UK

PART of the large consignment of 18th century English porcelain from a local, mid-Wales private vendor, this 18th century underglaze blue painted Lowestoft cider mug, offered as the final lot in Brightwells’ Ceramics and Glass sale in Leominster on July 21, proved to be the star of the sale.

HAVING sold her four-storey town house on The Circus, one of Bath’s most prestigious Georgian streets, Dr Teri McGovern announced: “I’m on the move. I came with two suitcases and I’m moving out with two.”

SOLD for £3800 as part of the June 21 Christie’s sale at Chirk Castle was a copy of the first and only published part of John Harris’ The History of Kent, bound in contemporary speckled calf, now rubbed and splits at the joints.

RICHARD Winterton Fine Art Auctioneers of Burton on Trent have acquired the fine art department of South & Stubbs, the auction house which has served the Penkridge and Stafford area for many generations. A full range of sales is being planned for Penkridge with many of the familiar personnel being retained.

NEWS sometimes takes a little time to filter out but I can confirm that at least three dealers made a profit out of last month’s Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia.

NORFOLK organiser (and dealer) Liz Allport-Lomax holds her second Southwold Summer Antiques Fair at St Felix School in the picturesque small Suffolk coastal town from July 23 to 25.

A LARGE scale oil by Kathleen Hale of Orlando Reclining Amongst Flowers failed to sell against a £10,000-15,000 estimate at Sotheby’s on July 8, but the autograph draft manuscript of Orlando (The Marmalade Cat) becomes a Doctor of 1944, right, each page with pencil and coloured crayon drawings (some with added wash or gouache, a few unfinished) did sell at £5000 to a London gallery.

THE very fine 1950 first edition copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe seen right, with just a few nicks to the jacket skilfully repaired, was sold for £6000 to a collector by Bloomsbury Auctions on June 17, but at Sotheby’s on July 8, a complete set of the seven books that make up C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia was left unsold on an estimate of £5000-7000.

ILLUSTRATED right is a very good copy of the 1885 first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s splendid A Child’s Garden of Verses that made £1200 (Bauman Rare Books) as part of the Alan Fortunoff library at Bloomsbury Auctions on June 4.

ONE yellow-covered rabbit book in the Dominic Winter sale of June 24, a scarce 1922 first of Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys Become Real, with its William Nicholson illustrations, was left unsold on an estimate of £4000-5000 (the original pictorial boards had been “rebacked in facsimile”) but the 1972 first of Richard Adams’ Watership Down, seen right – a copy used in the V&A’s 1977 ‘After Alice’ exhibition – made £610 in Swindon.

LINCOLNSHIRE organiser Ruth Thurman, who operates as Field Dog Fairs, holds her tenth annual antiques and collectors fair at Grimsthorpe Castle, near Bourne from July 30 to August 1.

FOUNDED in 1986, the Shelley Group is a collectors’ society dedicated to amassing and appreciating the china products made in Fenton, Staffordshire by the Wileman and Shelley companies during the 19th and 20th centuries.

SECOND generation Mayfair antiquities dealership Charles Ede Ltd, issue four catalogues a year devoted to different areas of their speciality, and they have just published their illustrated volume listing the Etruscan and Roman Antiquities currently available at their showroom at 20 Brook Street.

AFTER June in London, the first major fair on the calendar is the long-established summer version of Antiques For Everyone at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. It will be held this year in Halls 17-19 from July 29 to August 1.

THERE is never any shortage of news from the Hundred Acre Wood and this summer’s helpings included, at the very basic level, the straightforward 1926 first of Winnie the Pooh seen top right, a little rubbed and darkened to the spine, which brought a bid of £1350 (Sotherans) at a Dominic Winter sale of June 24.

ESSEX organiser Robert Bailey has pulled off a coup by clinching Harewood House, near Leeds in North Yorkshire, as the venue for his 54th Northern Antiques Fair, which will be held from September 22 to 26.

HARRY Potter prices are not quite as strong as they once were, but the fine “unread” copy of the 1997 first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone seen right was sold on June 17 for £11,000 at Bloomsbury Auctions, who had it hopefully estimated it at £15,000-20,000.

PICK of the recent Beatrix Potters were seen in the Dominic Winter sale of June 24, where the 1903 first of The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, seen right, complete with printed glassine jacket (showing some spine and edge loss) and inscribed as a Christmas gift at the time by the author to a Mrs Lord, was sold at £7600 to Hawthorn Books, who gave a further £7600 for a jacketed, 1904 first of The Tale of Benjamin Bunny that Beatrix Potter inscribed to Mrs Lord.

THERE was a 1954-55 first edition set of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books in a Sotheby’s sale of July 8 that sold at £6500 to a collector – all three volumes impressions in slightly frayed jackets, one of them with a tape repair, showing a little browning and spotting.

FIRST English editions of the works of Jules Verne have been selling for high prices of late. In a July 6 sale held by Strides of Chichester, the fine copy of Sampson Low’s 10/6d edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, seen right, dated 1873 but possibly issued as early as October of the previous year, sold for £12,000.