Auctioneers

It is not every day a dealer refuses to sell a piece of stock, but that was very much the case with the work shown here, which was the highlight of Sotheby’s Bond Street's (20/12% buyer's premium) sale of the Adler collection last month.

A named designer and good provenance sent this oak refectory table and benches, right, to the highest price at Woolley & Wallis’ sale on March 2.

by Alex CaponMARKET-FRESH pictures in good condition by major names...meet all three of these criteria and success is virtually assured. And, as was evident at the March 1 sale held in Exeter by Bearne’s (15/10% buyer’s premium), two out of three ain’t bad.

GORRINGES were celebrating a house record last Thursday following the sale of a rediscovered late work by John William Godward (1858-1922) for £440,000.

WITH their new magazine-format catalogues and weekend viewings and sales, Christie’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) are currently making a conscious effort to present themselves to the buying public as a customer-friendly art and antiques retailer.

THE new-style collectors’ sales held by Greenslade Taylor Hunt (15% buyer’s premium) at Taunton are proving a winning format, with wide-ranging, briefly catalogued but illustrated lots with low reserves.

Headlining proceedings at Andrew Hartley, Ilkley on February 16-17 was a pair of late 18th century 8in (20cm) barrelled pistols by Ketland & Co, formerly in the prestigious collection of Keith Neal, dispersed by Christie's South Kensington in 2000 and 2001.

Good corkscrews continue to attract solid sums. Alongside the likes of Thomas Lund and Edwin Cotterill, Robert Jones is one of the big names of the English patent market, if only because his so-called ‘Robert Jones II’ is among the rarest and most valuable of all corkscrews.

A local estate was the source of some fine Meiji ivories sold by Cheshire auctioneers Frank Marshall (15% buyer’s premium) of Knutsford on January 11.

On a day when some unusual offerings caught the eye at the Nottingham sale held by Mellors & Kirk, one such lot was a set of 36 Anglo-Indian Company School Delhi or Agra oval miniatures dating to 1827 and depicting India’s nobility and their wives, six of whom are shown right.

Duke’s, Dorchester, January 27Buyer’s premium: 15 per centOAK furniture’s rustic aesthetic and its ability to complement modern interiors, has kept it in demand by private buyers and decorators as well as oak dealers, and prices have tended to hold up during the furniture doldrums.

Remarkable things continue to happen in the Beswick market. Consider the fortunes of a handful of scarce, but damaged, models seen recently at the Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent rooms of Louis Taylor (12.5% buyer’s premium).

by Ian McKayLAST summer, when a large Biggles collection was put up for sale in Swindon, results were a little disappointing – at least for some of those titles offered individually, where some reserves proved too strong for collectors and trade alike – and around half of the 100 lots were bought in – but W.E. Johns’ famous creation certainly does not lack admirers and in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of February, a much smaller group of Biggles books, mostly from one source, brought good prices.

If a silhouette was going to set a new auction record then this elaborately embellished, highly decorative and grandiose royal subject was surely a good candidate. When it sold for £9500 (plus 20 per cent premium) at Bonhams on February 22, it beat the auctioneers’ own previous auction high of £8000 set last year by a Torond conversation piece.

The Fine Art Auction Group, parent company of Dreweatt Neate Fine Art and Neales of Nottingham, will be the major sponsor of the Art of Dealing conference at the Earls Court Conference Centre in London on May 16.

A group of 19th century sepia drawings, depicting Aborigines in Queensland, came up for auction at Brightwells (15% buyer’s premium) sale of paintings and prints on January 26 in Leominster, Herefordshire.

The market for Clarice Cliff may not be the spirited beast it was five or six years ago when Christie’s South Kensington’s specialist sales could routinely expect to boast 80-90 per cent selling rates by lot.

Publicity worked well in the Lyon & Turnbull sale for Golf in the Year 2000, or What are We Coming To..., a work of 1892 by J.A.C.K.

Brightwells, Leominster, January 12-13 Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent Illuminating this 900-lot Hereford-shire sale was the English brass candlestick featured on the front page of ATG No.1675, February 5, which was taken to £4600 in the confident belief it was a period 16th century example.

Pot Lids and Stevengraphs were two areas of the market put to the test last month.