Decorative Art

UK: THE current fashion for English porcelain may lean towards the earliest pieces of blue and white, but it was not the case 30 years ago when the vendor of this First Period Worcester yellow ground mask jug, c.1760 purchased this piece for £3800 at the Grosvenor House Antiques Fair.

THE best bottle ever dug? This was the question that auctioneer Alan Blakeman of BBR was asking himself after an extraordinary price was tendered by an American collector at the Elsecar salerooms on July 9 for this early shaft and globe example.

TO some a relatively run-of-the-mill hot water jug and cover, but to others the inspiration for possibly the most important prose fiction in Britain’s rich literary history.

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

UK: AFTER 16 years of working at Dreweatt Neate to develop their ceramics department, Mark Law, the Berkshire auctioneers’ ceramics specialist, has left the partnership and has joined Andrew Hilton at the nearby Reading firm Special Auction Services.

Highly desirable Clarice Cliff Blue Lucerne globular vase, 6in (15cm) high, shape 370, decorated with a stylised geometric Mediterranean landscape.

UK: TO the businessman in late 18th century rural England, these porcelain tokens would only have been worth a couple of shillings each, but to bidders at Dreweatt Neate’s Banbury salerooms on March 29 their value was to be measured in thousands of pounds.

UK: THIS Linthorpe pre-Columbian-style pottery vessel, designed by Dr Christopher Dresser during his time as Art Superintendent at John Harrison's Middlesborough factory c.1879-81, was sold to London's New Century by Darlington auctioneer Thomas Watson & Son for £1500 (plus 15 per cent premium) on March 21.

UK: This pair of 8ft 2in (2.5m) high polished steel gates inset with Lalique glass segments were bid to £13,000 at Christie's South Kensington on February 9.

UK: EVERY so often a dealer will acquire an object of academic interest for relatively little money and put it into an auction to see how much it will make.

This simple 91/2in (24cm) diameter pottery 'souvenir' plate, made in Llanelly c.1910 and decorated with Welsh folk heroine Mari Jones in the manner of the factory's most famous painter, Samuel Shufflebotham, sold to a Pembrokeshire collector at £1700 (plus 15 per cent premium) at the Carmarthen rooms of Peter Francis on January 25.

UK: THE Scottish art market has been given a boost of confidence over the past few weeks by the strong performance of three sales in Edinburgh, that turned over £1.5m of antiques from Scottish sources.

THE Moor's Head Cup, a rare 17th century silver gilt sculptural marriage cup which topped Sotheby's sale of The Moritzburg Treasure from the Royal House of Saxony when it sold for £1.6m.

UK: SILVER collectors could wait a long time for something so unusual to come onto the market.

UK: COLLECTABLE 20th century ceramics continue to be the target of some elaborate fakes: among the more recent additions to the 'danger' list are the series of 'Royal Doulton' Union Jack bulldogs and a 'prototype' character jug.

UK: WHAT was it about this Bloor Derby cup which attracted attention from as far afield as America and Japan, when it was offered at the Derby salerooms of Neales on December 8?