Cornwall

ANOTHER giant two-day sale on March 25-26 put together by David Lay (15% buyer's premium) saw the familiar rapid selling of two and three-figure lots, the cheaper ones mainly accounting for the unsolds, peppered with lots of more quality and wider interest.

LAST week, after two years of renovations, Judith and Phil Carrigan officially opened their Uzella Court Antiques Centre and Fine Art in the centre of Lostwithiel, Cornwall. The centre is housed in a partly medieval building which has been a shop of one sort or another – most recently a butcher’s – since 1850.

OVER 50 autograph letters and postcards addressed by Siegfried Sassoon to Professor Vivian de Sola Pinto are to be sold by Mill House Auctions of Helston on November 4, together with signed and inscribed copies of Sassoon’s books from de Sola Pinto’s library.

Sad news. The drunken rats and the two-faced lamb have finally parted company.

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.

THE nationwide buyer-base of Lays auctioneers was reflected by concerns far beyond the Duchy – Bath dealers, for instance, were particularly worried about selling on to American clients. However, a £213,076 total from 1906 lots was proof enough that business is still there to be done.

DAVID Lay’s trawls through Cornwall to mount regular sales like this 2000-lot marathon on 16-17 July usually throw up something special but here it was a case of piling ’em high and selling ’em reasonable.

UK: GIANT knives of the frontier period hold a special place in the heart of American collectors, and the late 19th century example by one of the leading Sheffield makers of Bowie-style knives for the American market – Brookes and Crookes – was eagerly contested by US bidders at Martyn Rowe’s Truro salerooms on May 26.

UK: AUGUST may be the quietest time of the year for the majority of the UK trade, but any business this week for the auctioneers and shopkeepers of Cornwall is likely to be overshadowed by a cosmic obligation on Wednesday morning.