South-east England

BERKSHIRE organiser Dinah Ives, who is better known as Magna Carta Country Fayres, has been putting together events at the Runnymede Hotel, Egham, Surrey, for 28 years, but has left for what she feels is a better venue where she is getting a better deal: the Exhibition Hall of Ascot Racecourse in her home county.

There was an upbeat country house feel at Mallams’ salerooms with almost half the sale comprising the local Grove House estate of the late Mrs Graham Greene, the 98-year-old widow of the writer (Greene was, as he said, “a bad husband and a fickle lover” but although he and his wife separated in 1948 they never divorced).

With Sotheby’s £6.7m Russian Pictures sale notching a hatful of records four days earlier, it was hardly a surprise to see some unfamiliar leather jacket-wearing, mobile phone-wielding characters turning up at Gorringes’ (15% buyer’s premium) November 21-23 sale at Lewes to view four paintings from the estate of a Knightsbridge-based lady who had once dealt in Russian objects.

Deal cements southern network of rooms: Berkshire auctioneers Dreweatt Neate have become the latest and the largest business to join The Fine Art Auction Group’s rapidly expanding network of regional auction salerooms.

SEVEN HUNDRED or so lots were offered in the September 23 sale held by John Nicholson of Fernhurst, and though there were some disappointments – notably the 1776 volume of The Scots Magazine that contained the first Scottish printing of America’s Declaration of Independence, valued at £5000-8000 – almost 80 per cent of lots, big and small, found buyers.

Exceptional quality pictures with truly international appeal from long-standing private collections have become an all-too-rare sight in the provinces, but on October 3, thanks to significant consignments from no fewer than three deceased estates, Mallams Oxford (15% buyer’s premium) were able to offer at least half a dozen lots that wouldn’t have looked out of place at any of the world’s most expensive art fairs.

CHIPPING Norton, Oxfordshire dealers Jane and Keith Riley, who trade as Key Antiques at 11 Horsefair, go back to their roots for their contribution to the Cotswolds Antique Dealers’ Association’s series of selling exhibitions.

What a novel idea Kent dealer Neville Pundole has come up with for his current exhibition at the Neville Pundole Gallery, The Friary, Canterbury.

It might not look much, but the humble unglazed earthenware vessel, pictured right, is believed to be the earliest form of watering pot made in Britain. It’s also the precursor to the metal watering can that did not adopt its recognisable shape until the 17th century.

ONE of the oldest provincial vetted fairs, the annual Surrey Antiques Fair, moves for its 37th staging next year to Farnham Castle. It has always been held at Guildford Civic Hall, which is due to close for redevelopment, and while the closure has been on the cards for some years, it was finalised earlier this year. The last Surrey fair in Guildford is held this week from October 2 to 5.

Sotheby’s will sell the contents of Fawley House, Fawley, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire on October 14-15. Their vendor, David McAlpine of the construction dynasty, has collected for 30 years.

ONE of the Home Counties’ longest running vetted, quality events, the Surrey Antiques Fair, will be held for the 36th year from October 2 to 5 and it will be the end of an era as this is the last staging at its original venue, the Guildford Civic Hall.

The Lewes auctioneers Gorringe’s (15% buyer’s premium) experienced one or two pleasant surprises in the third-day picture section of their September 9-11 sale. Alan Windsor’s Handbook of Modern British Painting and Printmaking 1900-1990 describes the Wakefield-born, Slade-trained Mark Senior (1862-1927) as an artist whose “early painting was influenced by Clausen whilst later work reflected the techniques of Steer, Whistler, Boudin and the Impressionists”.

Weller King will erect a marquee in the grounds of Dial Post House, Horsham on September 23 to sell period oak furniture and works of art belonging to the West Sussex dealer Alex Sloane. A regular on the quality fairs circuit since his shop in Robertsbridge, East Sussex closed in 1996, the vernacular furniture specialist is retiring from the antiques business to live in Spain.

The artist might have been unknown, the subject unconfirmed, but this unsigned 133/4 x 173/4in (35 x 45cm) Victorian oil, right, of figures on the deck of a yacht was nonetheless the most hotly contested lot at Stride & Son’s (15% buyer’s premium) August 29 sale in Chichester.

THE list of manufacturers who made cocktail shakers and accessories in the interwar years reads like a roll-call of the great luxury houses of the early 20th century: Asprey, Cartier, Tiffany, Hermès, Alfred Dunhill, Louis Vuitton, Puiforcat, Lalique and Baccarat. However, the firm responsible for some of today’s most coveted cocktail shakers is J.A. Henckels of Dusseldorf.

WITNEY specialist in fine period furniture David Harvey, head of W.R.Harvey & Co, was recently re-elected for a second term as mayor of the Oxfordshire town (having had one year out of office) but is not cutting down on his busy trading schedule, starting with manning his customary stand at the 97th Chelsea Antiques Fair from September 17 to 22.

AS autumn approaches, dealers are marking their diaries for some familiar calls and a favourite entry for the Home Counties trade will be The Petersfield Antiques Fair at The Festival Hall of the Hampshire town from September 5 to 7.

SPECIALIST items took three of the top-selling lots at this George Kidner Hampshire sale on 9 July. One was a 1731 pocket globe by Richard Cushee, a land surveyor, map and globe maker known to have been apprenticed to John Sellers Sr, a leading figure in the London map trade at the time.

Taking it in their Stride’s... a £500,000 dispersal on the premises of Courtauld home: AFTER months, if not years, of a scarcity of on-the-premises house sales, this summer has seen the genuine article come the way of a number of provincial auctioneers, the latest being the sale of the contents of Cooke’s House in West Burton, near Pulborough, West Sussex held by Chichester auctioneers Stride’s.