Auctioneers

IN the week that former chairman Alfred Taubman was finally released from jail, Sotheby’s announced first quarter total revenues of $47.6m, 4.8 per cent up on the same period last year.

A CHARLES II pattern crown from 1663, the Petition Crown(*), has set a new world record for English silver coins at auction.

The first, the finest, the rarest – and with an unbeatable provenance. It is not often that an auctioneer can boast this dream recipe for a lot, but Spink offer this heady mix of ingredients when they open their two-part sale of the Slaney collection on Thursday (May 15).

EDINBURGH auctioneers Thomson, Roddick & Medcalf (15% buyer’s premium) dispersed 532 lots at their Edinburgh saleroom on March 15 and auctioneer Sybelle Medcalf felt the market held up pretty well considering the international climate.

AFTER the successful sale of items consigned by the Austrian State Tobacco Museum to Wiener Kunst in Vienna last October, European pipemen had another chance to add to their collections when nearly 500 pipes and pipe bowls came under the hammer at Tajan (14.35% - 20.33 % buyer’s premium) on April 26.

THE NAME of Jean-Baptiste de Machault d’Arnouville (1701-94), Finance and Navy Minister under Louis XV, provided lustrous provenance to the top lots at the sale of art and furniture held by Beaussant-Lefèvre (14.35-17.94% buyer’s premium) at Drouot on April 25.

ON the same day as Whyte’s Dublin sale, the Irish theme continued this side of the water at Essex when Sworders (15 per cent buyer’s premium) offered a drawing by Sir William Orpen (1878-1931) at their Stansted Mountfichet rooms on April 29 – a 16 by 14in (40 x 35cm) signed pencil and coloured washes piece entitled The Furniture Painter.

BEARING the simple, one-word title ‘Literature’, an April 8 sale held by Christie’s New York (19.5/10% buyer's premium) was mostly concerned with books of the 19th and 20th centuries. Earlier works were rather thin on the ground and the principle lot in this category, a 1632 second folio Shakespeare, with the ‘To the Reader’ leaf in facsimile and with some outer leaves washed and pressed before it was bound in crimson morocco gilt by Rivière, was left unsold on an estimate of $90,000-120,000.

SLEEPERS among saleroom sections of Oriental ceramics are a regular feature at auctions around the country and at Charterhouse Auctioneer's 28 March auction (15% buyer's premium) one came in the form of a late 18th/early 19th century Chinese lotus bowl.

COYS, the Kensington-based auctioneers of veteran, vintage and classic cars, have formed a new collectors department around two former members of the Bonhams team.

GORRINGE'S, one of the UK’s premier provincial auction houses, have begun trading in Worthing following the retirement of local auctioneer Kenneth Ellis. Taking over the West Sussex patch previously occupied by R.H. Ellis & Sons, the Lewes-based company has also struck a deal with Worthing estate agents Michael Jones & Company, who are associates in the new venture.

THERE was a collective sigh of relief in the New York salerooms last week when, after a long period of uncertainty following the war in Iraq and turmoil in the stockmarkets, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s held impressive Part I Impressionist and Modern sales. Any fears that anti-French feeling would spill over in the salerooms proved unfounded after French artists took the top honours at both houses.

The regular specialist carpets and textiles sales at Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis (15% buyer’s premium) have shown what can be achieved in the provinces even in the most esoteric subjects, and the latest 560-lot event put together by June Barrett and Ian Bennett on April 10 underlined this. War in the Middle East seemed more likely than most to hit this market, but after a creditable 60 per cent turnover and a total just shy of £100,000, June Barrett was more than happy.

THERE were suppressed cries of irritation from the public at the May 8 sale held in Madrid by Alcalá Subastas as the Spanish State pre-empted all the important lots of the evening, including two newly-discovered paintings by Goya.

AUCTIONEERS and valuers Tayler & Fletcher have merged with Chartered Surveying specialists, land and estate agents Humberts.

Not such a pretty face, perhaps, but the artist was certainly worth a thousand dollars or more.

MOST numismatic material when offered at auction comes up in London. Sometimes this is not the case and then frequently a better-than-usual price is achieved.

IT’S been a long time since any auctioneer chose to illustrate his catalogue front cover with an array of silver candlesticks but this was the rather heartening decision by The Bristol Auction Rooms for their April 8 sale (12.77% buyer's premium inc. VAT) and their enlightened, so to speak, move was rewarded when all the lots, from George IV to 1967, sold within or above the admittedly modest three-figure expectations.

Black Forest Bear furniture is hugely popular and this late 19th/early 20th century stick stand in the form of a standing bear with outstretched arms, right, was one of the main attention grabbers at Clevedon Salerooms (15% buyer’s premium) on March 6.

HALLS of Shrewsbury will be taking a very active part in next month’s Asian Art Week, having turned up a 157-piece collection of netsuke in the Midlands.