News

SOLD AT £600 (Temple) in the April 25 sale held by Y Gelli (15% buyer's premium) in Hay-on-Wye was a “much nicer than average” copy of the 1886, privately printed, Lahore first edition of Rudyard Kipling’s Departmental Ditties and other Verses. One of 350 copies of this tall, narrow production, printed on one side only, it was in the original wrappers but with the flap removed, leaving an uneven fore-edge to the upper wrapper.

AUCTIONEER George Kidner admitted after this April 16 sale (15% buyer's premium) that he wished he’d been able to offer more of that currently under-regarded commodity, brown furniture, because while routine silver remains pretty dormant and there was little good jewellery to be found, good quality furniture, along with ceramics, was selling well, sometimes spectacularly so.

FEW images conjure up the nail-biting adventures of John Buchan more than Richard Hannay’s flight across the grouse moors of Scotland in the author’s best-known story, The Thirty Nine Steps.

AN ARRAY of elegant objects sold mostly within estimates at the Celebration of the English Country House auction at Sotheby’s New York (20/12% buyer’s premium) on April 30 and May 1.

AS announced earlier this year, Beckenham’s own Brian Simons and Philip Thompson, who trade as DECOFAIRS, relaunch their London Art Deco Fair at the Chelsea Village Hotel, London SW6, on Sunday June 8.

BEFORE we get steeped in the London June fairs, Essex organiser Robert Bailey revives his Petworth Antiques Fair at Seaford College in West Sussex from May 30 to June 1.

WALES’S top dealer in things Welsh, Richard Bebb, holds his annual selling exhibition of vernacular crafts at his showrooms, Country Antiques, Castle Mill in Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire from May 28 to June 7.