News

Continental Church Furniture in England: A Traffic in Piety, by Charles Tracy, published by Antique Collectors’ Club. ISBN 185149376 £50 hb

Christopher Gilbert: Selected Writings on Vernacular Furniture 1966-98, published by the Regional Furniture Society, price £20 plus postage and available from The Membership Secretary, The Regional Furniture Society, 12 Swan Street, Sible Hedingham, Essex, CO9 3HP. See also the society’s Website at www.regionalhistorysociety.com for details of back issues of the society’s journals.

The Wiltshire rooms Woolley & Wallis usually hold four specialist carpet sales a year but a fifth was squeezed in before the scheduled Valentine’s Day event, and with a 77 per cent rate and £77,000 total on the 284 lots on offer, the decision by specialists June Barrett and Ian Bennett was more than justified.

A privately sourced collection of jewellery boosted this first dispersal of the year in these Hampshire rooms at George Kidner on 9 January – “the bulk of the rest of the material was just good stock pieces”, said auctioneer Andrew Reeves.

UK: Thornhill Galleries are a 120-year-old British company that specialise in architectural antique interior design. They make panelled rooms on commission in antique pine and seasoned hardwood and carry a wide stock of period fireplaces and accessories, garden statuary and other architectural features.

London’s first costume and textile sale of the year took place at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) at the end of January, the 318 lots netting just over £150,000 with an 87 per cent take-up by lottage, 89 in money.

Pierre Bergé, president of Yves St-Laurent Haute Couture, has withdrawn from the race to acquire control of Drouot Holding SA. The company, which is owned by Paris’s 110 commissaires-priseurs, controls the Hôtel Drouot and the lucrative auction weekly, the Gazette de l’Hôtel Drouot.