Decorative Art

Star billing at Christie’s King Street sale of selected English and Continental ceramics on December 6 went to three Meissen Augustus Rex covered baluster jars of 1740 with the AR monogram and Dreher’s marks XII to the base.

Two of the strongest performances in the December ceramics sales came from the glass sections offered at Bonhams Bond Street on December 8 and at Sotheby’s Olympia two weeks later.

Top Right: it may be badly damaged but this 4 1/2in (10.5cm) high Lowestoft blue and white teapot and cover is an exceptionally rare and documentary piece.

A UNIQUE archive of journals and notebooks, including the secret recipe for Tiffany’s signature Favrile glass, is now available for public inspection at the Corning Museum in New York.

The 1150 lots offered at Essex auctioneers Ambrose (15% buyer’s premium) at Loughton on December 9 encompassed most areas of the market and, outside the jewellery, generally sold for three-figure sums.

THE V&A has appealed for help from the art and antiques world in tracing the eight bronze plaques thought to be worth a total of £450,000 stolen in the third raid on the museum in three months.

Oxfordshire pottery dealer John Howard, who specialises in Staffordshire, has an exceptionally busy 2005 lined up.

KNOWN as Twelve Months of Flowers, a famous set of plates engraved by Henry Fletcher after original floral paintings by Pieter Casteels was originally produced as a sumptuously illustrated nursery catalogue of some 400 different species of flowers.

OVER 2000 lots in the field of 20th Century Decorative Arts were offered for sale in Paris in late November and early December. The most lucrative Art Deco sale, at Christie’s on December 1, ran to 107 lots (93 sold) and yielded a hammer total of €2.04m (£1.43m), with a top price of €340,000 (£238,000) for a lacquered screen by Eileen Gray (c.1915). A 1927 lacquered coffee table by Gaston Suisse, with eggshell and oxidised silver decoration, tripled estimate on €55,000 (£38,500).

Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) were pulling out all the stops for their first full week of the month.

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.