Bonhams

THERE was quite a lot of frenzied activity at Bonhams (aka Glendinings) in the days running up to their sale on February 24.

ALTAR surrounds and other architectural elements from a 19th century Belgian church proved one of the bigger attractions at a February 8 sale held by in Los Angeles by Bonhams & Butterfields – a sale titled ‘Revival of the Centuries’.

BOUND volumes of Manchester United home match programmes from the 1950s seasons were the best sellers in the football section of a sporting memorabilia sale held by Bonhams Chester on January 28, with prices ranging from £520 to £1300 for the volume covering the 1957-58 season that brought the devastating Munich air disaster.

BONHAMS Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) Science and Marine outing on February 25 was hardly awash with blockbuster entries, but their disappointment at not selling John Gould’s cased display of humming birds (estimated to fetch £30,000-50,000 but bought in at £12,500 despite pre-sale collector interest) was somewhat allayed by the healthy bid placed for this Victorian octagonal double-cased shell Valentine (shown here).

WITH thousands of middle-class homes being turned into white boxes every week, how on earth can English auctioneers sustain the market for middle-of-the-road Victorian pictures?

This pair of early 19th century mahogany and brass-bound peat buckets soared to £68,000 plus 19.5% premium – six times their estimate – at Bonhams’ March 2 fine English and Continental furniture sale in Bond Street.

Bonhams are consolidating their reputation for high-profile and prestigious single-owner ceramics collections with another big name to add to the recent roll-call. After Bernard Watney, Norman Stretton, Billie Paine et al come Jeanne and Milton Zorensky, the first part of whose mammoth collection of First Period Worcester is to be offered for sale in Bonhams’ Bond Street rooms this month.

SILVER SALES: Although different in size, the 451-lot silver sale at Bonhams’ Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) sale on February 10 and the 263 lots offered at Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) on February 17 were both fairly routine affairs by London standards.

PORTRAIT MINIATURES: At just under £92,000 for 287 lots, Bonhams Bond Street’s (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) first portrait miniature sale of the year on February 3 was essentially a middle-ranking offering.

What Bonhams are billing as “one of the world’s greatest portrait miniature collections” will go on sale in their Bond Street rooms on April 22. The 175 English and Continental miniatures, which have been on loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for the past three years, date from the 16th to the 19th century and are estimated to fetch in excess of £1m.

CIGARETTE CARDS AND POSTCARDS: The cigarette and postcard auction is one of those corners of the collectables market where sales are keenly awaited by a specialist clientele and where very little tends to get left without a buyer.

BONHAMS have appointed Pippa Stockdale as managing director of the company’s Knightsbridge saleroom. Formerly the head of the pictures department at Knightsbridge, Ms. Stockdale joined Bonhams as a cataloguer in 1989 following time at Capes Dunn in Manchester.

MUCH of the saleroom activity in London over the past month has been of a fairly low key nature – routine sales of furnishings and objects. However, routine needn’t mean unsuccessful. Sales held at this traditionally thinly served period of the auction year can yield strong results, as customers home in on what little is around in the Capital. In the middle of the month, from January 13-15, Christie’s South Kensington held the first of their At Home weeks for 2004.

There was healthy competition for the most unusual or best quality entries in London’s December round of five toy sales at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) and Bonhams Knightsbridge (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) and some of the highlights are pictured right.

UK: BONHAMS are advertising for a new managing director for their Knightsbridge rooms following the announcement that James Knight is now to head their Bond Street operation. The vacancy has been created as part of a wider reshuffle to allow group managing director Malcolm Barber to concentrate on building business in the United States.

ENGLISH POTTERY AND LATER ENGLISH CERAMICS: The mixed-owner, all-English sale held by Bonhams Bond Street on December 10 covered a much broader canvas than the Billie Pain collection. It ranged from early delftwares to 20th century Royal Worcester, with examples of most other ceramic categories in between.

Prior to the sale of two record-breaking lots of Beswick at Bonhams’ October 28 sale – a colour trial Galloway Bull (£8800) and the Spirit of Whitfield (£9500) – the auction record for Beswick could well have been the £3500 paid for this rare figure at Potteries Specialist Auctions on October 22.

TWO nations, two auctions, one plane. The French and English charity auctions of Concorde parts and memorabilia, held by Christie’s and Bonhams in Paris and London respectively, both attracted audiences of over 1000 and passed off as complete sell-outs, with no shortage of estimate-crushing prices for components and souvenirs from the now retired iconic aeroplane.

IT was one of those landmark events that generated a perceptible buzz of expectation and drew the English porcelain collecting fraternity out of the woodwork en masse. Bonhams’ November 26 auction of the collection of the late Billie Pain pulled a capacity crowd to their Bond Street rooms and saw the trade and private collectors contest the 341 lots of prime early English porcelain to almost £782,000, getting on for twice the pre-sale predictions.

Just as Concorde was an Anglo-French initiative, so the entente cordiale continues with its dismantling. Two auctioneers on either side of the Channel: Christie’s in Paris and Bonhams in London, are holding Concorde souvenir auctions devoted to technical elements and mementoes from the iconic aircraft. In both cases the sales will benefit the respective airlines’ chosen charities.