Decorative Art

Richard Winterton (15% buyer’s premium)Trained by Tom Coulthwaite, who schooled a number of high-class jumpers in the first decades of the 20th century, Irish-bred Eremon was one of the top chasers of his era. And 1907 was very much his year.

Thos. Wm. Gaze & Son (10% buyer’s premium)At 13in (33cm) high this really is a very good-sized example of William Moorcroft’s celebrated Hazeldene design.

MINDFUL of how demand at many sales is polarised between the ‘best and the rest’, Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) decided to tackle this prevalent attitude head on with a new type of sale.

The Victoria and Albert Museum have updated security following a second theft from their Ceramic Galleries in as many months. While the new systems were installed, the galleries were closed for a week.

A LEADING figure in the world of heritage is calling for a change in the export licence rules – after the decision to keep a valuable work of art in the UK.

Pick up a copy of a Beswick price guide from the late 1990s and it will tell you that the Galloway Bull, designed by Arthur Gredington, was made in three versions.

Troika is known for two distinctly different styles – the rough textured wares of which the Cycladic masks are now the most celebrated and the scarcer Brancusi-style smooth monochromatic glazed wares that reveal a rather different aesthetic.

IN September 1878, as it became clear that the Newbury Borough Fire Brigade was suffering from a lack of men and equipment, around 20 determined tradesmen decided to take matters into their own hands and to form a volunteer fire brigade. After some debate by the town’s Watch Committee, the auxiliary brigade won a majority approval.

WEST Midlands Police have arrested three people from Birmingham in connection with the theft of Staffordshire figures from the Antiques for Everyone fair after the items were spotted on eBay.

IN the competitive world of domestic tablewares, the name of Spode has remained among the very best since production started c.1770.

GLASSWORKS by Emile Gallé thought to be worth over £1.5m have been stolen from a Swiss museum. Thieves seized 15 items by the French master craftsman in the raid on the Neumann Foundation, housed in the castle of Gingins overlooking Lake Geneva, on October 27.

BACK in April in Antiques Trade Gazette No 1633, we pictured and discussed an unusual Derby porter mug decorated with industrial scenes of two Mancunian foundries which sold at Bonhams in London for £3800.

A RARE bird from the English provinces has been spotted in Canada.

SHALL I be mother? At first glance there’s nothing very exciting at all about this Edwardian teapot. Decorated with printed, painted and aerographed flower sprays against a graduated green and yellow ground and highlighted by burnished gilt, it is typical of the cheap and cheerful earthenwares churned out in their thousands in Staffordshire at the turn of the last century.

AN early 20th century Tiffany Favrile ten-light lamp was an unusual consignment for a provincial auction house. The market for Tiffany is largely based in America and even the major London rooms tend to sell their best consignments through their New York rooms. However, the family of the late Peter Grant, former manager of the legendary rock group Led Zeppelin, live locally and put his lamp into Dreweatt Neate Tunbridge Wells Saleroom's (15% buyer's premium) September 3 sale.

A COUPLE of exotic sleepers swelled the tally at Lays Auctions (15% buyer's premium) September 23-24 sale which also boasted healthy prices for more home-grown fare such as Troika and Newlyn copper.

TWO or three times a year Bonhams (19.5/10% buyer's premium) offer a selection of modern pieces in their monthly Knightsbridge silver and objects of vertu sales. Undoubtedly a growth area of the market, works by major names such as Stuart Devlin, Gerald Benney and Christopher Lawrence routinely feature amongst the top ten lots.

THE Dowager Lady Langham, who authorised the HOK (18.5% buyer's premium) sale of the Langham family’s collections on September 27, is a world authority on Belleek having been collector/dealer for many years and having written three books on the subject. At the sale she only parted company with nine pieces of the Fermanagh pottery, most of which sold above expectations.

RIGHT: the most desirable of the varied wares produced by the small ceramics factory established by Vilmos Zsolnay (1828-1900) in the southwest Hungarian town of Pecs are those created after the 1890s. It was then that Zsolnay perfected his iridescent Eosine glaze and employed his principal designer, Tade Sikorski.

BUSINESS could not be better for Simon Spero, the Kensington Church Street, London W8 18th century porcelain specialist who opened his annual exhibition on Tuesday last week (October 5) at noon.