Auctioneers

Maidenhead auction house Dawson’s is dipping a toe into the world of design with a dedicated sale on December 2.

The Canterbury Auction Galleries included this George IV silver vinaigrette by John Lawrence & Co, Birmingham, decorated with a view of St Peter’s Church, Brighton. It sold to an Australian internet bidder for £2300.

It is possible to have too much of a good thing in a narrow collecting market – a feature amplified when the leading player has left the field.

Sotheby’s posted a record for the artist CRW Nevinson on November 21 when an important Great War scene was knocked down at £1.55m (£1.87m including premium).

The dual appeal of Maltese silver lies in both a sense of national pride and a very limited supply.

Natural history works, together with books, prints, even pictures featuring aspects of hunting, were a key component of a Sotheby’s (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 2 billed only as The Library of a European Gentleman.

An extraordinary example of British avant-garde clothing made on the eve of the First World War will be offered at auction in Oxford next month.

The sale of a comprehensive collection of Channel Islands silver in Guernsey provides a perfect opportunity to test the market temperature...

Wright Marshall (21% buyer’s premium) featured a still-life by John Pawle (1915-2010) in its sale on October 28 in Knutsford, Cheshire.

This painting of a flower market in Paris (below) by the Australian artist Ethel Carrick-Fox (1872-1952) took top honours at The Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium) in Cheltenham on November 14.

A December 7 sale of European ceramics at Bonhams will incorporate 130 pieces of Neapolitan porcelain from a single private source.

A recent silver sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury included a cache of early spoons from the collection of David Constable. Each had been illustrated and discussed in his magnum opus, 'Silver Spoons of Britain', published in 2016.

In September, eight works by two of Singapore’s most celebrated 20th century artists sold for multi-estimate sums at Andrew Smith & Son (20% buyer’s premium).

It was in poor condition and lacked the backstrip, but a copy of The Tale of Mrs Tiggy-winkle offered in the book section of a Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) sale of November 2 was redeemed by the presence of a presentation inscription.

Harry Clarke worked for three years on his first major book illustration commission, an edition of the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen commissioned by Harrap.

The material connected with William Butler Yeats in the family home of his son, the late Senator Michael, has proved as controversial – and profitable – as the great man’s writing itself.

Though probably better known for his bronze and chryselphantine Art Deco figures, Austrian sculptor Josef Lorenzl also worked for Viennese ceramics factories and, in particular, Goldscheider, for whom he designed the extremely popular Butterfly Girl.

Originally published in parts in the years 1804-12, George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica contains 90 colour-printed and hand finished aquatint and stipple-engraved plates of fruits then cultivated in Britain (pineapple pictured below).