Auctioneers

Scottish, Greek and Australian subjects gave a welcome international feel to the main highlights among the pictures offered on the third day of Gorringes’ (15% buyer’s premium) January 27-29 sale in Lewes.

Sotheby’s announced last week that the Forbes Collection of Fabergé, which had been scheduled for sale at auction in New York in April, has been sold by private treaty to a prominent Russian industrialist.

Christie’s South Kensington increase their buyer’s premium from February 11: The new rate will be 19.5 per cent of the final bid price of each lot up to £70,000 and 12 per cent on the excess of the hammer price above £70,000, the same premium currently charged at Christie’s King Street.

Contemporary art shines in London: The February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales in London gave plenty of evidence that the top end of the art market has made a strong recovery from last year’s bout of Iraq War syndrome.

BONHAMS have appointed Pippa Stockdale as managing director of the company’s Knightsbridge saleroom. Formerly the head of the pictures department at Knightsbridge, Ms. Stockdale joined Bonhams as a cataloguer in 1989 following time at Capes Dunn in Manchester.

Although a £12,000 oil by Arthur Spooner (1873-1962) was the most expensive entry in the sale at Derby held by Bamfords (15% buyer’s premium) on December 9-10, perhaps the most eye-catching lot was this Lenci dish, right.

IT was not just Sotheby’s and Christie’s who were generating some exceptional prices for Old Masters in New York in the third week of January. The East 87th Street auctioneers Doyle’s (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) generated keen interest from TEFAF Maastricht exhibitors in the room when they included a moody Gottfried Schalken (1643-1706) canvas in their January 21 sale.

Most Continental auctioneers combine clocks with their furniture sales, and Sotheby’s Amsterdam is alone in hosting the city’s only regular specialist clock and watch outing. These biannual specialist sales attract a mix of local and international dealers and in recent years Sotheby’s specialist Jos Meis has seen an increase in demand from US buyers for decorative French gilt mantel clocks and from Dutch collectors for the quality Dutch clocks in his sales.

THE close of 2003 gave us much information on the current market in 18th-19th century cameos with more than 130 examples on offer between two European auction rooms, one in the UK, the other in Italy.

There is no doubt that a weak dollar has contributed to a weaker UK majolica market – and yet low estimates for good pieces continue to stimulate bidding.

It wasn’t just top pieces of Americana and Old Master paintings that occupied the salerooms in New York last month, there was also a good selection of Chinese Export porcelain on offer. Christie’s were selling the third installment of the Benjamin Edwards III collection of Export Porcelain on January 20 plus an interesting mixed owner selection in their Captains and Kilns ceramics auction on the same day.

SCALE models of racing cars, and scratch-built models of engine components may not be typical stock for antique dealers but in a very special collectables niche market they enjoy a keen following as was clearly demonstrated by a sell-out sale, held at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) last month.

MUCH of the saleroom activity in London over the past month has been of a fairly low key nature – routine sales of furnishings and objects. However, routine needn’t mean unsuccessful. Sales held at this traditionally thinly served period of the auction year can yield strong results, as customers home in on what little is around in the Capital. In the middle of the month, from January 13-15, Christie’s South Kensington held the first of their At Home weeks for 2004.

FRANCE: THE centenary of the Wiener Werkstätte, founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1903, was commemorated in Vienna with various museum and gallery exhibitions, and two specialist auctions at the city’s main auction houses – the Dorotheum and Wiener Kunst.

The pre-Christmas horological sales were lower key than those traditionally seen in the London rooms at this time of year. With the continuing problem of sourcing enough good material, few top names were on offer to tempt the serious collector, and the general mixed sales which resulted provided some good-value purchases for buyers further down the scale.

Brightwells Fine Art, the Leominster based saleroom covering the Marches, Wales and the West Midlands announced their turnover for the year ended December 2003, which, including premium, was £3.16m.

EXCEPTING the Norwich Union (one-day) cup that the team picked up a couple of seasons back, trophies for Kent County Cricket Club have been a bit thin on the ground in recent years. By today’s county standards, a St Lawrence (Canterbury) gate of 4000 is considered a good one and – though Sussex picked up the county title last year – today it is Surrey that remain the side to beat.

The highlight of the month’s auction calendar, this remarkable Italian micromosaic and ormolu mounted centre table shot to £250,000 (plus 15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) at Dreweatt Neate of Donnington Priory, Newbury on January 21.

Paris auctioneer Jean-Claude Binoche has been charged with fraud in connection with the sale of three pictures in 1995. Binoche, 61, is accused of buying two works himself at an auction he staged on 18 October 1995, which is illegal under French law, and of selling another work after the sale (a Prud’hon drawing, to the Beaux-Arts museum in Dijon). After-sales were illegal in France at the time, although they have been permitted since 2001.

POSTERS provide instant wall power to any interior, and carefully chosen they can prove a most effective (and cost-effective) device in any decorating scheme. Look out for two interesting poster auctions next month on either side of the Atlantic.