UK

FAIRLY routine furniture and modest pictures predictably took most of the higher prices at this Brightwells 850-lot sale in Herefordshire on 15-16 August but a couple of unusual items among the silver and the objets d’art were the eye-catchers.

SPECIALIST collectors and dealers don’t seem to have a closed season, certainly not in the arms and armour world and they turned up in strength at Weller & Dufty in Birmingham on 25 July.

DAVID Lay’s trawls through Cornwall to mount regular sales like this 2000-lot marathon on 16-17 July usually throw up something special but here it was a case of piling ’em high and selling ’em reasonable.

JUST opened in an unprepossessing 1970s gasworks laboratory on the Fulham/Chelsea divide is Core One, a collective of five very unconventional antique dealers who specialise in items old and new for the decorator.

THE two-day Staffordshire sale at Wintertons on 25-26 July was, at just under 800 lots, not perhaps quite a giant sale but it certainly covered the range of lower and middle-priced antiques.

AT the second outing Antiques For Everyone – Glasgow confirmed its status as Scotland’s top fair and certainly enough business was achieved by enough of the 170 exhibitors at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre to indicate a secure future for this new fixture.

With their sinister gliding gait and shrill cries of Exterminate! Exterminate! the Daleks sent small children cowering behind the sofa when they first appeared on TV in the 1960s in their bid to rule the Universe. At approximately 8in (20cm) high, however, this particular example of spin-off merchandising from the BBC series Dr Who is more likely to invoke fond nostalgia than fear.

UK: LONDON’s art world was reeling last week with the shock announcement from Anthony d’Offay, one of the country’s leading and most influential contemporary art dealers, that he was to retire and close his West End galleries at the end of the year.

AS in Edinburgh, strong private bidding for local favourites dominated the picture section of Andrew Hartley’s (10% buyer’s premium) August 15 sale in well-heeled Ilkley, West Yorkshire.

UK: The trade are being warned to be on their guard following the theft of a Louis XV rococo clock worth in the region of £10,000 from Mayfair dealers Howard Antiques. At approximately 4pm on Tuesday, August 21, a man aged between 40 and 45 and of Eurasian appearance entered the Davies Street shop.

FOUR small deceased estates formed the basis of the 711-lot sale held by David Duggleby (10% buyer’s premium) at Scarborough, on July 30. Most of the best furniture came from the contents of Rillington, Malton – the highlight being this 8ft 3in (2.52m) tall George III mahogany standing corner cabinet, right. Its condition,colour and quality prompted a £6400 local private bid.

THE 2186 lots offered at Gorringes, (buyer’s premium 10 per cent) at Lewes on July 17, 18 and 19 had the touches of quality and variety that buyers demand but specialist Nick Muston noted the resistance to lower-value items.

SOTHEBY’S launch their new saleroom at Olympia in West London on September 18 with the auction of the Ian Grant Collection, removed from 41 Ladbroke Square.

There are some who think that the people who collect the cat paintings of Louis Wain (1860-1939) are as mentally unbalanced as the artistic imagination that created them, but there is no gainsaying the extraordinary prices that Wain continues to fetch in the salerooms.

A MIX of modest standard furniture and collectable ceramics hardly seemed a formula for success in mid-summer but the mix at Fellows (buyer’s premium 15%) attracted a full house at Birmingham on July 10.

Horology topped the July 24-25 519-lot sale at the Bournemouth rooms of House & Son (15% buyer’s premium) when an 18th century longcase, being sold on the behalf of a local storage company where it had been left uncollected for years, was a specialist target.

Brown furniture may not be at a premium at present but walnut is still capable of springing some surprises, as was seen at the Taunton sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) on July 26 and the July 21 sale held by Altrincham auctioneers Patrick Cheyne (12% buyer’s premium).

UK: DEVON dealer in early furniture and works of art Michael Dann of Hatherleigh Antiques holds another of his splendid exhibitions of very special pieces from September 12 to October 13.

A continued demand for good quality Georgian and early Victorian jewellery at Phillips (15/10% buyer’s premium), Bayswater, 415-lot antique and modern jewellery auction, August 7, saw this gem set heart-shaped locket pendant, c.1830, steal the top slot.

This pair of Chinese porcelain vases had been salvaged from a house owned by a religious cult. No, not the Falun Gong, but the Panacea Society, a ‘charity’ founded in Bedford after the First World War who believed that Christ would make his second coming to the town of the eponymous van.