Furniture

Such has been the fall in prices of Georgian card tables that it has become the norm for auctioneers to estimate most at well below £1000.

Among 83 lots of film and entertainment memorabilia offered at Lacy Scott & Knight (20% buyer’s premium) in Bury in St Edmunds was a British quad-size poster for 'Dr No', the first James Bond film starring Sean Connery released in 1962.

The investiture of the Prince of Wales in July 1969 was a pageant for the television age: held at Caernarfon Castle on a circular dais beneath a transparent Perspex canopy.

Michael Fenn was born on November 5, 1941, in Petts Wood, Kent, and died on Sunday, April 19, this year.

The sale at garden statuary specialist Summers Place Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in Billingshurst on March 24 (the day after lockdown) was among the first conducted under new government restrictions on social distancing.

A recent sale conducted by Michael Bowman (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Newton Abbot, Devon was a homespun affair – held in the auctioneer’s house, with his wife handling phone and commission bids and two assistants operating the bidding platforms remotely by way of a loudspeaker mobile phone link.

Held over three pre-lockdown days on March 5-7, Evesham saleroom Kingham & Orme’s (23% buyer’s premium) auction was rich in the best of English and European decorative arts.

Contents of Palladian home in County Durham provide showpiece auction in Newbury

Tiffany and Lalique glassware from a private New York City collector provided some of the highlights in the Clarke Auction Gallery (25% buyer’s premium) online and phone bidding sale.

This deluxe Victorian travel accessory is a ‘campaign wardrobe’ made by Robinson & Sons of Ilkley, Yorkshire.

This early-19th century mahogany writing table comes from a private New York City and Southampton, New York, collection of English country house furniture to be offered by Nye & Company.

As a young man in the 1960s, British creative designer Anthony Redmile (b.1937) took the London interior design scene by storm. Although his work was hugely eclectic, he became best known for his quirky designs taken from the animal kingdom.

Long unseen material from the country home of an ancient English family brought some estimate-demolishing five-figure bids at Morphets (17.5% buyer’s premium) including a genuine sleeper.

A highlight of the sale held by Andrew Jones (25% buyer’s premium) in Los Angeles on February 23 was this impressive 24-light cut and moulded glass chandelier with a 6ft 6in (1.98m) drop.

A pair of Chinese carved officials’ chairs offered at Ramsay Cornish (20% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh were typical of the furniture made at the end of the Qing period, some of it for local use, much of it for export.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

From relatively modest beginnings, specialist design sales have become mainstream money-spinners at provincial auctions.