Auctioneers

Helped by conservatively pitched estimates, a clutch of middle-market Orientalist pictures achieved some modest growth in value on their first return to auction in three decades.

A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening… is the single volume that I have selected from a recent Gloucestershire auction in which job lots were very much in evidence and that acted as a sort of extra, clearing-the-decks sort of exercise in the saleroom’s calendar.

Precisely four months on from a flood inundating its saleroom, Carmarthen auction house Peter Francis (20% buyer’s premium) enjoyed a literal and metaphorical day in the sunshine on February 13.

This study (below) was one of 10 drawings by Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) consigned by an unidentified charitable trust to Bonhams’ 19th Century European, Victorian and British Impressionist Art sale on February 20.

Regarded in their time as examples of the finest cabinet-making rather than simply reproductions, good 19th century French revivalist furniture remains in demand.

Sold for £900 by Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) on February 19 was an elaborately bound example of Monsieur Gravelot’s Almanach Iconololgique… for the year 1771.

On April 9 Christie’s will be holding a Pre-Columbian sale featuring the 90-lot collection formed by Felix and Heidi Stoll from Basel as well as around 50 pieces from other vendors.

Illustrated with eight hand-coloured litho plates, each with moveable flaps, The Puppy’s Visit To His Friends was issued as one of EC Bennett’s moveable books, probably in the 1850s.

This early 18th century Louis XIV French table clock is part of a selection of 19 early European timekeepers that feature in Heritage Auctions’ fine and decorative arts sale in Dallas on March 8-10.

Two Victorian stained-glass and leaded window panels entered by the same vendor trebled the estimates in selling to the same UK online bidder at Special Auction Services (17.5% buyer’s premium) on February 5.

A very rare and inscribed example of CS Lewis’ first published work, a 1919 collection of verses previewed ATG No 2377, was sold recently in Oxford for £2800. Spirits in Bondage was part of the extensive book section of a January 30-31 sale at Mallams (23% buyer’s premium).

Following the fall of Louis-Philippe in the 1848 revolution, the French royal sculptor Henri Joseph Francois, Baron de Triqueti (1804-74) was obliged to cast his net further afield for new patrons.