South-west England

The Somerset-based restoration and conservation specialists Everett Fine Art Ltd will launch what they believe is the first emergency service for art and antiques this month.

With only seven others known to exist, this pair of 1750s Worcester gugglets was destined for success when offered on July 22 at Bristol Auction Rooms. Acquired fairly recently by a local private source, the 9in (24cm) high pair were originally estimated at just £400-600.

Planning to shortly reopen their Marlborough saleroom, Hamptons have appointed John Haycraft, formerly of Phillips and Dreweatt Neate, as senior valuer and auctioneer.

DRAWING on long-ago mercantile wealth (don’t mention the slave trade or even, these days, tobacco imports) Bristol has for years rewarded visits by dealers looking for fresh material. But of late the city has been raising its profile as a premier league centre for antiques.

Netherhampton House, a wonderful Queen Anne home in Salisbury, was the venue for Duke’s English Country House sale on 16 June. Rented from the Pembroke estate since 1990 by dealer and collector John Parnaby, the elegant stone property operated as both a home and a showroom for Mr Parnaby’s business, Victor Mahy Antiques, specialists in 17th and 18th century furniture and works of art.

Highlight of the remainder of the Roy Mickleburgh collection sold by Bristol Auction Rooms on June 24 was this rare monkey band automaton, c.1870. The nine-piece chamber orchestra includes no fewer than 43 separate movements operated by a French mechanism and is housed in a rosewood veneered two-part case with a 48-note German-made crankwind barrel organ below playing a choice of seven tunes.

To you and me it’s just a 1950s enamel station sign but to railwayana enthusiasts – and to Gloucestershire Worcestershire Railwayana Auctions who are currently selling it at their first private treaty auction – this is quite simply the most desirable ‘totem’ ever to come on the market. So what’s all the fuss about?

The future of the Barbican Antiques Centre in Plymouth seems all but secure with the current manager of the 50-dealer shop eager to take over when the freehold of the building is sold.

WHEN he died tragically in a walking accident in Vermont last October, John Stewart Parry was still in full flow as a collector. A former advertising executive who lived in Gloucestershire, he began to buy antiques in the 1980s first for his home, Abnash House in Stroud, and then for an investment trust of which he was the primary advisor.

AN early 19th century bowfront chest of five over three drawers, mahogany strung with satinwood. Doesn’t sound too special does it? That’s until you realise that the description is of a fully fitted tea caddy measuring just 91/2in by 8in high (24 by 20cm). Lots of interest in this rare novelty saw it climb to take the top price of David Lay’s mammoth Penzance sale at £4400.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.