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£36,000 private bid on cabinet shows underlying market strength: BRITISH auctioneers have long looked enviously across the Irish Sea where there still seems a wealth of high-quality furniture coming onto the market from private sources to be welcomed not merely by the trade but also by confident and well-heeled private bidders who have been the dominant force these past ten years and more.

Between 1781-90, when Fidelle Duvivier was at New Hall he created some of the factory’s finest wares, painting in a highly characteristic style figure and landscape compositions. However, as Geoffrey Godden wrote in his Guide to English Porcelain: “His pieces are so rare that I wonder what on earth he did with himself when he was employed at the factory!”

Furniture can usually be relied upon to be the biggest money spinner at provincial auctions but some good quality consignments of reasonably estimated and fresh-to-the-market ceramics furnished this tri-annual fine sale at Bearne's on 1-2 July with some of its most interesting and most commercial entries.

THE latest artistic preference among Australia’s wealthy middle classes appears to be large-scale canvases by John Kelly (b.1965). Born in Bristol, he became an Aussie in the year of his birth when his parents emigrated to Melbourne and throughout his artistic working life, he has immersed himself in Australian iconography but he is particularly celebrated for his paintings of cows.

SPECIALIST items took three of the top-selling lots at this George Kidner Hampshire sale on 9 July. One was a 1731 pocket globe by Richard Cushee, a land surveyor, map and globe maker known to have been apprenticed to John Sellers Sr, a leading figure in the London map trade at the time.

Christie’s have announced worldwide sales totalling £589m ($947m) for the first six months of 2003, again laying claim to the title of the world’s leading auction house. This compares with a dollar total for the same period last year of $989m, a fall of just over four per cent. Of this, auction sales make up £549m ($883m) and private sales £40m ($64m).

A federal judge has ordered dotcom giant eBay Inc. to pay $29m (£18.3m) to a Virginia inventor who accused the company of stealing his ideas for holding and searching online auctions. Ruling in Virginia on August 6, US District Court Judge Jerome Friedman said there was “no dispute” that the online auction site eBay had infringed patents which covered ways for people to make online bids backed by credit cards and purchase items over the Internet for a fixed price.

LAST year was not a good year for Partridge Fine Art – in fact according to John Partridge, the firm, founded in 1905, suffered their worst set of results in his 46-year chairmanship. Now, however, a change in business direction is helping the Bond Street dealership – one of the capital’s most venerable and traditional – to turn their fortunes around.

Dealers are always complaining that, thanks to the Internet and the trade Press, there are no sleepers any more. But a seriously interesting group of pictures appears to have slipped through the trawl nets of specialist London dealers, leaving a local West Country trader with what may turn out to be a canny buy.

A small selection of striking and dramatic bookbindings by Philip Smith offered at Sotheby’s as part of their July 10 English Literature & History sale was not a complete success. In fact, five of the six lots failed to sell, but the most important of them, catalogued as “the greatest and most celebrated postwar English bookbinding” brought a bid of £130,000 from a collector.

HONG KONG ASIAN SALES : When SARS broke out in Asia earlier this year, Sotheby’s decided to hold their Asian auction series in Hong Kong as planned in April, but Christie’s postponed their Hong Kong sales until early July. Sotheby’s may not have registered the same levels of Western interest in their two fine Chinese sales on April 27 (the combined 281 lots totalled a premium-inclusive HK$106,481,440), but like Christie’s, they reported increased mainland Chinese buying.

ONE can never accuse the energetic Essex organiser Robert Bailey of resting on his laurels, or even standing still for longer than it takes to greet a visitor to one of his fairs. More aware than most independent organisers of the increasing importance of marketing Robert has just appointed Zöe Martin (right) to his permanant staff to oversee marketing and public relations.

Anyone who has studied the Americana market in any detail will know how important surfaces have become to its many folk art aficionados. Original paint is not just a bonus – it can often be the difference between $1000 and $10,000. And it can happen here, too.

ITALY: MORE than 440 lots of silver and Russian works of art were offered at Christie’s (24-18.5% buyer’s premium, excluding VAT) sale in Rome on June 12, of which slightly less than half sold.

THE Iraq war and the SARS epidemic hit Sotheby’s consignments and sales in the second quarter of this year, with total revenues down $8m on the same period last year.

A man has pleaded guilty to deception charges in an Essex court after conning more than a dozen auction houses across the South East with dud cheques. The extent of Robin Moss’s spree only came to light after auctioneers contacted the Antiques Trade Gazette following a warning in a recent issue and the paper liaised with several police forces across the region.

THE latest figures published by Customs and Excise show a significant leap in fine art and antiques imports and exports for 2002. Exports to non-European Union countries rose by more than 20 per cent from 2001, while imports went up by 16.5 per cent.

Taking it in their Stride’s... a £500,000 dispersal on the premises of Courtauld home: AFTER months, if not years, of a scarcity of on-the-premises house sales, this summer has seen the genuine article come the way of a number of provincial auctioneers, the latest being the sale of the contents of Cooke’s House in West Burton, near Pulborough, West Sussex held by Chichester auctioneers Stride’s.

With only seven others known to exist, this pair of 1750s Worcester gugglets was destined for success when offered on July 22 at Bristol Auction Rooms. Acquired fairly recently by a local private source, the 9in (24cm) high pair were originally estimated at just £400-600.

The two days of June 24 and 25 were occupied by a general sale (1895 lots) hosted by Dix Noonan Webb. The vast collection of British coins has been dispersed by Spink and latterly DNW at intervals over about the last decade. I was particularly struck by the English royal arms on the reverse of a very nice example of the gold Edward VI sovereign. A sensible estimate of £4000-5000 was suggested. It made £5800.