UK

UK: THE market for Arts & Crafts furniture remains a buoyant one as was evident at the February 28 sale held by Dorking-based Crow’s Auction Gallery (10 per cent buyer’s premium), when a period 5ft 10in wide by 6ft high (1.78 x 1.83m) oak dresser with open arched back panel and central bubble glazed door led the way at £1300.

UK: THE extent to which the decorators’ market has become a force to be catered for was illustrated at the 1200-lot Gloucestershire sale held by Wotton Auction Rooms (11.75 per cent buyer’s premium) February 20-21 when this relatively modern Queen Anne-style bureau bookcase led the bidding.

UK: SALES catering for specific collectors’ markets are steadily increasing in the provincial rooms with the Scottish arm of the LVMH empire.

UK: DOUBTS over the authenticity of several paintings, including a ‘Picasso’, led to the cancellation of a whole sale last week.

UK: ONE of eight coloured aquatints, plus map and plan, from an 1816 first edition of Travels in Brazil by Henry Koster, who first went to Brazil in 1809, hoping that a change of climate might alleviate his TB, and eventually settled to the life of a sugar planter at Jaguaribe, near Recife in Pernambuco, where he died in 1820.

UK: WHEN people talk of antiques as a sure investment a word of advice is always ‘Remember stevengraphs, think about pot lids.’

Timothy Sheldrake’s ... Herbal of Medicinal Plants is often found without a title and with fewer than the 118 plates by C.H. Emmerich after Sheldrake called for, but they have great appeal and the Phillips copy, a first issue of c.1759 with 111 coloured plates, made £5500 at Bonhams.

Early works in ceramics, brass and elm catch the eye at Bristol success UK: A RARE 17th century coffer, made of elm rather than the more usual oak had a pedigree about as good as it gets for vernacular furniture.

UK: NOTED for its wide variety of stock, there truly is something for everyone at all prices at the Summer Fine Art and Antiques Fair, which will be held at Olympia in West London from June 7 to 17.

The Scillies in one of 49 engraved charts from a 1753 first edition of Greenville Collins’ Great-Britain’s Coasting Pilot... which made £4000 at Bonhams.

Showing the Terra Nova at Cape Evans, this large, green toned carbon print is an example of the largest format photographs offered by the Fine Art Society in their 1913-14 exhibition of photographs taken by Herbert Ponting on Scott’s last expedition (this one measuring 2ft 6in x 23in – 75 x 58cm) and it sold for £5000 (Grigor Taylor) in the Bonhams Knightsbridge sale.

UK: Art imitates life in many ways – few stranger than this 1950’s pottery model of a Shetland Pony.

UK: Collectors and dealers will get a rare chance to bid for prints by pioneering photographers Roger Fenton and James Robertson, who made their names during the Crimean War, at an auction on behalf of a photographers’ charity on April 26 in central London.

UK: THE PRINTED word and picture, rather than the familiar manuscript and ephemeral material, were to the fore in this smaller than usual Chichester sale, and just edging to the front of the price lists was a copy of the famous 1797 edition of Young’s ...Night Thoughts, as illustrated by William Blake.

UK: THE arrival of the BBC at the Somerset auctioneers to film Bargain Hunt attracted a larger than usual crowd to this 670-lot dispersal but it appears bargain hunters had a hard time of it.

UK: JUST TO prove that “one can get a better... deal from the smaller boys”, John Cranwell, who trades in Oswestry as Bookworld and puts together two auctions a year for the local auctioneers, rang every Thomas Hardy specialist he could find in Sheppard's directory prior to this sale – determined that no-one with a declared interest should be unaware of the fact that a copy of Hardy’s third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, was to be offered in this 400-lot sale at the town’s Wynnstay Hotel.

THE BOOK section of this Worcester sale contained a good many equestrian titles, and while several seemed to be fairly modern and were job-lotted, what appears to have been the most important of these horse books was tacked onto a lot that led with an 1830 History of the Hundred of Carhampton in the County of Somerset by James Savage, and “three other books”.

UK: IT’S not just rose-tinted nostalgia – the old days really were more pleasant and these really are some of the toughest times the trade has known. The fact is that more dealers are chasing fewer lots at auction than ever before. Gloucestershire auctioneer Philip Allen has noticed a dramatic increase in private buying at auction in the past decade, which has obviously denied the trade much business, but what he has to say about the activity of dealers is even more depressing.

UK: STANDING head and shoulders above all other entries to this monthly sale in Sussex was a fine quality c. 1760 mahogany longcase clock by James Clarke of London.

UK: THE subject matter of the Viking collection sold at Spink on March 14 speaks for itself. Not something to appeal to most Antiques Trade Gazette readers it is worth reporting briefly, mainly to demonstrate the skill that resides in London.