Wales

IN rubbed contemporary sheep and with the fore-edges close cropped in some places, but generally in sound condition, a 1542 first edition of the scholar and dramatist Nicholas Udall’s translation of Erasmus’ compilation of ‘Apophthegmata’, as Apophthegmes, that is to saie, prompte, quicke, witty sayings, sold for £850 (Powell) in an Y Gelli sale of July 23.

SOLD for £3000 to David Stone in an Y Gelli sale of July 23 was a first edition set of Bernard de Montfaucon’s L’Antique Expliquee... of 1719-57, comprising ten vols. (in 15) including supplement.

ARGUABLY the most popular of the five events a year held by Towy Antiques Fairs at the United Counties Showground, Carmarthen is the September staging. The approaching event on the weekend of September 11 and 12 has been fully booked with its full complement of 180 exhibitors since early in the year.

SOLD for £3800 as part of the June 21 Christie’s sale at Chirk Castle was a copy of the first and only published part of John Harris’ The History of Kent, bound in contemporary speckled calf, now rubbed and splits at the joints.

EVERY country house sale should have at least one sleeper and at Christie's (19.5/12% buyer's premium) Chirk Castle sale this honour went to a sandstone grave slab.

THE servants’ quarters, very much a part of the history of any great house, are always hugely popular with visitors and the National Trust was keen to buy items at Christie’s (19.5/12% buyer's premium) Chirk Castle sale on June 21 which represented life below stairs.

BOUND in contemporary vellum, a 1681 first of Tel Ignea Satanae... [The Fiery Darts of Satan] by Johann Christoph Wagenseil was sold for £1000 (Powell) in an Y Gelli sale of June 11.

ONE of Wales’s premier regular antiques events, almost certainly the most popular, has its summer outing on the weekend of July 17 and 18 when The Carmarthen Antiques & Collectors’ Fair runs at the United Counties Showground.

POLICE investigating a series of gate thefts that have occurred in North Wales believe that they were stolen in order to sell as antiques.

NEARLY 1300 lots were offered by Anthemion Auctions of Cardiff in an April 21 sale of sports memorabilia and among the soccer programmes, there was a bit of a shock when a 1945 programme for a Newport County v Chelsea match, valued at £30-40, was bid to £2600!

ARCHITECTURAL antiques and stained glass specialist Drew Pritchard is holding a trade and professional open day on Saturday June 19 to officially mark his company’s move into splendid new showrooms and workshops at St. George’s Church, Church Walks, Llandudno in North Wales.

WITH a style, as one writer has put it, “sweetly intensified to a point where the world is reduced to a world of gossamer”, Annie French (1872-1965) was a Glasgow School artist who took the Art Nouveau idiom of Beardsley and Burne-Jones to new decorative extremes.

Welsh Ceramics in Context: Part I, edited by Jonathan Gray, published by the Royal Institution of South Wales, Swansea Museum, Victoria Road, Swansea SAl lSN. ISBN 0950851752 £17.50sb. THIS well-illustrated book is based on the papers delivered to the first Welsh Ceramics in Context seminar held at Clyne Castle in 2002.

ARE there any corners of Britain where the trade can enjoy an old-fashioned auction without the intrusion of confident private buyers? If so, Abergavenny is no longer one of them.

Setting a new house record at Carmarthen auctioneers Peter Francis on March 9 was this 18th century Coromandel Coast marquetry inlaid padouk, ebony and ivory chest of five short and two long drawers.

THE Staffordshire potters never missed a commercial trick. Despite the political differences that may have existed between the USA and Britain following the War of 1812, large quantities of transfer-printed wares were made specifically for the American export market during the first half of the 19th century.

NOW operating as Continuity Fairs, veteran organiser Donald Bayliss has been putting fairs together for at least three decades, but seldom has he been as excited as he is about his second International Antiques and Collectors Fair of Wales, which will be held in Builth Wells on October 11 and 12.

FOR the second time, the crowded sporting calendar at the city’s Millennium Stadium has forced the Cardiff Antiques and Collectors Fair to relocate to nearby Cowbridge.

DUELLING pistols often attract considerable interest and one of the top lots in this 1162-lot Welsh sale at Anthemion on 16 July was a pair of pistols by Wogden & Barton, 1795-1803.

David Rogers Jones has sold a lot of Welsh dressers in his 44 years as an auctioneer in the principality but only two of this rare form incorporating a grandfather clock. Peculiar to the mid-Wales county of Merionethshire, the form, c.1810, is well-known in the reference books but this is the first the auctioneer has seen since he sold another 15-20 years ago. And it’s a great example.