Auctions

THOUGH it might no longer be the place where an international vendor would choose to sell a £20m Picasso or Van Gogh, London last week enhanced its reputation as a revenue for selling major-name Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art with a string of major results at Sotheby’s and Christie’s evening sales.

UK: CYPHERS can be frustrating things, whether one is using the word to denote a code for secret writing or, as is more often the case in the antiques world, some ingenious arrangement of conjoined initials.

UK: LEADING the auction at £100,000 (plus premium) was this 27in (68.5cm) high early 18th century, two-section Saxon covered goblet from Dresden which is applied with 12 silver-gilt oval medallions of Roman emperors and was discovered in a cellar at Schloss Hinnenburg, in northern Germany.

UK: WHAT difference does provenance actually make to the price of an antique? The answer is apparently none at all in the case of the shortest lived and least productive factory in the history of English porcelain.

UK: Hawk-eyed Neil Froggatt spotted the true worth of an antique treasure during a routine household evaluation.

Memories of high royal days on the Cowes riviera were recalled on the Isle of Wight when a relatively plain Victorian mahogany dressing table surfaced at Shanklin Auction Rooms on June 6.

UK: ONE of a set of twelve 16th century Limoges enamelled plates, which were offered for sale by the Manchester auctioneers Capes Dunn during a special sale on May 25 conducted from the Assembly Rooms in Lytham to promote their regional office on the Fyld coast.

UK: GIANT knives of the frontier period hold a special place in the heart of American collectors, and the late 19th century example by one of the leading Sheffield makers of Bowie-style knives for the American market – Brookes and Crookes – was eagerly contested by US bidders at Martyn Rowe’s Truro salerooms on May 26.

FRANCE: THE reform of France’s auction system now looks in sight following an agreement reached by a bicameral commission drawn from members of both the country’s parliamentary chambers.

UK: THE PHENOMENAL success enjoyed in the English speaking world by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter... books has been expensively reflected in the antiquarian, or rather secondhand book world, where (even in the high priced modern firsts market) the prices being asked for Harry the First are almost unbelievable.

UK: OVER half the images in the Craven collection of photographs offered by Bearne’s in Exeter on May 6 were by William, 2nd Earl of Craven.

UK: THE romance, expertise and astonishing prices at the Benacre sale came together when this pair of candelabra, above, were put up by Sotheby’s.

UK: A George II Irish mahogany centre table, 2ft 8in (81cm) wide, which featured at Bristol Auction Rooms on May 16, attracted interest from an Irish dealer who went to £25,000 (plus 10 per cent buyer’s premium), despite speculation by the auctioneer that the edging may have been altered and the top re-finished.

US: A concerted push into the market by Phillips meant that there were three major players on the Impressionst and Modern auction scene in New York last week.

UK: THE first week of May saw a rash of specialist photograph, auctions break out in England but the cream of the crop was a single-owner sale of vintage photographs collected by William, 2nd Earl of Craven (1809-1866), at Bearne’s in Exeter on May 6.

UK: THIS rare and unusual George II carved giltwood console table in the manner of William Kent modelled with an owl and probably carved by John Bonson of Savile Row sold for £520,000 (plus premium) – some ten times its estimate.

UK: JAMES Boswell’s question and Dr Samuel Johnson’s answer on the subject of China, c.1778.

UK: THIS bronze, Theseus Slaying the Minotaur, stamped Barye 1, made £105,000 at Sotheby’s on April 19.

HONG KONG: Christie’s and Sotheby’s enjoyed a successful start to their Spring series of sales in Hong Kong last week, despite some local difficulties.

FRANCE: AFTER two readings in both the Sénat and Assemblée Nationale, France’s auction reform bill still awaits ratification.