Salisbury

THIS 2in (5cm) long brooch is textbook Lalique. Fashioned as a cicada, its main constituent is glass set into a gold frame. The insect’s body is formed from pâte de verre and the wings from plique à jour enamel, both favourite Lalique materials.

Two major silver collections will be sold by UK provincial salerooms in the autumn season. Edinburgh-based auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull will offer for sale the first part of the Chen collection in London on November 23, while Salisbury’s Woolley & Wallis will complement their October silver sale with a single-owner catalogue devoted to the collection of the late George Petzall.

The appearance on the market of a piece of ‘A’ mark porcelain at Woolley and Wallis’s Salisbury rooms on June 4 will be an exciting occasion for English porcelain buffs, especially those of an academic persuasion.

SILVER sales at the Woolley and Wallis’ Castle Street Salerooms – that last year totalled an impressive £1.9m – are tailored to catch the prevailing winds of the marketplace.

Offered in one catalogue, British Art pottery was the main thrust of two sales held by Woolley & Wallis staged at the end of last year.

Auctioneers are not just there for the bad things in life. It was in 2006 that Salisbury firm Woolley & Wallis were contacted by Sheffield silversmith C.J. Vander, a company in administration with stock to liquidate.

Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis are to sell the collection of early English, Scottish and Irish silver belonging to the well-known London dealership How.

The highlight of the Oriental sale conducted by Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis on May 22 was this underglaze copper-red Qianlong (1736-1795) mark and period moonflask standing 11in (27cm) high.

Leading country auctioneers Woolley & Wallis will no longer hold general sales of estate merchandise after October.

Two fine lots of 17th century English pewter greeted New Year bidders in the country.

Helped by a £2.6m windfall, Salisbury auctioneers Woolley & Wallis emerged from 2005 as the largest-grossing UK provincial saleroom.

The final 51 lots of Woolley & Wallis’s sale on October 19 comprised the Fauconberg & Conyers Heirlooms.

The second tranche of a private collection of nutmeg graters was offered at Woolley & Wallis’ October 19 sale.

“Someday,” wrote The Times in August 1912, “collectors will ransack the town for Martin’s artistic stonewares.”

When Alex Butcher’s eye was drawn to this painting, right, he did not realise that part of the attraction might have been its familiarity.

IT was just three weeks into the First World War when British destroyers engaged the enemy off the Heligoland Bight near Denmark.

Capping a sell-out sale of the first instalment of a private collection of nutmeg graters at Woolley and Wallis on April 20 was this unusual Victorian novelty specimen fashioned as a hinged strawberry, which sold for £8200.

IT is every auctioneer’s dream to find a treasure in a box of odds and ends. How much more exciting it must be when that treasure also proves to be of academic importance, a candidate for the title of the earliest figure in English blue and white porcelain.

A named designer and good provenance sent this oak refectory table and benches, right, to the highest price at Woolley & Wallis’ sale on March 2.

This pair of Hanoverian pattern tablespoons offered at Woolley & Wallis, right, is of interest not just for the unascribed and possibly Scottish marks but for the scratched initials RP and the lightly engraved iconography of a crown, a cardinal’s hat and the name Henry Stuart.