Decorative Art

While dedicated sales of English and Continental ceramics are rarer beasts in the saleroom calendar these days, the traditional mixed-discipline regional sales are a repository for plenty of material from the main factories of the 18th and 19th centuries.

A pair of Worcester dishes of so-called ‘Blind Earl’ form was a best-seller in the ceramics section that opened Dreweatts’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) spring sale.

While Sotheby’s and Christie’s no longer hold regular dedicated auctions of European ceramics, they still cater for elements of this market in their main centres worldwide via series of mixed-discipline traditional decorative arts auctions.

In today’s world when employment fluidity is the norm, it is rare to find someone who had been in the same job and place all their working life. But when he hung up his hat last week from his role as international director of glass and British ceramics at Bonhams, John Sandon had clocked up almost 44 years, man and boy, in the same saddle.

A c.1946 Italian wrought-iron dressing table was among the stand-out sales during the spring Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair in Battersea.

Opening the antique ceramics section of Lawrences’ (25% buyer’s premium) four-day sale in Crewkerne was the William Farrar Jackson collection of commemorative English pottery.

Keys’ fine sale on July 24-26 will include more examples of porcelain from the local Lowestoft factory.

The latest version of Christie’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) Collector sale in New York featured an interesting collection of equine pottery: an ensemble of 10 large-scale English pearl ware horses, the majority made in the Leeds pottery in the first half of the 19th century.

Although catalogued as 19th century, this horn, fruitwood and bone inlaid oval patch or snuff box offered by Rogers Jones in Colwyn Bay in north Wales is of a type associated with the late 17th century.

Satirical magazine Private Eye once ran a series highlighting the fatuity of interviews by supposedly asking famous names their feelings towards spoons, there being nothing more mundane or less worthy of comment. But the appeal of an antique spoon to the cognoscenti is not difficult to appreciate.

On May 17, Cologne auction house Lempertz is selling 115 bronze mortars from the 8th-18th centuries.

It is thought that the prestigious Meissen designer Johann Joachim Kaendler drew the inspiration for his teapot in the form of a reclining cockerel from a Chinese model he found in the royal collection in Dresden.

Offered as a sale within a sale, 34 silver snuff boxes and vinaigrettes came fresh to market at Lawrences’ April 9 sale after decades in a private collection.

Russian works of art are coming up for sale at Dr Fischer in Heilbronn on May 17.

Two cased Stuart Devlin silver gilt surprise eggs of unique designs sold for £4400 at 1818 Auctions (20% buyer’s premium) in Milnthorpe on April 1.

An Elkington electroplated duck press outsold silver proper at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) of Shrewsbury on March 20.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

On account of its relative scarcity, all Irish silver carries a premium. It is the pieces made in small provincial centres that are most highly prized.

After almost 50 years on public display in the silver galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a James I silver shell-form spice or sugar box was offered for sale at Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis.

Modern British ceramics are rarely offered by German auction houses. Among the notable exceptions is the Kunst & Design Auktionshaus Schops Turowski, based in Krefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia.