UK

A LARGE scale oil by Kathleen Hale of Orlando Reclining Amongst Flowers failed to sell against a £10,000-15,000 estimate at Sotheby’s on July 8, but the autograph draft manuscript of Orlando (The Marmalade Cat) becomes a Doctor of 1944, right, each page with pencil and coloured crayon drawings (some with added wash or gouache, a few unfinished) did sell at £5000 to a London gallery.

THE very fine 1950 first edition copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe seen right, with just a few nicks to the jacket skilfully repaired, was sold for £6000 to a collector by Bloomsbury Auctions on June 17, but at Sotheby’s on July 8, a complete set of the seven books that make up C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia was left unsold on an estimate of £5000-7000.

ILLUSTRATED right is a very good copy of the 1885 first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s splendid A Child’s Garden of Verses that made £1200 (Bauman Rare Books) as part of the Alan Fortunoff library at Bloomsbury Auctions on June 4.

ONE yellow-covered rabbit book in the Dominic Winter sale of June 24, a scarce 1922 first of Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys Become Real, with its William Nicholson illustrations, was left unsold on an estimate of £4000-5000 (the original pictorial boards had been “rebacked in facsimile”) but the 1972 first of Richard Adams’ Watership Down, seen right – a copy used in the V&A’s 1977 ‘After Alice’ exhibition – made £610 in Swindon.

LINCOLNSHIRE organiser Ruth Thurman, who operates as Field Dog Fairs, holds her tenth annual antiques and collectors fair at Grimsthorpe Castle, near Bourne from July 30 to August 1.

FOUNDED in 1986, the Shelley Group is a collectors’ society dedicated to amassing and appreciating the china products made in Fenton, Staffordshire by the Wileman and Shelley companies during the 19th and 20th centuries.

SECOND generation Mayfair antiquities dealership Charles Ede Ltd, issue four catalogues a year devoted to different areas of their speciality, and they have just published their illustrated volume listing the Etruscan and Roman Antiquities currently available at their showroom at 20 Brook Street.

AFTER June in London, the first major fair on the calendar is the long-established summer version of Antiques For Everyone at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. It will be held this year in Halls 17-19 from July 29 to August 1.

THERE is never any shortage of news from the Hundred Acre Wood and this summer’s helpings included, at the very basic level, the straightforward 1926 first of Winnie the Pooh seen top right, a little rubbed and darkened to the spine, which brought a bid of £1350 (Sotherans) at a Dominic Winter sale of June 24.

ESSEX organiser Robert Bailey has pulled off a coup by clinching Harewood House, near Leeds in North Yorkshire, as the venue for his 54th Northern Antiques Fair, which will be held from September 22 to 26.

HARRY Potter prices are not quite as strong as they once were, but the fine “unread” copy of the 1997 first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone seen right was sold on June 17 for £11,000 at Bloomsbury Auctions, who had it hopefully estimated it at £15,000-20,000.

PICK of the recent Beatrix Potters were seen in the Dominic Winter sale of June 24, where the 1903 first of The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, seen right, complete with printed glassine jacket (showing some spine and edge loss) and inscribed as a Christmas gift at the time by the author to a Mrs Lord, was sold at £7600 to Hawthorn Books, who gave a further £7600 for a jacketed, 1904 first of The Tale of Benjamin Bunny that Beatrix Potter inscribed to Mrs Lord.

THERE was a 1954-55 first edition set of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books in a Sotheby’s sale of July 8 that sold at £6500 to a collector – all three volumes impressions in slightly frayed jackets, one of them with a tape repair, showing a little browning and spotting.

FIRST English editions of the works of Jules Verne have been selling for high prices of late. In a July 6 sale held by Strides of Chichester, the fine copy of Sampson Low’s 10/6d edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, seen right, dated 1873 but possibly issued as early as October of the previous year, sold for £12,000.

A NEW auction house opening in Stroud in Gloucestershire is to hold its first sale on July 28. Stroud Auctions Ltd will be the first permanent auction house in the town.

A GANG slashed patrol car tyres at Petworth police station before launching an audacious burglary at an antiques shop in the town, escaping with hundreds of pieces of silver.

INTERNET enquiries do not always translate into bids but Golding Young (15% buyer's premium) received enquiries from as far afield as India, America and Australia for pieces among the 1100 lots illustrated on their website for their May 5 sale.

ENORMOUS pre-sale speculation surrounded the 25-lot single-owner antiquities sale that came under the hammer at Bonhams Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) on July 14, not least because the vendor was strongly rumoured in the trade to be the world’s most prolific collector, Sheikh Saud of Qatar.

SMALL, original and honest – these classic qualities took a 2ft 5in x 2ft 6 1/2in (74x 77cm) George I walnut chest to the top of the sales chart at Aldridges’ (15% buyer's premium) 344-lot May 25 sale where it took £3100.

SELECTIVE bidding at Hobbs Parker's (10% buyer's premium) 704-lot June 10 outing focused on the better-quality entries such as an Art Nouveau belt buckle by Liberty & Co., which fetched £400, and two Mappin & Webb silver photograph frames dating to 1917 and 1916 which took a respectable £400.