UK

Ceramics – The Jack Hacking Collection UK: THE JACK Hacking collection of English ceramics, offered by Phillips’ Bayswater (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) rooms back on January 23, was a less academic, more eclectic property than Norman Stretton’s. But it was not by any means a general collection since it had quite specific areas of interest.

London: Back in the 1860s, long before the days of Action Man and GI Joe, what did a young lad do if he wanted a manly miniature role model, a real boy’s toy?

UK: THERE is a distinctly nervous look about the Dodo pictured here, as befits a creature staring extinction in the beak. This “Facsimile of [Roelandt] Savery’s picture of the Dodo in the Royal Gallery at Berlin” is a plate from H.E. Strickland & A.G. Melville’s The Dodo and its Kindred; or the History, Affinities and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire and other Extinct Birds of the islands Mauritius, Rodriguez and Bourbon.

UK: ONE of 50 coloured illustrations from Alexandre Iacovleff’s Dessins et Peintures d’Afrique of 1927, which sold for £800. One of 100 copies, it comprised a text volume in leather-backed satin covers painted with an African design and a pigskin portfolio containing the loose plates.

UK: THAT pedestal partners’ desks have become the most in-demand of writing furniture has been obvious for some time – their rise has been matched by the decline of computer-incompatible davenports – but even so this mid-19th century example, offered at the Abergavenny rooms of J. Straker, Chadwick & Sons (6 per cent buyer’s premium) on February 9 achieved a notable price.

Bond Movie Memorabilia UK: IT WAS hardly surprising that Ursula Andress’s bikini, as worn in the memorable scene when she emerges from the sea in Dr No, should capture so much of the pre- and post-sale publicity for Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10 per cent buyer’s premium) second auction devoted entirely to James Bond memorabilia.

UK: THE Leominster auctioneers heralded the return of “big, brown and broad” furniture when a number of large and somewhat cumbersome pieces saw strong prices and fierce bidding.

UK: Morris sets out his vision for a market. UK: A NO dateline policy for all three Olympia antique fairs is among the plans Andrew Morris, chief executive of Earls Court and Olympia and head of Clarion Events, the halls’ organising arm, has revealed in an exclusive interview with the Antiques Trade Gazette.

UK: THE copy of T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom offered by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh on February 17 was one of the 170 or so signed, “complete” copies of the privately printed, subscribers’ edition of 1926 and in the original brown morocco binding, illustrated here.

UK: THE FIRST Phillips sale of the year gets a largely pictorial treatment here, but not everything that I selected for report was illustrated in the catalogue and a number of other highlights are described elsewhere (see "Job lots with a difference", above).

UK: ALREADY the king of the bottles and jugs collectables market which he has done so much to pioneer, Alan Blakeman’s latest successful sale of advertising collectables where some 410 lots totalled £44,651 has persuaded him to add an extra such event to the two specialist sales a year he has previously held at his South Yorkshire rooms.

UK: ONE of the scarcer plate collections in the Phillips sale was Via Crucis, novellamente eretta nell’ Atrio del Santissimo Crocifisso della chiesa parochiale, e collegiata di S.Polo. Engraved throughout, this small quarto Venetian volume of c.1780 comprises 16 full-page illustrations of the Stations of the Cross by Leonardis after Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, plus 29 pages of text.

UK: LONDON was far from bereft of carpet auctions in January and February with all the major salerooms holding auctions.

UK: THE hottest property in Dreweatt Neate’s, Newbury, January auction of ceramic and glass, was late 19th century decorative porcelain. “You cannot have enough late 19th century in your sales these days,” said specialist Geoffrey Stafford Charles. Strong prices were paid for Mason’s ironstone and Oriental porcelain of this period, but a turn-of-the-century Coalport blue ground part dessert service took the biggest money.

UK: A CLUSTER of four-figure furniture entries at Brighton saw the biggest price reserved for a set of eight Regency mahogany dining chairs.

UK: A COUPLE of weeks ago the Antiques Trade Gazette recorded the sale of the Joe Marshall Collection which put an extra sheen on the January sales at Sotheby’s South (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium). Among the goldmine of antiques veteran dealer Mr Marshall had shown Billingshurst chairman Tim Wonnacott in 1996, in a secret vault at his Blackburn shop, were a couple of oils by Charles Spencelayh R.M.S. (1865-1958) one of which was Mother shown here, which led the sale.

UK: FURNITURE provided the bread and butter at Exeter in January where, as so often, dependable sets of dining chairs, tables, linen presses and longcase clocks brought the best bids.

UK: “THIS was a small working sale with no astounding lots”, said Cheshire auctioneer Patrick Cheyne (12.5 per cent buyer’s premium) of his 378-lot sale in Altrincham on January 19, but there was one entry which did create plenty of interest.

UK: This mid-18th century Whieldon type pottery arbour group of two seated crinolined ladies provided the highest price in a sale at Potbury’s Temple Street rooms in Sidmouth on February 20 when it sold for £15,000 (plus 10 per cent premium).

LONDON: DESPITE there being no official announcement from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the papers have been full of the news that Mark Jones is to be the new director of the Victoria & Albert Museum.