UK

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from June 11-21, 2019.

French commode forms good example of selling strategy at long-standing London event

Tim Bowen Antiques brings this Welsh oak cwpwrdd bara caws (bread and cheese cupboard) to the midsummer Carmarthenshire event Midsummer Cahoots at the Hall (June 22-30).

By the 1980s, Thomas Mercer of St Albans had made almost a third of all chronometers in history – including that used by Ernest Shackleton to navigate his men to Elephant Island and eventual rescue during the Trans-Arctic Expedition of 1914.

This c.1790 Georgian mahogany bracket clock by John Scott is among the stock of Olde Time Fine Antique Clocks & Barometers, which holds its second open weekend this summer.

Undoubtedly the most evocative account of the workshop of the celebrated clockmaker Joseph Knibb comes from a letter written by the Restoration-era politician Richard Legh (1635-87) of Lyme Hall in Cheshire to his young wife, Elizabeth.

Eardley Norton, who is listed at 49 St John’s Street, Clerkenwell between 1762- 94, enjoyed a reputation as a skilled mechanic and the maker of complex timepieces, sometimes with musical and astronomical movements.

Three modestly valued works selling at regional sales at £1700 or under, including abstract-style embroidery by Frances Richards, the wife of Ceri Richards.

Early printed books, among them a Bible of 1476, were a notable feature of a recent West Sussex sale.

When Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), leading artist of the French Romantic school, died in 1863, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts commissioned a bust to commemorate the painter and embody his genius.

“It seemed that the world and his wife and most of Surrey came out for our inaugural Sunday Sandown fair, the complimentary Pimms flowed and the afternoon jazz set from Sabina Desir and Nick Adams, who trades at both our Tuesday markets and is nifty on the ivories as well, set the tone perfectly.”

The series of Victorian carriage clocks by James McCabe – the son of a Belfast clockmaker of the same name who came to London in the 1770s and worked at the Royal Exchange from 1804 – are typically beautifully made with exemplary twin fusee striking movements.

On July 2 Sotheby’s will hold the first of a four-part series of sales to disperse an important collection of clocks and pocket watches.

Estimated at a token £100-200, a large twin fusee wall clock sold to an online bid of £2400 (plus premium) at Wessex Auction Rooms (17% buyer’s premium) in Chippenham.

A rare regulator bracket clock signed by Thomas Cole was among a fine selection of English 18th and 19th century horology offered by Hutchinson-Scott (20% buyer’s premium) in Skipton, North Yorkshire, on May 23.

During an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic in 1996, a marine chronometer made by JW Ray, Liverpool, was recovered and brought ashore.

A mahogany longcase clock by Thomas Mudge (1715-94) is priced at £45,000 from Cheltenham dealer Tobias Birch.

B2B Events’ Malvern Antiques and Collectors’ Fair at the Three Counties Showground runs tri-annually, with the next on Sunday, June 23 – different timing to the organisers’ Malvern flea markets held nine times a year at the showground.

As the vast majority of Georgian clockmakers signed their work, most regional brass-dial longcase clocks have a great sense of place.

London’s horse dealers, auctioneers and cab-yards are among the most memorable subjects painted by Camden Town Group founder Robert Bevan (1865-1925) during the early 20th century.