Auction Reports

John Douglas’ interest in antique base metalware started over 60 years ago.

The choice element of a mixed lot offered in Chichester on April 16 was a Georgian walnut mitre plane stamped for Christopher Gabriel.

Remarkable Birkett family archive sold at Rogers Jones auction reflected the earliest days of organised sport.

From 1932-34 Clarice Cliff was the art director for a project involving nearly 30 artists of the day to promote good design on tableware.

The Annie Marchant (‘Breadboard Annie’) collection of domestic and country antiques offered in Kent on April 12-13 produced many strong prices.

Fifteen furniture lots make five-figure sums as Dreweatts bidders show encouraging confidence

Morphets (20% buyer’s premium) of Harrogate sold a Mouseman bureau for a tub-thumping £36,000 on April 15.

A Mitchells (22% buyer’s premium) sale included selected contents from Greystoke Castle near Penrith – home to the Howard family for over 500 years.

This unmarked teapot and cover, offered by Dreweatts, dates from the first decade of porcelain production at the Chelsea factory.

A Victoria Cross group awarded to a British soldier who volunteered to carry a vital message to a stranded platoon at Mericourt in October 1918, in the knowledge that five of his comrades had already been in killed in turn making earlier attempts, sold for £200,000.

Armorial head linked to the palaces of Henry VIII when he was married to Anne Boleyn.

South London auction house Roseberys (25% buyer’s premium) was instructed to sell the collection of Herbert Kennard on March 26.

Not to be confused with the modern Peter Rabbit series by Wedgwood, much scarcer teawares were made by the Grimwade’s factory in the 1920s.

Original photographs of a well-known Pre-Raphaelite beauty – the muse of William Holman Hunt and the mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell – sold for £2600 at Sworders (25% buyer’s premium).

Estimated at just £100-200, a rare automaton of a stereotypical Chinaman smoking an opium pipe sold for £7400 at McTear’s (24% buyer’s premium).

The best known of the decorators who worked at Aynsley in the 20th century is the flower painter Joseph A Bailey.

Two English Orientalists made the biggest impression at a recent sale at Gorringe’s (23% buyer’s premium) in Lewes.

The name ‘peg tankard’ comes from the vertical row of pegs inside that can be used to measure the amount of alcohol drunk as it was passed around a table.

The sale of Islamic Art & Antiquities at Roseberys London (25% buyer’s premium) on March 31 included this New Kingdom yellow quartzite shabti fragment.

The West as well as the East made a major contribution to the success of Gorringe’s £1m sale on March 30 where, overall, 86% of the 593 lots sold.