North-west England

On his way to join the QE2 for a Mediterranean cruise on April 16, John Sullivan knew there was something he must do.

MARCH is a busy fairs month for many organisers, but none more so than Cooper Antiques Fairs who hold three events, starting this weekend with their long-established fair at Arley Hall, near Knutsford in Cheshire, from March 11 to 13.

A local estate was the source of some fine Meiji ivories sold by Cheshire auctioneers Frank Marshall (15% buyer’s premium) of Knutsford on January 11.

Appearing at Frank R. Marshall’s (15% buyer’s premium) sale at Knutsford, Cheshire on January 11 and selling at £720, was this 10 x 7in (25 x 18cm) oil-on-canvas, right, by Augustus Edwin Mulready (fl1863-1880 d.1886). Framed, mounted and indistinctly signed, it showed a characteristic subject for the artist, and was estimated at £200-300.

By and large the Cumbrian antiques trade were counting their blessings last week after escaping the worst of the floods that engulfed the region.

Peter Wilson, Nantwich November 17-18 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent ALTHOUGH bidding was selective at this Cheshire sale, with only around 65 per cent of the 780 lots finding buyers, there was healthy competition for collectable ceramics such as a Royal Copenhagen set of ten colourful figures of children dressed in traditional Dutch costume by Carl Martin Hansen (1877-1941).

NOTED Manchester horologists Northern Clocks, run by Robert Love and his daughter Mary Anne, always have more than 100 good, craftsman-restored clocks in stock at Boothsbank Farm, Leigh Road, Worsley, but you can also see what they have on offer in their just published 2005 catalogue.

THE Bourne casket, a Restoration needlework casket that failed to sell when offered by Netherhampton Salerooms earlier this year, has been sold by private treaty to the Lancashire Museum Services.

BACK in April in Antiques Trade Gazette No 1633, we pictured and discussed an unusual Derby porter mug decorated with industrial scenes of two Mancunian foundries which sold at Bonhams in London for £3800.

SHALL I be mother? At first glance there’s nothing very exciting at all about this Edwardian teapot. Decorated with printed, painted and aerographed flower sprays against a graduated green and yellow ground and highlighted by burnished gilt, it is typical of the cheap and cheerful earthenwares churned out in their thousands in Staffordshire at the turn of the last century.

SOMETHING for nothing is seldom attainable but always desirable and David Fletcher of Unicorn Fairs promises just that at his Lancashire fixture on Sunday October 10.

TO one side of this 4.75in (12cm) high early 19th century lustre and transfer printed jug are the legends No Corn Bill, Universal Suffrage, Annual Parliaments and Vote by Ballot.

PEWTER always forms the first section of Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer's premium) oak sales at Chester, and on September 9 enthusiasts, mainly collectors, were there as usual. Most had their eyes on the obvious star offering, the fine Charles II wriggle-work tankard, top right.

ISAAC ROSENBERG had produced just two small pamphlet collections of verse and a play before he was killed in action on April Fool’s Day, 1918, but his reputation is now established as one of the finer war poets.

GOOD standard furniture sold well enough at Mitchell's (15% buyer's premium) July 15-16 sale and included a locally made Jacobean piece.

FAIRS two weekends running at opposite ends of England make for a busy programme for the Harrogate organisers Galloway, beginning with their Naworth Castle Antiques Fair at Brampton, near Carlisle in Cumbria on August 20 to 22.

FOR 71 of his 84 years Harry Davis (1885-1969) worked as a decorator at the Royal Worcester factory, ultimately rising to the post of foreman painter. He painted a wide variety of subjects, but is best known for his sheep-decorated landscapes, all produced in the first quarter of the 20th century.

THE most desirable of the varied wares produced by the small ceramics factory established by Vilmos Zsolnay (1828-1900) in the southwest Hungarian town of Pecs are those created after the 1890s. It was then that Zsolnay – having encountered the glazes of Clement Massier in Paris – perfected his Eosine glaze and employed his principle designer Tade Sikorski to model forms sympathetic to the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements.

A FOUR-page, colour illustrated feature in the April 25 issue of The Sunday Times Magazine will have done nothing to harm the saleroom prospects of a collection of 13 love letters written in the period January 1881-June 1882 by the actress Lillie Langtry, “the adored pin-up whose affairs rocked Victorian Britain”, and on May 13 Cumbrian auctioneers Mitchells of Cockermouth sold the lot for £5000.

AS the hubbub dies down in London, there is no shortage of action in the provinces.