Auction Reports

Bidders deem Yongzheng Guan ware to be of the period as estimate is demolished

A private Scottish collection was the source of the-top selling lot at McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium) in Glasgow on July 2.

Very much to current collecting taste is the 6½in (16.5cm) ‘peach bloom’ saucer dish shown here, offered by Batemans (20% buyer’s premium) on July 3.

Set of tools was designed specifically to take apart rather than create fine textiles

Mallams’ (25% buyer’s premium) latest Asian art sale was topped at £27,000 (estimate £3000-5000) by a Qing jade double gourd form snuff bottle.

William Billingsley (1758-1828), a key figure in the history of both English and Welsh porcelain, left the Derby factory in 1795 yearning to create the finest, whitest and most translucent porcelain.

Aficionados of later Chinese porcelain who happened to stumble on a lot of ‘collector’s plates’ at Unique Auctions (17.5% buyer’s premium) in Lincoln would have been excited to spot two fine artist-signed Republic period pieces.

This small Transitional porcelain vase came for sale at Gardiner Houlgate (22% buyer’s premium) in Corsham, Bath, on July 1.

This 15in (37cm) Sèvres porcelain presentation tazza or ‘Coupe Cybele’ was made for the Paris Exposition 1878.

A sale at Wilson55 (22% buyer’s premium) in Nantwich this month was topped at £22,000 by an 18th century Flemish ebony and tortoiseshell veneered cabinet.

Cheffins (24.5% buyer’s premium) in Cambridge has enjoyed some fine referrals from Christie’s in recent times.

A recent sale at Bentley’s (19% buyer’s premium) in Cranbrook, Kent included a rare US Presidential lifesaving medallion.

The price gulf that once existed between good 18th century French furniture and very good late 19th century revivalism is no longer visible at auction. A quality reproduction can often outsell its period exemplar.

With their cross-over collecting appeal to the automobile market, Lalique 'bouchons de radiator' – car mascots or hood ornaments – assume their own price levels.

The vast majority of cushion-moulded mirrors from the late 17th century have lost their original cresting, which was both flamboyant and fragile.

Mallams’ (25% buyer’s premium) Jewellery, Watches and Silver sale included this Commonwealth silver wine goblet.

Smaller decorative pieces by Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson (1876-1955) continue to excel in the saleroom.

Based on Warring States (475-225BC) archetypes, archaistic bronze ritual wine vessels, zun, formed as tapirs became popular during the Northern Song period, remained so through to the Qing dynasty, and are major draws in Western salerooms today.

As recently as a decade ago relatively little attention was paid to Iraqi niello silver.

What auctioneer Michael Callan called “a modest mid terrace town house in Irvine, Ayrshire” was the source of one of the star lots of a recent Thomas R Callan (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Ayr.