South-west England

THOUGH the May 21 sale held by Dominic Winter was a collectors’ sale that also included motoring, maritime and railway models, photographs, prints, etc., it was the aviation material that had star billing. There was yet another selection from the Amédée Gauthier collection of photographs, arranged as before in thematic lots.

AT OVER 1000 lots, the May 22 sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt of Taunton was certainly one of the bigger sales of that week, but only a single lot topped the £1000 mark – a disbound, incomplete and defective English Bible. Apparently a 1540 reissue in smaller format of the Great Bible that Thomas Cromwell ordered to be placed in the country’s churches so that “parishioners may moste commodiously resorte to the same”, it was bid up to £1250.

THE Fine Art Auction Group, who have been building a network of salerooms in the South East and South West over the past two years, have acquired Bristol Auction Rooms.

One of several items consigned to Woolley and Wallis in Salisbury by descendants of the 7th and 9th Dukes of Newcastle for sale on May 13, this Regency mahogany centre table with profusely carved trestle supports in the manner of Thomas Hope surprised auctioneer and vendor alike when it breezed past its £800-1200 estimate to sell for £57,000 (plus 15/10 per cent buyer’s premium).

The regular specialist carpets and textiles sales at Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis (15% buyer’s premium) have shown what can be achieved in the provinces even in the most esoteric subjects, and the latest 560-lot event put together by June Barrett and Ian Bennett on April 10 underlined this. War in the Middle East seemed more likely than most to hit this market, but after a creditable 60 per cent turnover and a total just shy of £100,000, June Barrett was more than happy.

AUCTIONEERS and valuers Tayler & Fletcher have merged with Chartered Surveying specialists, land and estate agents Humberts.

IT’S been a long time since any auctioneer chose to illustrate his catalogue front cover with an array of silver candlesticks but this was the rather heartening decision by The Bristol Auction Rooms for their April 8 sale (12.77% buyer's premium inc. VAT) and their enlightened, so to speak, move was rewarded when all the lots, from George IV to 1967, sold within or above the admittedly modest three-figure expectations.

Devon auctioneers SJ Hales (15 per cent buyer’s premium) have moved to a wider field than the ceramics, and particularly Staffordshire, on which they founded their reputation but this area remains their strength. The 500 varied ceramic lots and nearly 200 Staffordshire pieces took most of the better prices among the 1500 offerings at the new Bovey Tracey rooms on March 12 and 13.

Sourced from a small church in the West Country but apparently once part of the furniture at William Beckford’s splendid Fonthill Abbey, this George III pair of mahogany hall benches (one shown) were the highlight of Duke’s sale in Dorchester on April 17.

Peter Rindisbacher (1806-1834) was a Swiss-born artist who was the first Western artist to leave a significant visual record of colonial frontier life in Western Canada during the early 19th century.

YET again the Bath Decorative and Antiques Fair, held at the Pavilion, North Parade from March 5 to 8, proved a huge success with both the 46 exhibitors and the myriad dealer customers.

An advertisement in the Antiques Trade Gazette has brought to light a remarkable coincidence – that the two paintings illustrated here, clearly depicting the same subject, are both to be auctioned on the same day by two different auctioneers at opposite ends of the country.

“Is it 19th century?” a London dealer inquired of this unusual famille verte vase illustrated right which had been consigned to Woolley & Wallis’s sale with its partner, the more classical, yen yen vase, far right.

The little underglaze blue decorated cream pails or piggins made by Lund’s Bristol around 1750 are very rare specimens of English porcelain. Only six examples are known to exist, three of them now in museums, so West Country auctioneers Bearne’s were very pleased to offer this 23/4in (7cm) wide example, which they discovered in a local, private Devon house during a routine insurance valuation.

ON LEARNING that first edition copies of her first two Harry Potter books were to to be sold at Woolley & Wallis’February 12 auction to benefit Action Aid and Children in Need, author J.K. Rowling agreed to add her signature to both books and donated a signed copy of the fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

FOR nigh on a decade ceramics dealer Andrew Dando’s Spring exhibition, Animal Dando & Friends, has been a West Country institution, but since the firm moved from their long-time premises in Bath to Wiltshire last September many customers wondered if the show would go on.

If you still believe that the Cotswolds are merely the final bastion of traditional brown furniture, you should take another look at Moreton-in-Marsh. Just opposite Astley House Fine Art, where David and Nanette Glaisyer have shown Victorian and other traditional pictures for 30 years, is Astley House Contemporary, the airy, two-floor gallery they opened just before Christmas.

TIME waits for no man, the saying goes, and clients of Abraham-Louis Bréguet were certainly reminded of this fact when paying their monthly instalments to the Swiss-born watchmaker for Souscription pocket watches like this example right which featured at Woolley & Wallis’s sale on January 29.

Wiltshire auctioneers Finan & Co., have carved out a niche for themselves by steering clear of brown furniture and 19th century porcelain and offering slightly more exotic fare.

A number of auctioneers have reported their best sales of the year in December and the North Cornish firm of Kivells (10% buyer’s premium) were in that happy position following their sale at Bude, on December 12. It was not merely the best of the year but their best sale ever.