Auctioneers

IT’S not all Mod Brit, the modern art market in Britain – there are still buyers who want their heroes and their gardens and during May, Oxford auctioneers Mallams (15% buyer’s premium) were able to supply both markets, albeit at different price levels.

Coming up in London: Hidden for over 300 years behind the work of a pupil, this image of one of the world’s most celebrated painters at the age of 28 has only recently emerged from beneath layers of overpaint. This newly discovered Rembrandt self-portrait promises to be the highlight of this summer’s auction season in London and will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s on July 10.

One of the highlights of the English porcelain section of Sotheby’s Olympia’s ceramics sale on July 3 will be a group of pieces from the celebrated Duke of Gloucester Service produced by the Worcester factory c.1775. The service is said to have been made for William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh and Earl of Connaught (1743-1805), younger brother of George III.

In August Sotheby’s will open a new regional office near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, headed by Mark Newstead. The Staffordshire office will serve clients in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, as well as North Wales.

IN what they are billing “the beginning of a new era” in the firm’s fortunes, Stuttgart auctioneers Nagel are moving to grand new premises in the old quarter of the city next month.

AS AT London auctioneers’ themed events, nationalist bidding also underpins demand at sales in Ireland and Scotland. The Edinburgh auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) report having “lots of private buyers and underbidders” at their May 23 Fine Paintings sale, despite the quantity of material being down on the equivalent sale last year owing to the gathering period conciding with the war in Iraq.

Cheffins will sell a Suffolk collection of printed creamwares in their June 25-26 sale. Specialist George Archdale has made many personal discoveries during the cataloguing of the £30,000 collection, including the origin of the popular transfer Palemon and Lavinia.

The combination of a single-owner collection in a specialist niche corner of the market with a not over-large and mostly market-fresh selection of realistically estimated material were the keys to the warm reception that greeted Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) sale of Scientific instruments in their Olympia rooms on May 28. All bar 15 of the 155 lots, just short of 90 per cent (92 per cent by value) changed hands for a total of £262,350.

VENERABLE top Mayfair dealers Partridge hold an exhibition of French clocks at their gallery at 144-146 New Bond Street, London W1 from June 12 to 28.

AN early 19th century bowfront chest of five over three drawers, mahogany strung with satinwood. Doesn’t sound too special does it? That’s until you realise that the description is of a fully fitted tea caddy measuring just 91/2in by 8in high (24 by 20cm). Lots of interest in this rare novelty saw it climb to take the top price of David Lay’s mammoth Penzance sale at £4400.

Miety Heiden, Sotheby’s Amsterdam (22% buyer’s premium) picture specialist had a sneaking suspicion that Schelde Roeier, an oil on canvas by Belgian Expressionist Constant Permeke (1886-1952), would do well when it was offered in the 170-lot May 27 sale of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Dutch capital. But no-one was prepared for the record breaking sum.

THOUGH the May 21 sale held by Dominic Winter was a collectors’ sale that also included motoring, maritime and railway models, photographs, prints, etc., it was the aviation material that had star billing. There was yet another selection from the Amédée Gauthier collection of photographs, arranged as before in thematic lots.

Included among the fountains, wellheads and lead figures at Sotheby’s Sussex on 20-21 May were 18 watering cans from the collection built up over 15 years by John Massey, a senior director of the famous Haws Watering Can Company for over 25 years.

Sotheby’s wait for a change of climate to see prices grow after statuary sale falters: Sotheby's specialist-in-charge of the Sussex garden statuary sales, Rupert van der Werff, believes the most reliable barometer for this area is the housing market. Certainly the well-publicised recession in that overheated area has had a hugely detrimental effect on statuary.

AT OVER 1000 lots, the May 22 sale held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt of Taunton was certainly one of the bigger sales of that week, but only a single lot topped the £1000 mark – a disbound, incomplete and defective English Bible. Apparently a 1540 reissue in smaller format of the Great Bible that Thomas Cromwell ordered to be placed in the country’s churches so that “parishioners may moste commodiously resorte to the same”, it was bid up to £1250.

Christie’s have helped negotiate the sale to the Victoria and Albert Museum of the Castlereagh gold inkstand created by Paul Storr and Philip Rundell for the British diplomat Viscount Castlereagh (1769-1822) in 1818.

Christie’s South Kensington : May 15 was a crowded day in the Decorative Arts calendar. Both Christie’s South Kensington and Bonhams’ Bond Street rooms fielded sizeable decorative arts selections, much of it of crossover interest, which presumably presented potential buyers with something of a dilemma when it came to deciding which sale to attend in person.

Christie’s are to relocate their education arm from King Street to new premises in the Fitzrovia area of London. The current building, number 5 King Street that was the former Spink premises, will undergo refurbishment in the summer. While the upper floors are expected to remain Christie’s offices, a decision will be made in the near future as to the use of the prime retail space below.

NOT for nothing is the antiques market known for being unpredictable, nay, almost perverse. In the middle of the worst recession that many dealers have experienced, the worst drought that many salerooms have ever had to endure, auctioneer Nigel Kirk of Mellors and Kirk recorded his best sale in the brief (ten-year) history of his business on 10-11 April. He could not quite believe it, especially as half of the furniture lots failed to sell, but the statistics bore out the remarkable reality.

Apparently consigned for sale by a local lady who had no idea of its commercial potential – it had been acquired as holiday reading when she was a young girl – a 1937 first edition of The Hobbit was sold at £10,300 in a general antiques sale held by Fieldings in Hagley, Worcester-shire, on April 26.