Auctioneers

The auction process is a key part of the secondary art and antiques market.

Firms of auctioneers usually specialise in a number of fields such as jewellery, ceramics, paintings, Asian art or coins but many also hold general sales where the goods available are not defined by a particular genre and are usually lower in value.

Auctioneers often provide other services such as probate and insurance valuations.

£6500 says Rob Roy’s large kinsman sat here...

08 April 2003

For a Scottish antique, no provenance is more guaranteed to stir the blood than a connection, however tenuous, with a romantic outlaw. At Lyon & Turnbull’s sale on 26 March the link was Rob Roy McGregor, or at least the cattle rustler’s loyal kinsman and Glasgow magistrate Baillie Nicol Jarvie.

Record for Constable in battle for Victory

08 April 2003

“AS extreme as always with focused bidding on the key lots,” was Victorian specialist Grant Ford’s frank description of the selective response to Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) mid-season British Sale at Bond Street.

Cabinet of fish sells for £8900

08 April 2003

Auctioneer Neil Freeman said that he could not remember a high price for multiple cased fish during his 20 years’ experience in the market for antique piscatoria. This 5ft 10in by 4ft 11in (1.78 x 1.50m) cabinet was one of a pair containing 15 brown trout caught by the ninth Earl of Coventry during a fruitful fly-fishing holiday in Ireland in 1879.

Fellows & Sons plan major expansion with new 15,000 sq ft auction rooms

07 April 2003

FELLOWS & Sons, the Birmingham-based firm of auctioneers and valuers, have started major expansion plans by opening a new 15,000 sq ft auction house in Great King Street, Hockley.

Triumph of the titchy titfers

03 April 2003

Small is beautiful in the antiques world where miniature versions can command as much, sometimes more, than their full-size counterparts. That was certainly the case at Christie’s South Kensington last month when the small collection of miniature top hats and one bowler pictured above was pursued way beyond its £300-500 estimate to sell for £2400 (plus 17.5% per cent buyer’s premium) in the auctioneers’ March 12 costume and textiles sale.

Electric atmosphere in the saleroom as unique provenance holds sway

03 April 2003

Provenance, Provenance Provenance, this was the key to the runaway success of Sotheby’s 539-lot, £1.66m sale of items formerly owned by the famous engineer James Watt and his son James Watt Junior that had been carefully passed down through his family.

Entomology and a £2000 royal Valentine

03 April 2003

THE COVER of the catalogue issued by Cheffins for their Cambridge sale of March 19 made clever use of what I take to have been the coloured title of the 1794 French edition of Moses Harris L’Aurelien... that they sold for £4800. In rubbed red morocco gilt, this famous study of moths and butterflies was a large paper copy illustrated with 44 coloured plates, with text in French and English.

Moorcroft pottery makes its mark in Suffolk

03 April 2003

The death of Walter Moorcroft last year and the strong prices at Sotheby’s recent dispersal of the Wade collection have reinforced the popularity of this market, especially for the earlier Macintyre wares. A small collection at Bonham’s sale in Bury St Edmunds yielded the following results.

US bidder recognises superiority of Minton’s fresher fruit

03 April 2003

Minton did majolica just a bit better than anyone else – not just in their large monumental and sculptural pieces but also in the smaller and more mundane wares.

Rare frontier scene makes £35,500

03 April 2003

Peter Rindisbacher (1806-1834) was a Swiss-born artist who was the first Western artist to leave a significant visual record of colonial frontier life in Western Canada during the early 19th century.

Spanish state expected to buy unknown Goyas

01 April 2003

A rare discovery of two completely unknown paintings by Goya has aroused considerable interest in Madrid. Discovered during a visit to a family in Madrid, the two paintings of Tobias and the Angel and The Holy Family were identified by the picture expert of Alcalá Subastas, Richard de Willermin.

Christie’s open single owner collections department

01 April 2003

Christie’s have announced that a newly-formed department dedicated to single-owner collections and house sales will be headed up by Orlando Rock, assisted by Andrew Waters as director.

Gentlemen, start your engines…

01 April 2003

The classic car market has received a twin injection of interest, with Sotheby’s seeming set to return to the fray and a new face entering the Olympia arena. H&H Classic Auctions of Warrington have established a global reputation with their sales at Buxton, in Derbyshire’s Peak District. Riding high on the success of a recent European record for a Mercedes Benz 300SL (£174,000), they are now looking to expand into London.

A lens makes its marque

28 March 2003

Coming up in ....Hendon: The Bowers archive, depicting some of the most historic and important monochrome images of the motoring industry dating from the early part of the 20th century to the 1950s, will be included in Bonhams’ sale of Collectors’ Motor Cars, Cycles, Automobilia, Toys & Models at the RAF Museum, Hendon on April 28.

New rooms a perfect place to sell hidden collection

26 March 2003

It is not now often that a collection which has not been available for study for a large number of years comes to the market. Dix Noonan Webb announce that they have recently been consigned an extensive collection of coins and medals formed by the late Alan Beeton.  

Later Chinese coins comes to the fore in Singapore

26 March 2003

The twice-a-year Baldwin, Ma, Gillio, Monetarium sale of Far Eastern coins this time took place in Singapore on March 6. There has been a sea-change in the type of goods offered. Hitherto Chinese coins of all periods have been on sale. The Chinese have a penchant for dollar-sized silver coins. Indeed there are many varieties which were struck for major cities in that vast country. What has changed is that in this sale there was an emphasis on these later coins.

Textile bias…from the artistic....to the archaic

26 March 2003

A veritable feast of textiles from an older era will be up for grabs in a big way next month in Paris when French auctioneer Olivier Coutau-Begarie holds a mammoth two-day dispersal at Richelieu-Drouot on April 29 and 30 of over 5000 pieces of antique silks, tapestries and embroideries from the House of Hamot, a French textile retailer and manufacturer of carpets and tapestries.

‘Chaise tongue’ will help lick sale into shape

26 March 2003

ON May 6 Vienna’s top auction house, Dorotheum, holds an important Design sale featuring works from the turn of the last century by such luminaries as Adolf Loos, Josef Hofmann and Carlo Bugatti through to some 20 square metres of aluminium flooring from the Berlin Skoda Boutique, designed by Mark Newson in 1992.

Ruskinware maintains momentum

26 March 2003

The Oriental glazes of the Midlands Arts and Crafts pottery known as Ruskinware have proved remarkably popular in the past year, as the disposal of the Wade collection at Sotheby’s and the Birkett Collection at Bonhams took prices in this market to unprecedented levels.

Beato’s India and more on that old Siege of Lucknow

26 March 2003

The vessel in the foreground of the photograph reproduced right, which at first glance appears to have been deliberately rolled over onto its side, or careened, but which may of course be a special craft, looks uncannily like a vast stranded fish. It is seen here in one of 129 albumen prints of photographs by Felice Beato that sold at £26,000 to Shapero in a Bonhams sale of March 11.

News

Categories