Mallams

Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) offered 12 impeccably provenanced pieces by Peter Waals (1870-1937) at Oxford on May 23.

Desmond Morris on his many lives as a zoologist, painter, author and collector

London’s horse dealers, auctioneers and cab-yards are among the most memorable subjects painted by Camden Town Group founder Robert Bevan (1865-1925) during the early 20th century.

At the turn of the 20th century, work by Italian émigré Andrew Grima (1921-2007) or the London jeweller Kutchinsky was on the periphery of the collecting world – still languishing in the bottom of jewellery boxes or, worse, the melting pot.

This 19th century painted photograph of an Indian maharaja was the stand-out picture in Sworders’ (23% buyer’s premium) dispersal of the Chelsea home of the late Henry Wilson – a World of Interiors photographer who died in a bicycle accident in 2017.

Consigned from a deceased estate in Oxfordshire, a loosely bound album containing nearly 100 watercolours of marine and topographical views drew multiple bids at an Oxford saleroom.

A group of railway posters, found in a cellar and almost discarded by their owner, sold for more than £5000 at the House and Garden sale at Mallams in Abingdon.

Edward Seago (1910-74), perhaps the best-known 20th century artist who lived and worked almost exclusively in Norfolk, captured the atmosphere of his beloved East Anglia with sweeping compositions and a delicate palette.

A very rare and inscribed example of CS Lewis’ first published work, a 1919 collection of verses previewed ATG No 2377, was sold recently in Oxford for £2800. Spirits in Bondage was part of the extensive book section of a January 30-31 sale at Mallams (23% buyer’s premium).

Good times at the Oxford rooms of Mallams (20% buyer’s premium), when all bar one of 56 clocks got away almost all going comfortably above estimates.

Three lots selling for multi-estimate sums at regional auctions in the UK including a Staffordshire slipware honey pot from c.1700 that drew demand at Woolley & Wallis of Salisbury.

Illustrated below is the title page of a copy of the very first book by CS Lewis to be printed, Spirits in Bondage of 1919.

One of the more unusual corkscrews to come onto what is a fiercely competitive collectors’ market recently was a brass, steel and wooden contraption of the type one may have seen clamped to the bar of fin-de-siècle brasseries.

A rare photographic postcard sold via thesaleroom.com at a surprise £850 (estimate £30-50) at Toovey’s (24.5% buyer’s premium) in Washington, West Sussex on October 30.