South-west England

KIDSON-Trigg (15% buyer's premium) reported a healthy turnout for their 725-lot February 26 sale with steady interest for collectable ceramics such as Beswick and the better-quality furniture attracting a mixture of local and UK private and trade buyers.

Right: this 17th century stumpwork jewellery casket will be the highlight of the first sale of antique rugs and textiles at the Netherhampton Salerooms. The auction will be put together by the team responsible for the regular specialist sales at Woolley & Wallis – the only sales of their type outside London – that ended in February.

ALTHOUGH Derwent Lees (1885-1931) is recorded in reference books, such as the Handbook of Modern British Painting and Print-making 1900-1990, published by Ashgate, he is not that well known outside specialist trade circles.

IF the performance of the 52-lot clock section of Bristol Auction Rooms (15% buyer's premium) March 2 sale was anything to go by, this firm’s reputation for selling timepieces is gathering pace.

Illustrated in colour on the catalogue cover of Clevedon Salerooms’ March 4 sale was a watercolour described as being by Richard Parkes Bonington (1801-1828).

WILTSHIRE ceramics specialist Andrew Dando has been mounting annual selling exhibitions for more than a decade and the tradition goes on in 2004.

ALTHOUGH Oriental pieces were the main strength of Woolley & Wallis’s (15% buyer's premium) quarterly specialist ceramics sale on February 25, there was also evidence of the continued strength of the market for unusual examples of early English porcelain.

FLUSHED with the successful launch in early February of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs moves north this weekend to her established Cheshire County Antiques Fair, which will be held at Arley Hall, near Knutsford from March 12 to 14.

ALONG with most examples of standard furniture, 18th and 19th century bureaux are not bringing the prices they were a couple of years back and vendors are having to adjust expectations in order to find buyers. Nevertheless, more unusual examples, or those with an extra degree of quality, still meet enthusiastic reactions and it was interesting to see two 18th century Continental walnut bureaux among the higher sellers at Lawrences' (12.5% buyer's premium) February 3-5 sale.

MARCH is bursting with smart, large and prestigious fairs. But, while neither massive nor flashy, the favourite of many in the trade is the Bath Decorative and Antiques Fair, the 15th of which will be staged in the Pavilion, North Parade, Bath from March 3 to 6.

Local trade fare particularly well at Powderham: TWO weeks ago, when Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs promised her new West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter, would be “an antiques event of a quality not seen before in the West Country”, I must admit I thought that a very bold claim indeed.

Portsmouth are just hanging on in the Premiership at present, but they too have had their glory days, and in a December 10 sale held by Nesbits of neighbouring Southsea, this programme (right) for the last pre-war FA Cup Final of 1939, in which they beat Wolves 4-1, was sold for £400 (a ticket for that game made £135) and another for the 1934 final, in which they had been beaten 2-1 by Manchester City, was bid to £450.

ORGANISER Sue Ede of Cooper Antiques Fairs is promising “an antiques event of a quality not seen before in the West Country” with this weekend’s launch of her West Country Antiques Fair at Powderham Castle, near Exeter. It seems a bold claim but, on reflection, there have not been that many successful quality fairs in the West Country so Mrs Ede may well be on safe ground.

TALISMAN Fairs would like to point out that they are pressing ahead with all their dates in both Bristol and Bath.

EXCEPTING the Norwich Union (one-day) cup that the team picked up a couple of seasons back, trophies for Kent County Cricket Club have been a bit thin on the ground in recent years. By today’s county standards, a St Lawrence (Canterbury) gate of 4000 is considered a good one and – though Sussex picked up the county title last year – today it is Surrey that remain the side to beat.

This impressive Victorian tortoiseshell and ormolu mantel table clock with three dials for GMT, Paris and New York time, each inscribed Viner London, sold for £26,000 at Woolley and Wallis’s first furniture sale of the year on January 13.

Following the £620 sale of three Wedgwood Ravilious Coronation mugs in November, Tom Delaney of Mallams in Cheltenham recalled seeing a similar mug in a local house – this much rarer example transfer printed with a brick kiln together with a silhouette portrait of Stoke-on-Trent’s most famous son and the inscription Josiah Wedgwood Barlaston 1940 Etruria 1730.

Following his decision to move to France, the silver reference library of long-time London dealer Brand Inglis will be sold by auction in Salisbury at the end of this month. As part of their silver sale on January 28, Woolley & Wallis will offer an enviable working library that has served Mr Inglis for over 40 years.

LAPADA have confirmed that they will proceed with their new 2004 fairs programme but have put the Cheltenham event back by two weeks.

Despite the unpredictable trading conditions of the last 12 months, Tennants posted record trading figures for 2003. Aided by a bumper £1.62m autumn catalogue sale, total sales at The Auction Centre, Leyburn from January to December 2003 were £8.44m (not including premium), a substantial improvement upon the previous year when the North Yorkshire operation posted hammer sales of £7.4m.