UK

Furniture in country house is eclipsed by piece found in a drawer UK: PAPERWEIGHTS have not hit any sort of headlines in years and anyone outside the coterie of (mostly American) collectors may have assumed they had been relegated to the status of murder weapons in Thirties whodunits – but not so. One became the totally unexpected star of the contents of The Thorne, a country house at Bethsersden which were removed to the salerooms at Canterbury.

UK: CORNISHWARE may be at the lower-priced end of the ceramics market but there is no shortage of enthusiasm as was evident when this 71/4in (18.5cm) jar, illustrated here, sold at £600 at the ‘Kitchenalia’ sale held by niche-market specialist BBR (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 20.

UK: ONE of numerous full-page woodcut illustrations of bridles, bits, etc. to be found in a 1602 Naples first of Piero Antonio Ferraro’s Cavallo Frenato..., bound in contemporary limp vellum, that sold at £1950 (Traylen) in the Dominic Winter, Swindon (buyer's premium 12.5 per cent) sale.

UK: TOPPING Christie’s June 14 English furniture sale at £420,000 was this pair of marble-topped side tables attributed to the Cobb and Vile partnership.

UK: STILL relatively new to the auctioneering world as independent auctioneers, the husband and wife team of S.J. Hales (15 per cent buyer’s premium) have already built up a nationwide reputation for Staffordshire and one that was enhanced at their May 30 sale when they could offer this rare early Samuel Alcock porcellaneous pair of leopard groups.

UK: ALTHOUGH there were no huge prices among the 416 lots at these Devon rooms, there was success across the wide range of offerings.

UK: ONE of only three in existence, this Sir Stanley Matthews Royal Doulton Character jug shocked all in attendance at Louis Taylor in Stoke-in-Trent on June 11.

UK: IN a very busy month for the ceramics world ahead of June’s International Ceramics Fair in London, a couple of unusual items led the first day of this Staffordshire sale although neither was from the Potteries.

UK: CERAMICS took the top spots at this 1650-lot Cotswolds sale in the form of a pair of mid-19th century Continental majolica stick stands.

UK: MEDALS took the top three slots in this toys, juvenilia and ephemera sale but there was a healthy take-up for toys from collectors and from a couple of Liverpool-based specialist dealers at this 537-lot auction that netted Biddle & Webb around £25,000.

Pictured here is a selection of books sold in auctions in London and New York.

UK: AN 80-lot collection of Japanese netsuke, inro and okimono from the deceased estate of a Lewes-based collector lifted the proceedings in Raymond P. Inman’s Sussex sale.

UK: ONE OR TWO lots that figured among the higher prices in this Midlands sale would seem to have been sold primarily as collections of travel or botanical plates, and these I have bypassed in favour of the following selection of books.

UK: A RARE example of Irish printing, this work by Hugh MacCaghwell, styled Aodh mac aingil, translates as A Mirror of the Sacrament of Penance and was printed at the Irish Franciscan College of St. Anthony of Padua at Louvain in 1618.

UK: TWO LOTS in this Norfolk sale stood head and shoulders above all others, at least in financial terms. One was a group of original illustrations by Charles Kerr for a Rider Haggard adventure story that made £3200 (see caption story below); the other a copy of John Arrowsmith’s London Atlas in modern half calf that reached £6600 (Heald).

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are two items used to decorate the covers of the sale catalogue issued for by Dominic Winter for their May 17 Sports sale.

UK: THE trial of Dennis Yates, the Nottingham-based radio specialist accused of blackmail and receiving stolen goods after an Enigma code machine was stolen from Bletchley Park Museum, may be delayed by a defence plea to move the venue.

UK: THE 900-lot sale held at Ambrose (12.5% buyer’s premium) at Loughton, Essex, on May 10-11 was an event for bidders on budgets, with only three lots going into four figures. But there was active bidding, with a 75 per cent success rate, and the best sellers were all of interest.

UK: THE Shropshire auctioneers Walker Barnett & Hill marked a first with their sale on May 1 by giving it a fully illustrated catalogue that was also posted on the Web.

After a long delay due to Foot and Mouth restrictions the Herefordshire auctioneers’ Morris Bricknell mammoth 1200-lot sale went ahead at the local village hall.