Bonhams

Two weeks after Christie’s and Bonhams’ Knightsbridge sales, Bonhams’ (15/10% buyer’s premium) offered a small 110-lot selection of antiquities along with a dozen lots of icons in their Bond Street rooms on November 27.

The secret memorandum that Nelson sent to all of his captains on the eve of the Battle of Trafalgar, outlining his plan to divide the fleet into three squadrons and thus be able to direct at least 24 ships against any part of the enemy’s line, has become one of the more celebrated documents in the history of naval warfare.

As fresh, quality private consignments become ever scarcer, the competition for such works must make it difficult for auctioneers nationwide to put sales together. Although Bonhams’ (15/10 buyer’s premium) 400-lot Fine Asian Art sale on November 12 had fewer top quality works to tempt buyers than at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the modestly estimated and fresh-to-the-market tea dust-glazed moonflask, Qianlong seal mark and period, saw buyers jostling for ownership.

One of the advantages of being an auction house with offices and salerooms spread around the country is that items with regional associations can be sold in the areas with the relevant local interest. This is precisely what happened on November 8 when the signed Louise Rayner (1832-1924) watercolour that had originally been consigned to Phillips Bath came up for sale 120 miles and one corporate take-over away at Bonhams Chester (15/10% buyer’s premium).

Manchester City Art Gallery, the underbidder at auction for the lantern which was the original model for Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World, have secured the piece after all. The gallery underbid the lantern, pictured right, when it was sold to a private collector for £46,000 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) on November 1 at Bonhams Knightsbridge.

PORTRAIT miniatures are one field that has been performing strongly in recent seasons, an area of the market where the private buyer is very much in evidence.

Four of the six lots of antique silver from Her Majesty’s Treasury due to be sold by Bonhams & Brooks on October 30 were withdrawn from auction the day before the sale.

Fewer than half of the 128 lots that made up The Cat Sale at Bonhams & Brooks on September 12 found buyers, but while demand was distinctly patchy and only 10 of 22 works by one of the foremost contemporary exponents of feline portraiture, Anne Mortimer, found buyers, there was no stopping Louis Wain.

“One of their less distinguished sales. There were one or two decent things, but there was no heavyweight stuff...an example of too many auctions of marine things with not enough stock to go round.” Such was the assessment of one leading West End specialist dealer of Bonhams & Brooks (15/10% buyer’s premium) September 5 sale of Marine Works of Art.

CHRISTOPHER Elwes, former managing director of Bonhams, and Indian art expert Patrick Bowring have broken new ground by opening India’s only specialist fine art auction house. They will hold their first sale in Delhi on November 5 and aim to create a network of offices to service the Indian market.

UK: CERAMICS expert at Bonhams & Brooks’ Honiton outpost, Lucy Lanning, believes ceramics and glass to have a much stronger following than brown furniture at present – a belief borne out by buy-in rates in the two sections.

BONHAMS & BROOKS confirmed on Friday evening that they are to merge with Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg, ending a week of speculation that this move was imminent.

UK: If proof were needed that it is collector’s silver that is the most desirable category of ware in today’s market one could have had no better example than the sale held by Bonhams & Brooks (15/10% buyer’s premium) last Thursday, July 5. This 261-lot auction was especially strong on vertu and collectors items swelled by a number of private collections.

Bonhams & Brooks (15/10% buyer’s premium) held their Far Eastern Works of Art on May 30, a couple of weeks earlier than the other main auction houses.

UK: FURTHER evidence that it is the strong abstract designs that are most popular in the Clarice Cliff market could be seen last week at Bonhams & Brooks (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) on June 12. Leading their 104-lot sale at £3600 was an 11-piece coffee service decorated in the Mondrian pattern while the preceding lot – two coffee cans and saucers decorated in the sought after Football pattern – easily left behind a modest £200-300 estimate to sell for £1150.

UK: AS EVEN the upper echelons of the trade cannot afford to stick to academic standards at the expense of turning a profit in the market for the purely decorative, one finds increasingly serious sums of money paid out for amusing trifles of zero antiquity, such as a large pair of 20th century Continental jardinières, one of which is shown here.

UK: A RARE example of Irish printing, this work by Hugh MacCaghwell, styled Aodh mac aingil, translates as A Mirror of the Sacrament of Penance and was printed at the Irish Franciscan College of St. Anthony of Padua at Louvain in 1618.

One of the high points of Bonhams & Brooks’ May 2 sale in the London Islamic Series of sales was a 10in (25cm) square Isnik tile, pictured, dated to c.1580.

Eugène Gayot’s Atlas statistique de la production des chevaux en France. Documents pour servir a l’histoire naturelle-agricolle des race de chevalliers du pays of 1850 contains 27 coloured maps and 31 litho plates of horses, mostly with two views.