Decorative Art

A group of medals awarded to the great scientist, explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was fiercely contested at auction last week, hammered down for a £273,000 (or £327,600 with buyer’s premium) total against a high estimate of £80,900.

Sealed wine bottles possess a powerful sense of time and place. For some collectors it is the regional connections that appeal most.

Bonhams Skinner’s August 13 Americana auction in Massachusetts will feature a wide selection of American, English and Chinese Export works of art and paintings.

Sealed examples with coats of arms, names, dates and places reveal a social history and give an ideal opportunity for genealogical research

A strong price for a porringer that Arts & Crafts designer Charles Robert Ashbee produced for the Guild of Handicraft was achieved in a Decorative Arts auction held in Cincinnati.

A collection of glassware by the Moser company is to be offered by Neue Auctions in Ohio on July 30.

This sealed and dated onion in olive green glass, below, comes with a handwritten scrap of paper inscribed 'George found [this bottle] when he dived into the Thames at Windsor'. The seal reads 'S Slater 1710'.

For reasons of both supply and economics not every collector of English 18th century drinking glasses gets to own a piece from the great Beilby enamelling workshop that operated at Amen Corner in Newcastle in the 1760s-70s.

Of all antique sealed bottles, those made for the All Souls College Common Room are probably the most prevalent.

With 207 pieces of silver from the Levant and all points East to China on offer at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium), the stand-out pieces were the work of Iranian smiths.

Among the very rarest bottles to appear for sale in recent months was a miniature shaft and globe in dark aqua glass, c.1650, sold in South Yorkshire.

A new record for a Royal Doulton figure has been set in Stoke-on-Trent.

Estimated at £40-60, a pair of puce decorated creamware plates sold for a surprise £2000 at Bamfords (21% buyer’s premium) in Derbyshire.

I am currently writing a supplement to my book 'The patterns and shapes of the Pinxton china factory 1796-1813', published in 1996.

Although he initially specialised in small furnishing objects and statuettes, the Parisian bronzier Victor Paillard (1805-86) began exhibiting with more elaborate creations in the 1840s.

An English delft drug jar offered by Great Western Auctions (24% buyer’s premium) in Glasgow was both a polychrome and a documentary piece.

A remarkable Sèvres part tea service made to mark the recovery of George III from illness in 1789 was among the unheralded highlights of this year’s London sales season.

The major summer sales of works of art included a boxwood prayer nut and Rothschild provenanced vases.

Topping the bill at Dore & Rees in Frome, Somerset on July 6 was this 2in (5cm) archaeological revival brooch by Castellani.