Auctioneers

TO many people, Geoffrey Godden is indivisible from English porcelain. The scholar and author is a name on every ceramic enthusiast’s bookshelves through the many books on English ceramics written during the course of his 60 years of collecting and study.

WEST Sussex auctioneer Rupert Toovey was ordained deacon at Chichester cathedral on June 26.

THE latest Impressionist & Modern art auction series in London saw rising returns for the salerooms but buyers reacted unfavourably to heavy estimates on the most expensive works.

A GROUP of five photographs by pioneering British photographer Roger Fenton (1819-1869) sold for £100,500, some five times above their combined estimate, at Dominic Winter of South Cerney, Gloucestershire on June 17.

HOUSE contents sales always create a frisson of excitement. Alongside the stars of the show, big-ticket pieces that comes trailing clouds of pre-sale publicity, there is the potential thrill of the unexpected, the serendipitous attractions of the less elevated contents of cellar, outhouse and attic, which hold out the possibility of a bargain.

IT may have been an exceptional piece that generated an equally exceptional level of presale interest but, even still, few people present at Christie's Paris for the sale of Amedeo Modigliai's (1884-1920) Tête were expecting it to become the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction in France.

THE unexpected highlight of the sale conducted by Cheffins of Cambridge on June 9-10 came courtesy of this mahogany writing table. Estimated at £4000-6000, it sold at £68,000 (plus 17.5 per cent buyer's premium).

THERE can be no more important figure in British inter-War aviation than the aircraft designer Reginald Joseph Mitchell (1895-1937).

FROM perfume bottles and menu holders to vases and car mascots, the glass creations of René Lalique remain consistently appealing to a varied gamut of buyers.

THE troubled internet entrepreneur and art collector Halsey Minor, who in March was ordered to hand over $6.6m for unpaid items ‘bought’ at Sotheby’s, has won a parallel legal battle with Christie’s.

THE first slice of the Longridge collection of early British pottery and European vernacular works of art, formed over 30 years by American Syd Levethan, was sold in two sessions for £2.93m by Christie's in King Street on June 10-11.

WITH the retreat from Dunkirk so much in the news at the moment, Aguttes have a particularly topical offering in their June 18 sale of manuscripts, postcards and historical documents.

This jewelled and gold mounted hardstone model of a turkey by Fabergé was among the highlights of Christie's Russian art sale in London on June 8.

THIS Regency mahogany Carlton House desk, embellished with barber's pole stringing and marquetry fleur-de-lys medallions, was consigned for sale at Moore Allen & Innocent of Cirencester and attracted seven phone lines and others in the room.

LINCOLN saleroom Thomas Mawer and Son has been sold to Grantham auctioneer Colin Young.

SOMETHING for the dealer with almost everything, a personalised car registration plate with the legend ANT IK is being sold later this month.

SETTING the highest price ever seen at auction for Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), this lifesize sculpture of a mother and child, overshot its £60,000-80,000 estimate at Sotheby's latest sale of Modern British art in London before being knocked down to a private buyer at £120,000.

ANGELIC rosy-cheeked village girls were George Clausen’s (1852-1944) staple subject matter. During his time living in the Berkshire village of Cookham Dean, Clausen was particularly preoccupied with this idyllic rural subject matter and, from around 1889, he began to make a series of studies and paintings of a local child, Rose Grimsdale.

THE original autograph stock book of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, found in a box of girlie magazines, sold for £25,000 (plus 17% buyer's premium) at the Shropshire auctioneers Mullock's in Ludlow.

MOST Star Wars aficionados are familiar with the story of the Flintshire pensioner who bought 20 Palitoy action figures for 49p each in 1978 and sold them at Stockton-on-Tees toy specialists Vectis for a small fortune in 2003.