Decorative Art

UK: With a sale total of £30,256 for 442 lots of ‘breweriana’, Alan Blakeman of BBR Auctions chalked up yet another niche market success on May 13.

UK: THE penultimate Doulton outing held by Phillips (15/10% buyer’s premium) on March 27 was the 263-lot offering of prototype figures from the Doulton archives, an event which proved highly successful for both auctioneer and vendor being a near sellout and almost doubling predictions at £425,570.

UK: THE Internet has, so far, hardly lived up to the initial claims made for it in the auctioneering world, but it does have its merits, as the Staffordshire firm Wintertons will attest.

UK: At over 300 lots, Christie's South Kensington’s modern design auction on May 16 was a large and wide ranging gathering, (it would have been even larger had the auctioneers not withdrawn a 17-lot collection of Italian glass).

Pewter is seldom seen in large quantities these days but Phillips’ Chester May 4 sale turned the clock back to the ’70s with an array of more than 100 lots.

UK: A striking amalgam of European form and Oriental decoration, this Meissen derived Kakiemon tankard was a rare hybrid, apparently one of only four in public record, and it consequently attracted worldwide interest at Woolley and Wallis’s sale in Salisbury on May 23.

UK: Somehow it still happens. After all the years of the Roadshow and other TV programmes on antiques, all the glossy magazine articles and all the newspaper columns, people still junk what seem obviously valuable materials, like this set of three Victorian stained glass panels.

UK: TRADITIONAL silver may be a dull market, but make the metal decorative, like the pair of London, 1860 candelabra offered at Peter Wilson auctioneers in Nantwich, Cheshire, and it will shine.

Not to all tastes, Bunnykins and PenDelfin figures are strong enough collectors’ items to justify launching a “Bunny Weekend” in Cobridge, Staffordshire by Potteries Specialist Auctions</b. (10% buyer’s premium) on April 28-29.

UK: A number of auctioneers have remarked on a rather flat silver market of late but the Surrey auctioneers Crow's saw no such reluctance among buyers with a number of offerings going well above estimate.

One of the high points of Bonhams & Brooks’ May 2 sale in the London Islamic Series of sales was a 10in (25cm) square Isnik tile, pictured, dated to c.1580.

Such is the ubiquity of lamp bases that have been converted from vases that rarely does one encounter a genuine collector’s item in this field, but this abstracted stoneware example produced for the Atlantis range of Poole pottery in the early 1970s, was a refreshing discovery. consigned to the Applied Arts sale at Sotheby’s South (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) near Billingshurst on March 27.

UK: Moroccan textiles were the strong suit in Christie’s South Kensington’s May 4 sale of Islamic and Indian textiles, none more so than this impressive 2ft 3in x 8ft x6in (70cm x 2.6m) silk-embroidered linen ceremonial panel dated to the 18th century and worked with striking abstract designs.

Silver spirit labels (‘Holland’ refers to Dutch Gin) are not quite two a penny, but they are among the cheapest drinking trinkets available.

UK: This Urbino majolica istoriato dish, depicting the cutting of Samson’s hair and attributed to Francesco Xanto Avelli di Rovigo, was discovered in a box of effects following a clearance at a Fenland farmhouse and entered for sale at Golding Young & Co. of Grantham on April 11.

UK: One of this year’s most stunning finds, a group of four rare Sèvres Etruscan red ground dessert plates from the Prince Napoleon Service, 1854-6, offered at Mellors and Kirk, Nottingham, on April 5.

To what extent the bouyant market for Gaudy Welsh pottery would become deflated if every American collector realised it was actually made in Staffordshire, England, not Wales, is a pertinent question – given the misty eyed view of Scottish/Welsh/Irish history from the other side of pond.

UK: A NEWLY established firm of provincial auctioneers are broadening the scope of their business by launching a two-day ceramics fair in London in June.

UK: WHEN people talk of antiques as a sure investment a word of advice is always ‘Remember stevengraphs, think about pot lids.’

UK: Art imitates life in many ways – few stranger than this 1950’s pottery model of a Shetland Pony.