Sèvres

Judith Howard (1945-2019), collector, part-time dealer, museum curator, author, TV expert and lecturer, was a self-confessed ‘maximalist’. Every shelf and wall space in her Wiltshire end-of-terrace was there to be filled. Dusting was a chore reserved for just one day a year.

The Homes & Interiors sale at Bonhams Los Angeles on February 3 includes this Sèvres flower vase or Cuvette à Fleurs Courteille, measuring 10¼in (26cm) wide, estimated at $4000-6000.

An impressive 23in (58cm) tall Sèvres vase offered by Shropshire auction house Trevanion & Dean (20% buyer’s premium) had a lot going for it historically but a considerable amount of condition problems.

Included in a mixed-discipline sale held in Paris by Daguerre (28% buyer’s premium inc VAT) at Drouot was a Sèvres bough pot in soft paste porcelain.

This pair of plates, one of them extensively damaged and riveted, proved much more popular than predicted in a sale held in Carmarthen by Peter Francis (20% buyer’s premium) last month.

Last November, Lempertz in Cologne held a successful sale of 19th century porcelain from the so-called Twinight Collection, amassed from 1994 by the New York businessman Richard Baron Cohen.

Obituaries for a portrait miniatures expert and a renowned Sevres expert.

Building a collection can be the work of a lifetime. Selling is often a much quicker affair. But dealer Haydn Hansell of Juno Antiques is being far from hasty when it comes to the fine assortment of mostly 18th century porcelain he offers this year.

Bonhams’ (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) main summer sale of European ceramics took place at its Bond Street rooms on July 5. On offer were 245 lots which raised a hammer total of just under £600,000, with a 62% take-up.

A Sèvres teapot from the Louis-Philippe era sold for an unexpected £13,000 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at Kingham & Orme in Broadway, Worcestershire, on June 17.

A pair of 12in (30cm) high Sèvres hard paste vases painted with elaborate chinoiserie sea battles by Jean-Jacques Dieu, proved the highlight of Bonhams’ June 14 sale of European ceramics.

Following the glass and British ceramics auction, which takes place in Bonhams’ Knightsbridge rooms this week, the auction house holds its main European ceramics sale of the summer in New Bond Street on June 14.