South-east England

Sold for £180 as part of a Hamptons sale on August 1 was the handbill exhorting Englishmen! to take up arms against Napoleon, right.

WHEN Tom Crowther founded Crowther of Syon Lodge dealing in antique chimneypieces in 1876, the prevailing design trends were moving from Gothic Revival to Aesthetic, and over the next 125 years the Middlesex firm have serviced every subsequent design trend.

UK: FROM October 1 – 31, to mark the 602nd anniversary of Chaucer’s death, the Gallery in the Friars, Canterbury, is holding an exhibition, entitled The Canterbury Tales.

ONE of the most widely recognised furniture designs of the 20th century, Ray and Charles Eames’ reclining chair and ottoman, designed in 1956 for the film director Billy Wilder, has also been among the most mass produced. Every second-hand design shop in Britain will either stock a copy, or will tell you they have just sold one, but the recent proliferation of online warehouse retailers has stabilised the price for modern copies at around £2000.

BIG BROTHER winner Kate Lawler is rumoured to want to hold her sister’s wedding reception in the hi-tech TV house, but she may find the Hertfordshire home-from-home that was her prison for so long is a little more spartan than when she was incarcerated there…

WITH the Proms season now upon us it seems fitting that a portrait of the founder of the famous concerts, Sir Henry Wood, topped the pictures on offer at Bonhams Oxford (17.5% buyer’s premium) on June 25.

CLARKE GAMMON's 584-lot sale on June 25 (15% buyer's premium) was most notable for the Sydney Oliver Trust costume and textile collection.

PROOF that the specialist collector knows no close season was offered in June by Weller & Dufty (15% buyer’s premium), at Birmingham and Wallis & Wallis (15% buyer’s premium), Lewes, who held sales devoted to arms and armour and militaria on consecutive days.

SEVERAL pieces of mahogany furniture from a dilapidated stables near Weybridge provided the core to this 544-lot auction at Ewbank Auctioneers, Woking on June 27 (15% buyer's premium).

THERE were few signs of recession at an old-fashioned, all-inclusive sale at Mallams Oxford on June 27 (15% buyer's premium) where more than 80 per cent of the 540 lots got away.

THEY had to meet sometime and it was a colourful clash when the two TV stars, interior designer Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen and dealer/presenter David Dickinson, chanced upon each other at the Ardingly International Antiques and Collectors Fair at the South of England Showground on July 16 and 17.

Great Grooms Antiques Centre at Parbrook, Billingshurst has closed due to the loss of trade since the opening of a bypass two years ago.

UK: KNIGHT Frank, who are overseeing negotiations for the sale of Sotheby’s Billingshurt rooms, have set a deadline for interested parties of July 26.

A HARD act to follow will be Elizabeth Fell who after seven years running the whole show is leaving The Swan at Tetsworth, one of our most successful and innovative antiques centres.

THERE were few out and out stars at the Amersham Buckinghamshire rooms on 6 June but the buyers were keen enough to support the auctioneers’ contention that, with more widespread holidays and the Internet, it is only vendors who are cautious about midsummer sales.

A zeal for collecting in an age of double glazing has created a strong market for pottery window rests, which have been freed from the domestic drudgery of keeping sash windows open and elevated to the mantelpiece as decorative works of art in their own rights.

One of the more curious sections of Sotheby’s sale at Billingshurst on 21-22 May was devoted to natural, rather than man-made statuary.

Shanklin Auction Rooms have taken what they believe to be a record price for a Worcester teapot. The Isle of Wight auctioneers expected a bid of around £1000 for the rare c.1760, 5in (13cm), first period Worcester pot (pictured) and were amazed to see it knocked down to a London dealer for £11,000 (plus 10 per cent buyer’s premium).

AT the time it was produced – 1930/31 – the geometric design of a Shelley tea set with triangular handles was far from popular and speedily withdrawn. Seven decades on, with Art Deco a buoyant area and Shelley becoming more in demand by collectors, the scarcity of the pattern was a considerable addition to the appeal of a tea set for six offered at Stride’s 1000-lot West Sussex sale.

A VENDOR has been ordered to pay more than £10,000 legal costs after a picture he sold at auction proved not to be by the famous German artist to whom it was attributed.