Auctioneers

IT could have come straight out of one of the author’s own stories – a lost archive of unique material valued at two million pounds uncovered in the offices of a London law firm after being missing for decades.

BUYERS may have been thin on the ground for the more routine furniture in this 712-lot Crow's, Dorking (10% buyer's premium) sale on February 25, but the four telephone lines booked for a Georgian Chippendale rectangular tilt-top occasional table ensured this would be a hotly contested entry.

A PORTRAIT of two of the ‘Scottsboro Boys’, illustrated right, topped this year’s sale of African-Americana at Swann’s when it was knocked down at $36,000 (£19,080). But there was also a bid of $20,000 (£10,600) on a group of 40 letters and telegrams addressed to Dickenson, Hill & Co. and S.R. Fondren, slave dealers of Richmond, Virginia, in the years 1836-62.

Bonham’s had no difficulty dispersing the first instalment of the mammoth collection of Worcester porcelain formed by Milton and Jeanne Zorensky, offered in their New Bond Street rooms on March 16. Just five of the 416 lots were left unsold and even these had all found buyers by the end of the day.

INITIAL arguments in the £1.75m High Court dispute between Christie’s and Taylor Lynne Thomson over a pair of porphyry urns indicate that both parties intend to fight their corner vigorously.

THERE was quite a lot of frenzied activity at Bonhams (aka Glendinings) in the days running up to their sale on February 24.

On a day when early pieces took the top prices at Mallams (15% buyer's premium) sale on March 3, one of the earliest was this late 16th century Venetian bronze inkwell, right.

THE first day of a Belle Epoque sale held by Doyle of New York on February 25-26 awoke what one might, with greater reason than most, term a sleeper – the remarkable piece of furniture, catalogued as “An Italian Baroque style Mahogany Bed”, seen right. The bed was part of the Woodruff collection, comprising stock from a former Hollywood business that from 1922-60 was a popular rental source for the film studios, but stock that for the past 40 or more years has been in storage in Oklahoma.

SOTHEBY’S have just published their fourth quarter and year-end results for 2003, showing the company to be in a much better financial state than at the end of 2002.

ALTAR surrounds and other architectural elements from a 19th century Belgian church proved one of the bigger attractions at a February 8 sale held by in Los Angeles by Bonhams & Butterfields – a sale titled ‘Revival of the Centuries’.

The highlight of the sale conducted by Bourne End Auction Rooms (12% buyer’s premium) near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, on March 4 was this pair of tin-glazed earthenware plates, right, made c.1740 by Saverio Grue at the Castelli factory in Naples.

THE SPIRO collection, sold by Christie’s on December 3 included a few letters and documents of Spanish monarchs and a proclamation of July 1501, signed by both Ferdinand V and Isabella, that banned all unconverted Moors from Granada – the last step prior to the final expulsion of the Moors from Spain – was sold for £42,000.

LETTERS from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to members of his family are rarely seen on the market, but one lot in a Sotheby’s sale of December 9 presented no fewer that 40 letters and postcards addressed to his pianist brother Paul, among them some of the earlier known letters in his hand and, naturally enough, containing much on the subject of music. This lot found a buyer at £42,000.

TWO views of New York from what were, at the time, the city’s tallest buildings, are illustrated here. Both were part of the February 17 Swann’s sale of ‘100 Fine Photographs’, where ‘The Movement’, another of Frantisek Drtikol’s much admired pigment prints was scheduled to have become the sale’s best seller for the third time in a row, but in this instance failed to live up to expectations of $340,000-60,000.

BOUND in red morocco gilt, an autograph draft manuscript of one of the more important letters that make up the narrative of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloise – Lettre XXI, in which Saint-Preux writes about the women of Paris – was sold for €82,000 (£56,550) as part of the library of King Léopold III and Princess Lilian of Belgium at the Chateau d’Argenteuil near Waterloo. The sale was held by Sotheby’s Paris on December 11.

WHEN Poole Pottery went into administration last June, it could have been a sad day for one of Britain’s best-known producers of table, giftwares and art pottery. But the Dorset pottery has risen phoenix-like under new ownership and is once again producing ceramics as well as launching four new giftware ranges.

IN addition to technical excellence, decorative appeal and early date, sentiment is an important player in the sampler market.

LARGELY unknown outside the world of harpists, the name of the celebrated Dublin maker John Egan is guaranteed to tug at the heart and purse strings of aficionados when one of his harps makes a rare appearance for sale as this one, right, did at the February 25 collectors sale held by Aylsham auctioneers Keys (15% buyer’s premium).

BOUND volumes of Manchester United home match programmes from the 1950s seasons were the best sellers in the football section of a sporting memorabilia sale held by Bonhams Chester on January 28, with prices ranging from £520 to £1300 for the volume covering the 1957-58 season that brought the devastating Munich air disaster.

ALTHOUGH Oriental pieces were the main strength of Woolley & Wallis’s (15% buyer's premium) quarterly specialist ceramics sale on February 25, there was also evidence of the continued strength of the market for unusual examples of early English porcelain.