Auctioneers

A quarter of a century ago, Christie’s sold an amazing doll’s house known as Titania’s Palace. This truly palatial mansion, more miniature museum than dolls’ house, was designed by Sir Nevile Wilkinson over 15 years from 1907-22, when it was opened by Queen Mary. Initially intended for Sir Nevile’s daughter, as the house and project grew it turned into a fund-raising publicity exercise for children’s charities.

WITH vendors finding greater confidence (and, in some cases, greater incentives) to offer blue chip works, both Christie’s and Sotheby’s mounted strong sales of Impressionist and Modern art in New York last week. Ahead of this week’s sales of Contemporary art, the two big players both improved substantially upon last year’s figures and posted artists records for Modigliani, Léger, Klimt, Jawlensky and Moore against a backdrop of solid levels of demand.

Sotheby’s have appointed their current German chief, Philipp Wurttemberg, to succeed Laure de Beauvau Craon as head of Sotheby’s France. M. Wurttemberg will start in the job in January 2004, while continuing as managing director of Sotheby’s Germany, a post he has held since 1999.

THE Chicago Clearing Corporation, the US traders in class action certificates, are to visit London again to buy and sell the vouchers issued following the Christie’s/Sotheby’s collusion case settlement.

Deal cements southern network of rooms: Berkshire auctioneers Dreweatt Neate have become the latest and the largest business to join The Fine Art Auction Group’s rapidly expanding network of regional auction salerooms.

THE Chinese-born, French-based artists Zao Wou-Ki and Yan Pei Ming, who both featured among the successes at FIAC Paris, were also in demand at the sale staged by Cornette de St-Cyr (20.33/11.96% buyer’s premium) at Drouot Montaigne on the evening of October 11.

The seasonal nature of the international Asian art market means buyers risk being swamped by the sheer volume of Asian art auctioned in a concentrated period. So it was the sale timing as much as the market freshness of a 103-lot private English collection of Asian works of art from a deceased estate that contributed to the success of Christie’s South Kensington’s (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) 465-lot outing on October 4.

THE Newcastle upon Tyne auctioneers Anderson & Garland are to relocate their second-string saleroom to a new purpose-built building at Westerhope. The firm took over Pattisons Rooms at Crawcrook near Gateshead in 1983 where for 20 years they have held their fortnightly sales of Victorian and later furniture and effects supporting the quarterly sales held at Marlborough House in the city centre.

Walking may be an unfashionably slow mode of transport in today’s time-pressured world, but lengthy periods spent on foot in past centuries were made more pleasurable by a vast array of walking aids. This material is now seriously collected and a cluster of cane collections have appeared on the market of late.

The lacklustre results posted at Sotheby’s (20/10% buyer’s premium) summer garden statuary sale were not bettered in early autumn, the September 23 catalogue seeing only 365 of the 666 lots sold.

WITH buying split 50/50 between trade and private bidders, a total of £84,000 and all bar 84 of the 928 entries getting away, this was one of the healthiest of Andrew Hartley’s bi-annual specialist collectors’ sales to date, on 20 September.

‘SEE NAPLES AND BUY’ is a headline that has previously made its mark in the Antiques Trade Gazette when some Neapolitan scene has tickled the fancy and the bank balance of a determined picture bidder, but it was never more applicable than in the case of the Worcestershire couple who bought the superbly preserved Attilio Pratella (1856-1949), shown right, at the Colwyn Bay auctioneers Rogers Jones & Co (6% buyer’s premium) on September 27.

London marine sales can be routine affairs, but there was a frisson of speculative interest in this unsigned and unattributed 19th century canvas, right, which ended the 171-lot picture section of Bonhams’ (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) October 1 marine offering in Knightsbridge.

SEVEN HUNDRED or so lots were offered in the September 23 sale held by John Nicholson of Fernhurst, and though there were some disappointments – notably the 1776 volume of The Scots Magazine that contained the first Scottish printing of America’s Declaration of Independence, valued at £5000-8000 – almost 80 per cent of lots, big and small, found buyers.

Included amongst the more venerable 18th century flutes, 19th century hurdy gurdies and 17th century harpsicords and spinets that make up the l03-lot sale of early musical instruments to be held at Sotheby’s Bond Street on November 25, is this unusual piece of more recent vintage.

This 10in (25cm) Burleigh Ware pottery wall plate, by Charlotte Rhead established a new auction record for the industrial ceramicist when it sold for £2900 (plus 10 per cent buyer’s premium) at Andrew Hartley Fine Arts on October 8. Consigned to the Ilkley rooms via a local house clearance, the vibrantly-coloured plaque carried the pattern number 4350, a design previously known only from pattern books dated to c.1928-29.

Bonhams weren’t the only London salerooms to be offering a good selection of antique glasswares. On October 9, just a week after the Harvey’s dispersal, Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% per cent buyer’s premium) had a mixed-owner 280-lot selection of British and Continental glass to offer as part of their monthly At Home series.

Exceptional quality pictures with truly international appeal from long-standing private collections have become an all-too-rare sight in the provinces, but on October 3, thanks to significant consignments from no fewer than three deceased estates, Mallams Oxford (15% buyer’s premium) were able to offer at least half a dozen lots that wouldn’t have looked out of place at any of the world’s most expensive art fairs.

Exceptional subjects still have the capacity to fetch exceptional prices, as the Bury St Edmunds auctioneers Lacy Scott & Knight (10% buyer’s premium) discovered when this unsigned and unattributed 19th century watercolour came under the hammer on September 20 with an estimate of £250-400.

And now for something completely different...A high-rise flat on the outskirts of Glasgow is not the place one would expect to find works of art by the celebrated firm of Fabergé but that was the origin of the finely crafted photograph frame, right, offered on September 26 by Glasgow auctioneers McTears (15% buyer’s premium).