Dorset

RIGHT: this suite of Victorian silver gentleman’s dressing table bottles is among 200 lots donated from Dorset homes that will be sold for charity at auction on September 18.

PICTURED here are two outstanding pieces of provincial silver sold in the country during August.

WITH London hosting Asia week, Olympia and Grosvenor House in June, there was always going to be a trade battle for a Chinese vase which proved the sleeper of Charterhouse's (15% buyer's premium) 870-lot May 21 auction.

The Exiled Collector: William Bankes and the Making of an English Country House by Anne Sebba, published by John Murray. ISBN 0719563283 £22.50hb.

Auctioneer Richard Bromell of Charterhouse Auctions (15% buyer’s premium), Sherborne had listened with reserved interest to a client who described a gilt blue glass decanter in his possession “almost identical” to a pair catalogued as in the manner of James Giles c.1770 that had featured in a 1968 edition of Country Life.

It is not unusual for an auctioneer to receive enquiries from members of the public who have seen items ‘identical’ to theirs in a newspaper, a magazine or on television. In reality the Queen Anne walnut chest turns out to be a 1920s reproduction worth £100 – but, yes, they do look almost identical.

ALTHOUGH there were no blockbusters at the 778-lot February 20 sale at Charterhouse (15% buyer's premium), neither were there many casualties, with 86 per cent of the sale finding buyers.

Sourced from a small church in the West Country but apparently once part of the furniture at William Beckford’s splendid Fonthill Abbey, this George III pair of mahogany hall benches (one shown) were the highlight of Duke’s sale in Dorchester on April 17.

Peter Rindisbacher (1806-1834) was a Swiss-born artist who was the first Western artist to leave a significant visual record of colonial frontier life in Western Canada during the early 19th century.

This full dress uniform of an officer from the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding regiment, right, was an important diversion from the main proceedings at Duke’s auction in Dorchester. Under normal circumstances this would have been a standard lot of textile militaria for the trade, but this uniform actually belonged to the sixth Duke of Wellington and had passed by descent to the vendor.

After some research Guy Schwinge of Duke’s in Dorchester discovered this rare English porcelain mug to be an early piece of Worcester and not Bow as originally catalogued.

THE sales figures from Duke’s sale August 15 & 16 (buyer's premium: 15 per cent) would look good at any time in the year but coming in the high summer for a sale of silver, jewellery and furniture, they were particularly pleasing for auctioneer Matthew Denney.

THE heroic exploits of the first Duke of Wellington in defeating Napoleon at Waterloo must be among the best recorded events in British military history.

THE WEST Country is not the antiques wilderness it is sometimes painted but a relatively sparse population means that auctioneers cannot simply rely on local solicitors to provide the deceased estates. Networking the landed gentry at cocktail parties or hunt meetings is part of the social round for any flourishing local auctioneer and such contacts regularly pay dividends for Duke’s rooms in Dorchester.

Following hot on the heals of a gold cased pocket watch which took £25,000 Sherborne auctioneers Charterhouse (15% buyer’s premium) found further horological success on May 31 with this early 19th century carriage clock, right.

PRE 1921 the Poole pottery firm, one of the most innovative of the 20th century British potteries, was known as Carter & Co. Headed up by Jesse Carter, the firm produced very few domestic wares focusing instead on tiles and architectural and garden ceramics.

This gold pair-cased pocket watch was brought into the offices of Charterhouse auctioneers of Sherborne, Dorset in a plastic carrier bag – albeit a Harrods bag – by a vendor who had kept it in his sock drawer for many years.

Limoges enamel has its English equivalent in the rustic little boxes produced by artisans in the South Staffordshire towns of Bilston and Wolverhampton during the late 18th century.

The season has not quite begun, but this late 18th century cricketing badge enjoyed a long innings at Duke’s Dorchester salerooms on April 11-12.

There was no charitable quarter given to rival bidders when this plaster bust of General Charles Booth took centre stage at Duke’s (15 per cent buyer’s premium) dispersal of the Timothy Rich collection of Staffordshire figures in Dorchester on January 24.