Furniture

When this walnut chair arrived at Shanklin Auction Rooms (10 per cent premium) on the Isle of Wight it was catalogued as Victorian and expected to fetch £400-600. However, specialist dealers who viewed it before the September 4 sale noted its clean, classical lines its ebony strung motifs and, most significantly, the wrap-around back.

FAIRLY routine furniture and modest pictures predictably took most of the higher prices at this Brightwells 850-lot sale in Herefordshire on 15-16 August but a couple of unusual items among the silver and the objets d’art were the eye-catchers.

FOUR small deceased estates formed the basis of the 711-lot sale held by David Duggleby (10% buyer’s premium) at Scarborough, on July 30. Most of the best furniture came from the contents of Rillington, Malton – the highlight being this 8ft 3in (2.52m) tall George III mahogany standing corner cabinet, right. Its condition,colour and quality prompted a £6400 local private bid.

UK: PAINTINGS were the main strength of the 422-lot sale at Phillips, Knowle (15/10% buyer’s premium) on July 18, but furniture and works of art also boosted the £236,800 total.

Ebony furniture is not to everyone’s taste, but a fished-out brown furniture market and a couple of colonial sleepers in the regional salerooms recently has prompted speculation that the black stuff could be due for a revival.

FURNITURE brought the biggest money at the Northern and Southern branches of (at this point) Phillips’ provincial empire with Leeds taking the honours netting £146,000 from 250 lots against a Sevenoaks total of £100,545 from 886 lots.

Not quite in the same league as Dutch Old Master fish stalls, Victorian butchers’ models still elicit the same puzzled question in our squeamish age – why did anyone go to elaborate lengths to compose such a gris(t)ly display?

Furniture took the only four-figure bids at this 858-lot Heathcote Ball Leicester sale on June 21 with a George II oak chest-on-stand leading the way.

With the dearth of fresh-to-the-market quality antiques, the zeal with which dealers seek out sleepers ensures that few lie dormant. Such was the case at Leominster where an 18th century walnut and marquetry commode, 5ft 10in (1.78m) wide, sailed past its £2000-3000 estimate and sold at £11,800 to a Maltese buyer.

MAINTAINING their policy of high-content, budget priced sales, the Norfolk auctioneers Keys put up a bumper June offering with a 1540-lot antique sale on June 26 and 27 following a 1236-lot collectors’ sale on June 14. Occasionally there emerges a high-priced star at these antiques offerings but in the quieter days of summer the best bid came for a Georgian-style pedestal birdcage supper table, 3ft 1in (94cm) which sold at £2450.

USA: A Philadelphia mahogany Chippendale games table, that represented the discovery of a lifetime for a small Massachusetts auction house, was bought by New York City firm Israel Sack Inc. for a massive $1.2m ($1.32m including the 10 per cent buyer’s premium) on June 4.

US: ROBERT Eldred’s March 30-31 sale of Americana in East Dennis (Massachusetts) included what they first saw as a 2ft 11in (89cm) wide “mahogany Sheraton-style one-drawer console table”, consigned from a local, Cape Cod estate and valued at $250-350.

UK: QUALITY items eagerly contested, patchy bidding on low to middle-range entries – a familiar countrywide pattern was evident at Bristol but it was a very unfamiliar piece which led the day.

UK: THIS Georgian chinoiserie framed mirror painting of c.1760 took the top slot at Sotheby’s June 13 English furniture sale when it sold to an American private buyer for £280,000.

UK: TOPPING Christie’s June 14 English furniture sale at £420,000 was this pair of marble-topped side tables attributed to the Cobb and Vile partnership.

FRANCE: DIJON’S trio of auction firms like to cash in on the presence of antiques collectors at the Dijon fair (see Fairs Sales Analysis, "Dijon cuts the mustard") and one of the highlights at the Vregille-Bizoüard sale on May 20 was this pair of early 18th century Italian engraved rococo mirrors, 3ft 11in (1.20m) tall, that tripled estimate on Fr142,000 (£13,100).

UK: A TAKE-UP of 70 per cent at this Locke & England Midlands sale on May 3 was evidence of the selectivity of buyers when it comes to furniture in the lower price ranges but there were some sound enough individual sales.

UK: This 3ft 81/2in (1.13m) wide giltwood settee of antique inspiration, based on a design in Thomas Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration of 1807, went under the hammer at Gorringes’ sale in Lewes on June 6.

After more than 30 years in storage, the Hereford Screen, one of the metalwork masterpieces of the Victorian age, has been conserved and returned to its former glory. Richly intricate and colourful, this Gothic Revival choir screen was made for Hereford Cathedral and will be unveiled at the V&A on Thursday, May 24.

UK: Two Victorian mahogany bookcases topped this Ambrose , Essex sale – a library model with four glazed doors and four panel doors, 5ft 8in (1.73m) wide and a straightforward double door bookcase with two frieze drawers, 4ft 6in (1.38m) wide, each attracting bids of £1250.