Features

Both parts of the excellent Jason Pilalas collection delivered suitably impressive results for London auction house Noonans

There is no doubt that the Asian art auction market in London’s major salerooms is feeling the squeeze.

An intriguing collection that came from a house of a well-connected Devon family caused a stir when it emerged at Exeter saleroom Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (26/25% buyer’s premium).

Operation Chariot on March 28, 1942, was one of the most daring British commando raids of the Second World War, aimed at destroying the heavily fortified dry dock at St Nazaire used by the German battleship Tirpitz.

From Pokémon trading cards to retro gaming consoles, the growing market in modern collectables is bringing new buyers and consignors to the market – and providing new business opportunities

The rise in modern collectables at auction has enabled one relative newcomer to prosper.

In 1950, the Swiss artist, architect and designer Pierre Jeanneret (1896-1967) joined his cousin Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier) to create a new capital of Punjab.

Welsh auction house Rogers Jones (26.4% buyer’s premium inc VAT) recently conducted its largest house clearance in over 30 years: the principal contents of Plas Teg in Flintshire.

Whatever interior statement one hopes to achieve, it is so often the furniture that really makes a room.

Estimated at €1000, this 19th century Irish mahogany bureau with a link to Sir Winston Churchill sold for €9500 (£8000) at Fonsie Mealy (25% buyer’s premium) in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny.

A number of hall chairs of this idiosyncratic type from the early years of the ‘age of mahogany’ are known and have appeared on the market.

What a difference three years and an estimate can make.

The second part of the Beedham Collection – a fine array of early oak furniture and associated works of art from the Derbyshire dealing family – came for sale at Bishop & Miller (25% buyer’s premium) in Glandford, Norfolk, on March 19.

The contents of the Bishop’s House in Newry, standing on the Clanrye river in counties Down and Armagh, were sold by Victor Mee (20% buyer’s premium) earlier this year.

A recent sale at Burstow & Hewitt (20% buyer’s premium) in Battle, East Sussex was led by six Danish rosewood dining chairs designed by Niels Otto Moller for JL Moller.

Archibald Knox (1864-1933) is known today as the genius behind the Cymric and Tudric ranges sold by Liberty & Co in the early 20th century.

If Knox is best known today for his work with Liberty & Co, in his own time on the Isle of Man he was better recognised as an art teacher and for his study of the local Celtic crosses and standing stones.

The few surviving pieces of furniture designed by Archibald Knox were mainly produced at the Sunnyside Workshops in Douglas, founded by Knox with his friend and patron Wilson James Ashburner in 1899.

When Anthony Bernbaum curated the exhibition Archibald Knox, Beauty and Modernity, a Designer Ahead of his Time at the Olympia International Art & Antiques Fair in 2014, he was working in investment banking.

A closer look at the post-war appreciation of the great designer including exhibitions and auction landmarks