Woolley & Wallis

When it comes to the business of selling middle-market collections, the big London salerooms are particularly adept at cherry-picking the best and rejecting the rest.

A hitherto unrecorded teapot attributed to a pioneering North American porcelain factory sold last week for a remarkable £460,000 (plus premium) at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury.

Deemed a little ostentatious in some Western circles, tiaras remain popular with the so-called ‘new’ markets.

Four unusual collections caught the eye, if not always the cash, at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer's premium).

Two of the first sales of 2018 suggest that toasts to the future can be drunk from half-full, rather than half-empty, Georgian rummers.

A gentleman retires to his designated smoker’s chair, picks up his meerschaum pipe and Dunhill lighter and puffs away contentedly by his hearth… a vanished scenario in the UK today but recreated in the antiques world in these three items from December auctions.

Two pre-Christmas sales, one at Woolley & Wallis (22% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury and one at Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) in Oxford, highlighted the move of studio pottery from esoteric niche into the mainstream market.

Cockney barrow boy-related jewellery is coming to auction in Salisbury later this month.

A hitherto unrecorded teapot attributed to a pioneering American porcelain factory has surfaced in the UK.

A market-fresh figure study by Mod Brit giant LS Lowry (1887-1976), pictured below, topped the sale at Woolley & Wallis.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Art assembled by Peter Mangold, the late political historian, led a strong line-up of Modern British pictures at Woolley & Wallis (25% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury.

Engraved 18th century glassware opened the sale at Woolley & Wallis (22% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury on October 18.

Among the weapons in demand from collectors are Eastern arms and cased pistols, judging by recent auctions. Here we take a look at a few examples – and a specific arms and armour feature will appear in an upcoming issue.

A recent silver sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury included a cache of early spoons from the collection of David Constable. Each had been illustrated and discussed in his magnum opus, 'Silver Spoons of Britain', published in 2016.

Twelve items of jewellery belonging to Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938) – the woman who inspired the DH Lawrence character Lady Chatterley – contributed more than £15,000 to the sale conducted by Woolley & Wallis on October 26.