Gloucestershire

In recent years Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) has enjoyed considerable success with cookery manuscripts and the most recent auction further enhanced the saleroom’s recipe for culinary success.

Militaria has the advantage of a wide price range for items. A photograph sold in Cirencester on July 7 was a good example of ‘more affordable’ levels.

Tattooed from head to foot, this ‘Native of Nukahiva’ (in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia) features on one of the two frontispieces and a folding chart that form the illustrative content of the 1813, first English edition of Adam von Krusenstern’s 1803-06 Voyage round the World…

Naïve-style paintings of livestock remain one of the liveliest sectors of the 19th century pictures market, judging by the response to several examples offered in Gloucestershire.

‘L’Abbé Quille’ (shown below), against whose leg a dog is seen relieving itself in the illustration, is one of 84 hand-coloured plates – 12 each of seven subjects – that make up a French magic trick book of c.1799 sold for £2900 by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) in a June 19-20 sale.

Thieves in Chipping Campden have struck at the core of the Court Barn Museum’s collection of Arts & Crafts silver and jewellery.

Handsomely bound, a set of Gould’s Birds of Britain offered as part of the small but select Dorros ornithological library at Christie’s New York sale of June 15 failed against a $60,000-80,000 estimate, but in a Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale of the previous day a very differently presented set brought a mid-estimate £36,000.

When this cabinet on stand appeared in the inventory of a Gloucestershire home in the 1920s it was described simply as ‘An old Italian Cabinet of ebony and Tortoiseshell’. In fact, it is Flemish rather than Italian and was probably made in Antwerp in the first half of the 17th century.

While many in the trade believe the future lies in specialisation, Gloucestershire auction house Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) is making significant inroads into the general market beyond its renown as expert in books, maps and other works on paper.

Entered by a leading UK college, two very similar pairs of mid-18th century mahogany lecterns, one illustrated above, became the focus of two major West Country dealers at Tayler & Fletcher’s (20% buyer’s premium) June 22 sale at Bourton-in-the-Water.

Original House, a Cotswolds dealership that specialises in industrial furniture, antique painted French furniture and unique interior objects, has branched out into contemporary art.

A “jewel-like” painting of a young girl reading by Edward Frampton (1870-1932) starred in Dominic Winter’s (19.5% buyer’s premium) June 15 sale.

A miners‘ lamp lit up bidding at a Cotswold saleroom to set a record for a George Stephenson model.

The appeal of this 16in (40.5cm) tall French silvered bronze of a ballerina offered at Wotton Auction Rooms (21% buyer’s premium) on May 23, undoubtedly owed much of its success to its provenance.

Over three busy days in May Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium) mounted a three-catalogue sale that presented close on 1600 lots in all.

The general sale at Dominic Winter was followed on May 11 by one of motoring literature, automobilia and historic bicycles and accessories – a 620-lot auction held in conjunction with Transport Collector Auctions.