Auctions

Interest in 20th century maps is growing rapidly among dealers, collectors and curators. And some are rarer than you might think, writes Tim Bryars.

Just over a year since its launch, Stamford Auction Rooms is staging its first estate sale on May 27.

Primary provenanced Arts & Crafts furniture comes up for sale at Mallams in Oxford on May 25.

The Bovey Pottery Company, closed in 1957, would have passed into collecting history without incident had it not been for the ‘Our Gang’ collection of figures.

Nicholas Mellors Auctioneers in Newark has closed but Newark Antiques will continue to trade.

No fewer than 840 lots were offered in the bumper April 5-6 sale held by Dominic Winter (19.5% buyer’s premium). The most successful of them, at a record £32,000, was a presentation copy of a pioneering work that has been described as “the first practical statement of socialist doctrine”, Robert Owen’s A New View of Society… of 1813-14.

This 8¾in (23cm) diameter Liverpool delft charger, dated 1738, is initialled MML for Michael and Mary Lightfoot, members of a Quaker family who lived in Chester County.

An ‘Unfashionable’ single-owner collection from a London club attracted trade and private buyers. The 98-lot sale on April 5 was held by British pictures specialist Harry Moore-Gwyn at 25 Blythe Road (20% buyer’s premium) in West Kensington.

Nearly a quarter of the sale total at the auction held by Harry Moore-Gwyn at 25 Blythe Road (20% buyer’s premium) in West Kensington on April 5 came from a collection of original cartoons.

A work by one of Lebanon’s most eminent painters, Khalil Saleeby (1870-1928), surfaced at Hansons (17.5% buyer’s premium) of Etwall in Derbyshire.