South-east England

OCTOBER 21, 2005 will see the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar and many celebrations marking the most decisive naval victory in modern history are planned. However, it will not be until January 9, 2006 that we mark 200 years since the funeral of its most famous protagonist.

SOME steady selling of material which has been hard to shift of late provided some encouragement for the trade generally at Lawrences of Bletchingley's (12.5 buyer's premium) July 20-22 sale and among the 2000 lots – which totalled nearly £200,000 – there were enough of those quirky offerings which make provincial British auctions the fascinating events they can be.

BOTH visitors and exhibitors were delighted with the Kent Pavilion, the new facility unveiled to antiques buyers at the Detling Antiques & Collectors Fair on July 24 and 25.

THESE two half-length images of women, right, could hardly be more different in date or technique, but their prices proved as uncannily similar as their poses when they came under the hammer at recent fine art auctions.

LIKE the proverbial bad penny, scam advertising company European City Guide have struck again, targeting antiques dealers in London and the South East.

FIRST English editions of the works of Jules Verne have been selling for high prices of late. In a July 6 sale held by Strides of Chichester, the fine copy of Sampson Low’s 10/6d edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, seen right, dated 1873 but possibly issued as early as October of the previous year, sold for £12,000.

A GANG slashed patrol car tyres at Petworth police station before launching an audacious burglary at an antiques shop in the town, escaping with hundreds of pieces of silver.

SELECTIVE bidding at Hobbs Parker's (10% buyer's premium) 704-lot June 10 outing focused on the better-quality entries such as an Art Nouveau belt buckle by Liberty & Co., which fetched £400, and two Mappin & Webb silver photograph frames dating to 1917 and 1916 which took a respectable £400.

THIS elaborate late 19th century boulle longcase is typical of the revivalist furnishings that were the stock-in-trade of the Acton-based television and film-props company Period Props and Lighting that closed earlier this year after 30 years in the business. Their inventory was enormous and will provide Rupert Toovey & Co’s (15% buyer’s premium) rooms at Spring Gardens, Washington with a series of sales. The first tranche was offered on June 15.

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.

STAYING with idyllic summer settings, next month Sussex organiser Ron Beech hosts his one fair of the year, the annual Lindfield Antiques Fair, which has been running at the King Edward Hall in the West Sussex village near Haywards Heath for 37 years.

BERKSHIRE-based Dinah Ives, who operates as Magna Carta Country Fayres, has a new venue from Sunday October 10 – St. Leonard’s Mansion at Legoland, near Windsor.

AT Scarborough Perry Fine Arts' (15% buyer's premium) June 24-25 sale, auctioneer Stephen Perry, who had given a distressed Regency painted settee sofa a modest pre-sale estimate of £400, admitted ruefully after seeing it go for ten times that amount: “I can value furniture in general but I find it difficult to value interior decorator’s pieces.”

SET in 200 acres of Surrey farmland, Cranleigh School is one of those ideal English settings for a high-summer fair, as Harrogate-based Galloway Fairs are well aware. They have been organising events at the famous public school for 11 years and their next Cranleigh School Antiques Fair will be held from July 23 to 25.

SAIREY Gamp and Tony Weller are two of the most commonly encountered Royal Doulton character jugs (and accordingly among the cheapest) but only very rarely are the two Dickens’ characters seen as bookends.

WHAT local organiser Cliff Woods of London Antiques Fairs terms his Antiques Shopping Weekend will be held on July 16 and 17 at the Royal Star & Garter Home for disabled ex-servicemen on Richmond Hill, Richmond, Surrey.

“ONE has to get sellers to be realistic and then things will sell,” commented Clive Stewart-Lockhart in the wake of the Donnington Priory sale conducted by Dreweatt Neate (15% buyer’s premium) on May 26.

TOYS from before the First World War up to the 1970s met with an enthusiastic reception at Wallis & Wallis' (15% buyer's premium) specialist sale on June 14, few more so than a c.1912 Lehmann tinplate toy which raised something of an ethical question.

PROVING the highlight of the commemoratives offered by Special Auction Services (15% buyer’s premium) in the wake of the Leslie Crowther collection of pot lids and Prattware on June 7 was this George III King and Constitution earthenware beaker.

CONTINUING the recent spate of sophisticated country house thefts, valuable antiques were stolen from two homes in the south east of England in the space of a week last month.