Decorative Art

THE most desirable of the varied wares produced by the small ceramics factory established by Vilmos Zsolnay (1828-1900) in the southwest Hungarian town of Pecs are those created after the 1890s. It was then that Zsolnay – having encountered the glazes of Clement Massier in Paris – perfected his Eosine glaze and employed his principle designer Tade Sikorski to model forms sympathetic to the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements.

AS all but the very top end of the furniture market continues to stagnate, Andrew Hartley (10% buyer's premium) can take some solace in the solid private client base it has built up for its regular consignments of Royal Worcester porcelain.

THERE were few head-turners at Greenslade Taylor Hunt's (15% buyer's premium) 738-lot specialist book and clock sale on May 13, with dealers and collectors bidding selectively for the best quality works.

SAIREY Gamp and Tony Weller are two of the most commonly encountered Royal Doulton character jugs (and accordingly among the cheapest) but only very rarely are the two Dickens’ characters seen as bookends.

PROVING the highlight of the commemoratives offered by Special Auction Services (15% buyer’s premium) in the wake of the Leslie Crowther collection of pot lids and Prattware on June 7 was this George III King and Constitution earthenware beaker.

FOLLOWING last year’s inaugural, successful summer show of graduate student’s work, The Metal Gallery at 90 Mount Street, London W1 have declared this an annual event and this year’s selling exhibition, The Graduate 2004, will run from July 21 to September 11.

THE Paris firm of Bourgey was founded in Paris in 1895. Now under the direction of the granddaughter of the founder, Sabine Bourgey, it is still going strong if the recent sale on June 3 is anything to go by.

CONTINUING the recent spate of sophisticated country house thefts, valuable antiques were stolen from two homes in the south east of England in the space of a week last month.

A SMALL group of animal stirrup cups provided the high points at Christie’s South Kensington’s silver sale held on June 16 affirming the evergreen appeal of novelty and collectors items over more useful hollowares.

THE work of the pioneering Victorian designer Christopher Dresser is soon to have a major public airing in an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum opening this September. In the meantime the rarest examples of his iconic designs continue to command high prices in the marketplace.

The primary artistic influence behind the Prattware phenomenon that captivated Victorian society for 40 years was the freelance artist and engraver Jesse Austin (1806-1879).

“A WONDERFUL morning and a dreadful afternoon,” was how auctioneer Elizabeth Pepper-Darling summed up Morphets' (15/10% buyer's premium) 640-lot June 10 sale which was in some ways a microcosm of the auction scene in general.

WITH giant sales every three weeks, Keys (10% buyer's premium) of Aylsham will cheerfully put two-figure lots under the hammer, but there were also a number of four-figure sellers to help swell the hammer total to £110,000 at the latest 1640-lot outing on June 2-3.

THIS technical marvel of the ancient world, pictured right, known as a Roman glass diatretum or cage cup, was cut out of a single blank of glass to form two layers. The solid inner cup is linked to its outer cage only by a series of delicate struts.

THE very earliest English porcelain has long held sway in the market, but one feature of Part I of the mammoth Zorensky Worcester collection sold by Bonhams in March was the high prices paid for some of the late 1760s and early 1770s underglaze blue ground tablewares.

WHILE recent months have seen some softening in the majolica market as a whole, scarce pieces by good makers continue to attract bids close to those they did three or four years ago. Pictured right is one of George Jones’ best-known Stilton dish designs, modelled as a thatched bee skep on a rustic base of mottled greens and browns that also includes a registration lozenge for 1872.

GLASGOW in the 18th century was a shadow of the powerhouse it was to become during the Industrial Revolution. In the mid-18th century, when the primary source of wealth on the Clyde was trade in tobacco, rum and sugar from the New World, the population stood at a modest 17,500, enough to support only a handful of goldsmiths and silversmiths.

RARELY one to miss a commercial opportunity, from pub jugs to caviar pots, Henry Doulton’s potworks in Lambeth produced stoneware advertising novelties for many local businesses. There are, for example, a series of paperweights made for the Thames boat people carrying the names of the companies who commissioned them as gifts for their best clients.

ALTHOUGH catalogued as a late 18th century fruitwood apple form tea caddy, this finely turned and carved 5 1/2in (13cm) high vessel sold by Biddle & Webb (15% buyer’s premium) on April 1 was more accurately a melon.

POLICE are investigating the theft of antiques valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds stolen from Uppark, the National Trust House in West Sussex, overnight on June 6-7.