Furniture

Giving a new lease of life to otherwise undesirable old items makes for an exciting, if occasionally controversial, line of business.

Perth saleroom Lindsay Burns (22% buyer’s premium) posted a new house record with an exceptional piece of period jewellery at its latest three-day sale.

Gardening and vernacular furniture displayed as imagined from Beatrix Potter's Mr McGregor’s garden shed forms a highlight from the upcoming The Decorative Fair on May 12-17

This Flemish Baroque carved ebony table cabinet shown below opens to reveal intricate silk needlework images of flowers to the inside of its three doors.

Robert Tucker lives in the Grade I-listed Restoration House in Rochester with his partner Jonathan Wilmot.

An Irish Regency overmantel mirror in Egyptian Revival style by the Dublin artisan Joshua Kearney (1797-1849) hammered for $22,000 (£16,400) against a $6000-8000 guide at Andrew Jones Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in Los Angeles.

In 1950, the Swiss artist, architect and designer Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967) joined his cousin Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who had assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier) to create a new capital of Punjab.

According to the lot notes, 11 wood veneers from Macassar ebony to burr maple were used in making the c.1903 Émile Gallé Épis de Blé sideboard.

The latest Design Since 1860 sale at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh was topped by four Morris & Co tile panels depicting the Labours of the Months dated to c.1865.

Female artists and makers are well represented at this year’s Petworth Park Antiques & Fine Art Fair. Of particular note is Ann Lee Warner, about whom little is known, but whose name appears on a lacquer cabinet offered by Reindeer Antiques.

Though sourced separately, the two best-selling furniture lots at Gorringe’s (25% buyer’s premium) latest Fine Art & Interiors sale in Lewes were both products of colonial India.

Quality and craftsmanship is rarely out of fashion.

I first met Ronald Phillips in the late 1960s in the Warwick Arms.

A Queen Anne olivewood oyster, holly and walnut cabinet on stand offered by Dreweatts (27/26% buyer’s premium) in Newbury was among a number of lots sold recently showing the commercial boost that royal provenance can provide.

A 17th century Safavid carpet on offer at Christie’s in London on April 30 is woven into the ceremonial life of the British monarchy in the early 20th century.

Alice Liddell was just a 10-year-old living in Oxford in the 1860s when Charles Dodgson – better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll – spun a fantastical tale to her and her two sisters Edith and Lorina on a summer afternoon by the Thames.