South-west England

A selection of highlights from the Chorley's auction on July 24-25 and the Tennants sale on July 21 (also see main Auction Reports story this edition).

From 1936-45, St Ives artist John Wells (1907-2000) embarked on a series of labour-intensive creations while working as a GP on the Isles of Scilly.

Sold for £2500 in a Dominic Winter (20% buyer’s premium) sale of July 25 was an enormous archive of work produced in the 1950s and ‘60s by Leslie Starke (1905-74), a cartoonist once very popular in both the UK and US.

Private bidders were overtaken as dealers found warmth in the best traditional furniture and chattels offered at auction.

Cirencester saleroom Moore Allen & Innocent (20% buyer’s premium) enjoyed a taste of India’s fast-growing art market when three pictures by the Indian folk artist Jamini Roy (1887-1972) were scooped up for a total of £24,500.

It’s a rare sale these days at which an English furniture standard challenges quality Chinese pieces for price, but the top end of the trade certainly rated a 6ft 3in (1.9m) William and Mary walnut and featherbanded bureau cabinet offered by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

Two French corkscrews were the top lots of Henry Aldridge & Son’s auction of the first tranche of a single-owner collection of around 450 examples.

A very suitable buyer emerged for an 19th century picture of The Artists Rifles by John Evan Hodgson (1831-95) offered in Exeter.

Demand for Scottish artist with a ‘distinctive personality’ drives a good auction result in Somerset.

A coveted lot from the silver sale at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury on July 17 was an Edwardian Drew’s ‘Patent and Registered’ En Route picnic basket.

Chosen as the front-cover illustration to Paul Atterbury and John Benjamin’s 'The Jewellery and Silver of HG Murphy' (2005), this gemset pendant also provided Woolley & Wallis’ latest Jewellery and Watches sale with its showcase lot.

This set of three tubeline tiles featuring polychrome birds in a grassland setting, is one of the many pieces on offer at The Cotswolds Decorative, Antiques & Art Fair at Westonbirt School.

While good-quality but familiar Georgian silver such as entrée dishes, tureens and sauceboats estimated in the £6000-12,000 range met stiff resistance at Dorchester auction house Duke’s (25% buyer’s premium) on June 28, two top-quality pieces made their money.

Auction houses in Bristol, Staffordshire and Norfolk have chosen to invest in new premises this year. Suggesting continued confidence in the regional auction market, Bristol Auction Rooms, Potteries Auctions and TW Gaze are planning to open new salerooms by the autumn.