Auctioneers

Clarice Cliff and Moorcroft: THE majority of Clarice Cliff’s colourful and highly decorative pottery may be financially accessible to large numbers of enthusiasts for three-figure sums, but the top end of the market is driven by a relatively small number of wealthy buyers.

Dollar rate deters American teddy bear enthusiasts: Daniel Agnew, the teddy bear specialist at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium), felt the market was a bit softer than usual for the first of his bi-annual teddy sales on June 10.

On September 16, Doyle New York will sell the F. Gordon Morrill collection of Chinese and Chinese Export porcelain. Considered to be one of the last great collections of early blue and white Chinese porcelain still in private hands – the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has described the Morrill collection as “equal in quality to the superb collection at the Ardebil Shrine in Tehran, Persia” – the archive was assembled during the 1960s and 70s, when many notable collections came onto the market.

The Asian auction held by Nagel (33% buyer’s premium) in Stuttgart on May 20 and May 21 saw a larger influx of mainland Chinese dealers than for their last major Asian sale in November despite the fact that until two days before the auction the German government had placed a moratorium on visa applications in response to the SARS outbreak.

Some huge prices were paid for Du Paquier porcelain last week at Christie’s when the auctioneers offered a single-owner collection of predominantly Austrian and German porcelain in their July 7 sale of Continental ceramics.

20TH CENTURY Decorative Arts in New York: American museums are not so squeamish about deaccessioning as British ones and Christie’s New York (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) headlined its 20th Century Decorative Arts sale on June 12 with 52 lots of Tiffany from the Museum of Modern Art.

The resurgence of interest from Asian buyers in quality transitional blue and white sleeve vases was seen at Sotheby’s (22% buyer’s premium) in Amsterdam, when this finely painted example, right, illustrating boys presenting gifts to a number of scholars, topped the 243-lot Asian sale on May 21.

Halls Fine Art of Shrewsbury are to change their regular antiques sales from a Friday to a Wednesday from September. The firm’s Welsh Bridge salerooms will open for a pre-sale public viewing on Saturday mornings for its fine art and antiques sales in a bid to attract a wider public audience.

Victorian painter Sophie Anderson (1823-1903), who specialised in heart-warming female figure studies, appears rather infrequently on the market, but a Hampshire religious institution furnished the Lewes branch of Gorringe’s (15% buyer’s premium) with two good quality, signed half-length female subjects in untouched condition for their June 12 picture sale.

A Rolls-Royce & Bentley sale held by Bonhams at Towcester Racecourse on June 21 included a number of sales brochures, catalogues, handbooks, manuals, etc. amongst the automobilia.

THE Graham Rickett Collection of rowing ephemera offers a unique opportunity for collectors when it comes up for sale as part of Bonhams’ annual sale of traditional rivercraft and marine ephemera on Saturday, July 19 at the Boat Tents, near Leander Club, Henley-on-Thames.

Totalling £533,120, the Wingfield Digby collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain offered at Sotheby’s Olympia (20/12% buyer’s premium) on June 12 may not have been the highest grossing sale of the London Asian series but it fielded the fewest casualties and was full of the type of fresh-to-the-market provenanced material at low estimates which the trade crave.

Many in the art world will know of Professor E. T. ‘Teddy’ Hall through his work in archaeometry, the science used to establish the age and origins of much of the world’s ancient art and artefacts, using tests such as thermoluminescence.

Sotheby’s and Bonhams routinely include sections of Export porcelain in their general Chinese sales but Christie’s specialist Caroline Allen devotes her time solely to this field and it is an area she is keen to develop. To this end, Christie’s</b? (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) gave her the go-ahead to present a single-owner collection of European-subject Export porcelain in an individual catalogue even though it was never going to be a big money-spinning, seven-figure collection.

THERE was a greater concentration of Chinese Export porcelain at Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) than at either of the other two houses with a single- owner collection of European-subject Export ware offered in a separate catalogue on June 17 and a private collection of famille verte porcelain in mixed condition that was 99 per cent sold by lot and by value, included in their mixed-owner sale on the same day.

A FEW of the highlights of the June 10 sale held by Comic Book Postal Auctions are illustrated in the accompanying caption stories – along with one of the two Dandy annuals sold a couple of weeks later in Swindon – and as ever, Malcolm Phillips has provided me with some informed observations on prices, market movements and much else besides.

Originally belonging to the Dean family of Fareham House, Hampshire, this pair of Sheraton period mahogany folding card tables, right, was offered at the Cotswold Auction Company (15% buyer’s premium) on June 10.

Netherhampton House, a wonderful Queen Anne home in Salisbury, was the venue for Duke’s English Country House sale on 16 June. Rented from the Pembroke estate since 1990 by dealer and collector John Parnaby, the elegant stone property operated as both a home and a showroom for Mr Parnaby’s business, Victor Mahy Antiques, specialists in 17th and 18th century furniture and works of art.

Even as the million-pound Impressionist and Modern pictures were being knocked down in their King Street saleroom last week, Christie’s were reconfirming their commitment to the currently troubled middle market sector.

On July 21 and 22, Sotheby’s will be holding a house contents sale at Wormington Manor near Broadway. This was the Worcestershire home of interior decorator, Christopher Rowley whose shop in Lower Sloane Street, Belgravia was a familiar meeting point for his large circle of friends and clients until his death in April this year.