’t enough, a book is on the way

The antiques trade descended on The Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle for the opening of an exhibition celebrating dealers’ shops, tastes, practices and their role in the creation of museum collections.

The antiques trade is to be celebrated in the New Year at a museum exhibition in County Durham.

Catalogued simply as ‘a pair of English soft-paste porcelain models of parrots’, these rare 18th century figures by Bow sold at Thomas Watson in Darlington, County Durham, for £16,000 (plus 24% buyer’s premium) on May 15.

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.

Made in various materials across the centuries, brush pots used by Chinese scholars are steady favourites at UK auctions and the blue and white porcelain example shown here was no exception when offered at Thomas Watson’s (17.5% buyer’s premium) sale at Darlington on June 20.

As with many collectors and dealers, the antiques passion started in an auction room. As a child, some of Amanda Allinson’s earliest memories are of sitting with her grandma in the County Durham rooms of Addisons Auctioneers in Barnard Castle, the town where she grew up.

A selection of vibrant prints, artist’s proofs and portrait studies by the 20th century artist Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) is up for sale in County Durham.