UK

THOMAS Tompion may be England’s most celebrated 18th century horologist, but he is less widely known for his exquisitely crafted sundials, a signed example of which furnished Sotheby’s Bond Street (20/12% buyer's premium) with their undisputed highlight on June 15.

THE Cricket, Tennis and Traditional Sports sale at Christie’s South Kensington on June 22 saw a hammer total of £87,355 from the 163-lot offering. Yet nearly three quarters of this figure came from the two top lots alone, hence the sold by value figure of 63 per cent was noticeably higher than the sold by lot figure of 51 per cent.

ROBERT Bowman, one of the key players in dealer-led initiative London Sculpture Week, is launching a new venture to attract City executives into the antiques market.

CHRISTIE’S have won leave to appeal against the High Court judgment that found them liable to pay damages to Taylor Lynne Thomson in the dispute over the £1.75m Houghton urns.

PART of a collection of antiques from a late Shrewsbury area farmer’s estate, this 8ft 6in (2.59m) mahogany longcase clock made in 1765 by London clockmaker Ellicot was in original condition when it appeared at the Welsh Bridge saleroom of Halls' Fine Art on July 14.

LIKE the proverbial bad penny, scam advertising company European City Guide have struck again, targeting antiques dealers in London and the South East.

WHEN Mount Vesuvius erupted in 1906, the problems that beset the 1908 Olympic Games had begun. Rome, the intended host city for the games, was forced to withdraw and London stepped in with an offer to take over. A 68,000-seat stadium in White City, completed Athens-style at the eleventh hour, became the location for the fourth modern games.

GEORGE Graham’s 18th century ebony or ebony veneered bracket clocks are his most traditional and sought-after timepieces, but arguably representing better value for money was this flamboyant ormolu clock offered at Bonhams Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer's premium) on June 8 that housed one of a small number of George Graham’s non-standard movements.

AS its title suggests, the June 30 sale of scientific, medical and engineering works of art held by Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer's premium) was something of a mixed bag. The 216-lot auction incorporated anything from 18th century microscopes and preserved amphibians to delft barbers’ bowls and scale models of locomotives.

KATE Dickens adored her father but found the situation at home after her parents’ separation to be intolerable and in 1860, desperate to get away, she entered into what was to prove a less than happy marriage to Wilkie Collins’ younger brother Charles.

A GANG made off with £400,000 worth of Asian jewellery after fooling a shop owner into believing they were police officers. Pretending to carry out a drugs raid, the men appeared to be genuine policemen with uniforms, radios, evidence bags, bullet-proof vests, and what appeared to be authentic ID and search warrants.

IN recent years, clock dealers and collectors have adopted ever more exacting condition standards, preferring to wait and pay a premium for timepieces in untouched condition such as the highlight, pictured right, at Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer's premium) on July 2.

REINFORCED at the spine with linen some time ago, the sale catalogue seen right was issued in 1836 by a Mr Pigott for a sale of farming stock, garden and other seeds, plus household furniture, held at Normandy Farm, near Ash in Surrey – the home of “the late William Cobbett, Esq. MP”, and of course author of Rural Rides. In a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of June 17, it was sold for £400 (C.R. Johnson).

BOTH visitors and exhibitors were delighted with the Kent Pavilion, the new facility unveiled to antiques buyers at the Detling Antiques & Collectors Fair on July 24 and 25.

FOR the second year running, dealers and auctioneers are to face each other across the football pitch rather than the saleroom in the Antiques Trade Gazette-sponsored annual challenge.

ANOTHER of the top-priced clocks to feature at Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer's premium) on July 2 was this Regency rolling ball skeleton timepiece pictured right, made in Edinburgh by Robert Bryson after the model by Sir William Congreve, the inventor of the rolling ball clock.

AS one of Keys of Aylsham's (10% buyer's premium) huge, six-a-year, sales aimed squarely at collectors, the strengths of this 1423-lot outing on June 17-18 lay in toys and militaria.

THE earliest book in English on the subject, John Stalker’s Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing... of 1688 has been described by H.D. Molesworth as “a work of art in its own right... as readily accepted for its literary content as for its technical information”.

PART of the large consignment of 18th century English porcelain from a local, mid-Wales private vendor, this 18th century underglaze blue painted Lowestoft cider mug, offered as the final lot in Brightwells’ Ceramics and Glass sale in Leominster on July 21, proved to be the star of the sale.

HAVING sold her four-storey town house on The Circus, one of Bath’s most prestigious Georgian streets, Dr Teri McGovern announced: “I’m on the move. I came with two suitcases and I’m moving out with two.”