East of England

Organisers launch new fair in Suffolk after long-standing event had to be abandoned.

Just as fine English mahogany is selling below par, Chinese furniture, particularly in the desirable huanghuali hardwood, is booming.

Part of the intake for a general sale, a terracotta sculpture by a protégé of Antonio Canova sold for £21,000 (plus premium) at Reeman Dansie in Colchester.

Two albums of 19th century watercolours and drawings produced unexpected results in summer sales.

James and Jessica Rawlin of J&J Rawlin specialise in Modern British art and contemporary British ceramics. They are based in rural Suffolk. Here, James talks about their business and how they started it.

Pairs of Georgian candlesticks by the best-known London specialist makers such as William Cafe and Ebenezer Coker continue to sell well enough, as long as condition is acceptable.

Celebrating 10 years of sales at Sworders’ (23% buyer’s premium) custom-built auction house (the firm has actually been going since 1782), chairman Guy Schooling was in a justifiably buoyant mood.

Salvage dealers are increasingly bringing smaller decorative items to the Knebworth Park fair.

Issued by ‘Hunt & Sons, Card Makers to His Majesty’, a ‘Great Mogul’ deck of playing cards of c.1830, the labels that seal the packaging still unbroken after all those years, featured in a recent Suffolk sale.

In terms of lot numbers, the major single contribution to Sworders’ anniversary sale (see main Auction Reports this edition) on June 19-20 was the estate of the late Annabelle Comery, an inveterate and wealthy collector who had lived on Alderney in the Channel Islands.

Antiques street markets and fairs are a boon to local businesses, a popular and lively addition to any small well-visited town, particularly in the summer when these are buzzing with tourists.

The latest batch of period portraits to pass through Cheffins featured several from a late-16th century property in Great Chesterford, Essex. Passed by descent, the quartet was led by an attractive English School portrait of Queen Mary I (1516-58), an oil painted on an oval 2ft x 21in (62 x 53cm) canvas.

British watercolours depicting the beautiful county of Devon and painted during the medium’s golden age drew eager bidding at Cheffins of Cambridge (22.5% buyer’s premium).

Bids of £100 and upwards bought bidders a history of the English hearth and home among the Crowther lots at Cheffins on June 13-14, where 80% of the lower-priced items went to private buyers.

For Paul Nunn, founder of antique clocks and barometers dealership Olde Time, the virtues of fairs and the internet have always been secondary to that of the physical shop.

Some 240 lots in a recent two-day book sale in Norfolk came from the library of local authors and collectors David and Patricia Cory, with science fiction, fantasy, ghost stories and crime fiction very much in evidence.