Decorative Art

APPEAL Court judges have lifted the punishment given to a London dealer convicted of handling £1.5m worth of stolen silver after hearing how he had committed the crimes in order to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment.

THE unexceptional contents of a Scottish country house may have furnished Mallams (15% buyer's premium) April 28 304-lot outing with three-quarters of its entries, but it was the decorative, ornamental works from a variety of other private sources which provided many of the highlights.

BILLED as a regular Victorian sale, the main attractions of Abbots Auction Rooms' (10% buyer's premium) March 29 sale were in a 129-lot specialist decorative arts section – in particular two pieces of René Lalique glass.

OFFERED at Edinburgh’s Royal College of Surgeons, a 169-lot section of Scottish provincial silver provided many of the highlights at Thomson Roddick & Medcalf’s (15% buyer's premium) March 29 sale.

RIGHT: the faience wares decorated by Louis Kramer for Burmantofts between 1887 and 1890 are among the most coveted productions of the Yorkshire factory. So there was lots of interest among academics, collectors and dealers prior to the May 8 sale at Fieldings of Stourbridge in this fully signed 18in (46cm) diameter charger.

BIRMINGHAM auctioneers Biddle & Webb (15% buyer’s premium) have been holding regular decorative arts sales for some years now. Generally 20th century ceramics top the sales list and this was again the case at the April 16 sale when two 13in (33cm) examples of Drunken Bricklayer vases designed by Geoffrey Baxter for the Whitefriars pottery were major stars.

SOMETIMES the significance of important commemorative pieces, which must have been so obvious at the time of their manufacture, remains something of a mystery to modern day collectors.

MOST of us are familiar with the designs Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Keith Murray produced for Wedgwood, but how many have heard of Norman Makinson?

KEYS (10% buyer's premium) of Aylsham maintain the format of mammoth offerings – 1556 lots offered over two days (April 20-21) in this case – and, although only 60 per cent of them got away, there was plenty of material for budget-conscious collectors of such favourites as Royal Doulton character jugs and figures as well as Beswick Beatrix Potter and animal models.

ARCHITECTURAL antiques and stained glass specialist Drew Pritchard is holding a trade and professional open day on Saturday June 19 to officially mark his company’s move into splendid new showrooms and workshops at St. George’s Church, Church Walks, Llandudno in North Wales.

Pictured right is one of two major pieces of Georg Jensen silver stolen in a raid on Denmark’s National Art Gallery in the early hours of May 2. The thieves involved got away with an estimated £70,000 worth of silver that formed part of an exhibition featuring the work of the celebrated Danish silversmith.

THIS fine Nantgarw porcelain plate, right, once thought to be painted by Thomas Baxter and traditionally known as the ‘Three Graces’, is part of a collection of porcelain to be offered by Worcestershire auctioneers Philip Serrell on May 20.

ONE might not have thought that a Glaswegian enamelled devotional triptych was the easiest of items to estimate, but Lyon & Turnbull (17.5/10% buyer's premium) specialist John Mackie had a number of reference points when cataloguing the piece shown right for the decorative arts sale in Edinburgh on April 21.

AS USUAL at the March 18-19 sale held by Neales (15% buyer's premium), the spring event was led in price terms by furniture – but in terms of selling rates and the degree of competition in the room, the Nottingham event was more notable for the smalls and collectables.

SMALL items in the form of a 100-lot silver and jewellery section were the backbone to the April 1 outing at Martel Maides Auctions (15% buyer's premium), in particular nine pieces of scarce Channel Island silver from a Jersey collection, all of which sold and most well above estimate.

WOOLLEY & Wallis sold the first tranche of the caddy spoon collection assembled over the past half century by John Norie on April 20.

CHARLES Baldwin’s stock-in-trade as a porcelain artist was swans in flight, but the celebrated Royal Worcester painter did occasionally apply his meticulous technique to other subjects including mammals and other birds. The sale held by Philip Laney (10% buyer’s premium) at the Malvern Auction Centre on April 6 included the impressive vase, top right, decorated by Baldwin with goldfinches.

ANOTHER giant two-day sale on March 25-26 put together by David Lay (15% buyer's premium) saw the familiar rapid selling of two and three-figure lots, the cheaper ones mainly accounting for the unsolds, peppered with lots of more quality and wider interest.

FOR some years now the country’s top glass fixture, the next bi-annual National Glass Collectors Fair will be held at the Heritage Motor Centre, near Gaydon in Warwickshire this Sunday, May 9.

KENSINGTON Church Street will be a worthwhile call for those interested in brushing up their ceramics scholarship over the next week or so, with two specialist dealers holding non-selling exhibitions aimed at furthering our knowledge.