UK

SOLD for £2200 (C.R. Johnson) at Bloomsbury Auctions on August 19 was a Batchelor’s Directory.., a work. of 1694, which goes on to describe itself as ...a treatise on the excellence of marriage; of its necessity, and the means to live happy in it: together with an apology for the women against the calumnies of the men. Bound in contemporary red morocco gilt, this first edition was catalogued as “a dedication copy from the author”, but to whom, we are not told.

AT a time when many dealers are scaling down and reducing costs, Burford sporting antiques specialist, Manfred Schotten, is opening his new trade warehouse to coincide with his Old Sport. Here's Sport Indeed exhibition as part of the CADA autumn selling exhibition which runs from October 9-23.

SOME canny detective work by both the auctioneer and the buyer seems to have come up with answers to most of the questions surrounding this intriguing unsigned mid-19th century miniature on ivory, right, offered by Neales (15% buyer’s premium) of Notttingham on September 9. The 4 x 3in (10 x 7.5cm) miniature, presented in its original Victorian frame in a glazed easel display case, had been entered by a private vendor who had no idea of either sitter or artist.

IN rebacked and refurbished contemporary calf, the copy of Hobbes’ Leviathan... seen at a Dominic Winter sale of August 25 was a 1651 first edition, but both the engraved additional title and main printed title were cut down and relaid, the folding table was torn and repaired and there was some browning and dampstaining.

SOTHEBY'S (20/12% buyer’s premium) September 14 sale offered a selection of watches and wristwatches in their Bond Street sale that realised a total of £424,500 with selling rates of 67 per cent by lot and value.

MOVING from its usual September slot, the autumn Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair – the last of the three annual stagings – will be in its trademark marquee in Battersea Park, London SW11 from October 5 to 10.

VETERAN organiser Fred Hynds of Wakefield Ceramics Fairs holds a ceramics event at Burford School, Burford, Oxfordshire this weekend on October 2 and 3.

SOLD at £1650 in a July 6 sale held by Lawrences of Crewkerne was a group of ten volumes, mostly in contemporary full or half calf, that were grouped under the heading ‘Scandal’.

BILLED as the top gun on the catalogue cover of the September 1 sales at Lewes arms and armour specialists Wallis & Wallis (15% buyer's premium), this c.1649 German or Dutch 34-bore wheel lock pistol lived up to its reputation.

IN a 19th century binding of blue straight grained morocco, a 1548, first English language edition of Bishop Edward Fox’s The True Dyfferes between ye regall power and the Ecclesiastical power, translated from Fox’s 1534 Latin original by his friend and admirer, Henry, Lord Stafford, was sold at £1400 in a July 6 sale held by Lawrences of Crewkerne.

HANDSOMELY bound in dark crimson morocco gilt in the 19th century, a 1609, first folio edition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the titles to the two parts with large and elaborate woodcut devices (both with small amounts of early colouring) and containing numerous woodcut head- and tailpieces incorporating various royal devices and symbols, made £1740 (Powell) in a Dominic Winter sale of July 21.

RIGHT: translated by William Hamilton, the 1661 first English edition of Blaise François de Pagan, the Comte de Merveilles’ Historical & Geographical Description of the Great Country and River of the Amazones in America..., contains this important folding engraved map showing French ambitions in the area.

FURTHER to the footballing prowess of dealers and auctioneers (see last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette), Christie’s have announced two more sporting successes.

JAMES Sillett was a jobbing artist from the Norwich School of painters, who worked on a broad spectrum of projects including heraldic painting and stage scene decoration, but he is best known as a competent miniaturist.

OFFERED as part of a Lawrences of Crewkerne sale of July 6 was ‘The Valehouse Collection of Letters to Mrs W.K. Clifford’. Though little read nowadays, ‘Lucy’ Clifford was immensely popular in late Victorian and early Edwardian times and was even classed with Edith Wharton, Joseph Conrad and H.G. Wells as one of those whose books “will never die”.

THE 30 plates, all India proofs on heavy paper, that make up an 1857 volume of Etchings for the Art-Union of London by the Etching Club include three by Samuel Palmer – one shown right.

WITH the autumn season well underway, it’s good to see a number of dealers promoting business with selling exhibitions which, apart from anything else, present a confident looking trade to the world. Second generation West Sussex furniture dealer Frank Wilson, owner of Wilsons Antiques, has held such an exhibition in Worthing every year since the early 1990s and this autumn’s event will run from September 28 to October 2 at his showrooms at 45-47 New Broadway, Tarring Road.

THE solid cast metal figures produced by Georg Heyde in Dresden from 1872 until the Second World War can lack the detail and proportion of the best lead miniatures, but they are celebrated for the imaginative and animated uses to which Heyde put them.

INSCRIBED in both volumes “with the author’s love” to an Edith Barnes, presentation firsts of Lewis Carroll’s over-long children’s story Sylvie and Bruno of 1889 and its continuation or conclusion of 1893, the original red cloth bindings now uniformly faded to the spines, dampstained to the front of Vol. II and showing repairs to the spine ends of the first volume, was sold for £1400 in a Bloomsbury Auctions sale of July 15.

While Dee, Atkinson & Harrison's (10% buyer's premium) August 20 sale did not comprise the best quality works from Ganton Hall, Scarborough, there was no shortage of competition for the there-to-sell and fresh-to-market residual contents from its attics and cellars ensuring that the 483-lot outing eclipsed its £30,000 estimated hammer total at £48,000.