Furniture

“It’s not the age or pedigree – it’s the look of the piece.” The phrase became less a heresy and more a cliché during the latter years of the furniture boom of blessed memory, when the increasingly influential decorator trade was spending substantial sums on 19th and early 20th century reproductions.

Considering retiring and selling up, the owner of a Cornish B&B owner consigned the George III, japanned chest on stand, below, to Honiton saleroom Chilcotts (19.5% buyer’s premium) to test the market.

On a lesser scale than the exceptional £35,000 George II chairs at Holloway’s sale, but standing out from the general run of brown furniture, were other encouraging results across the country in February.

Dwarfed as they were by the £440,000 oil of St John the Evangelist (see ATG last week, No 2332), a number of other lots helped to make Holloway’s (20% buyer’s premium) first major sale of the year in Banbury on February 27 an event to remember.

The first annual exhibition at English Antiques, in the small Suffolk market town of Eye, is titled 'A Taste of the Orient'.

“Mid-century is pretty unstoppable as the ‘new antique’ with exhibitions on Fifties and Sixties designers like Charles and Ray Eames and Harry Bertoia now regular events,” says Lucy Ryder Richardson, founder with Petra Curtis of the Midcentury Modern Shows.

With most English furniture still underperforming at auction, it is French 19th century cabinetmaking that is providing the soundest base of furniture sales in England.

“We were particularly encouraged by the performance of the furniture with many pieces selling to trade and private buyers for ‘old school’ prices.”

A fresh-to-market consignment involving great names of Art Nouveau/Arts & Crafts and a New York buyer determined to have it… It hasn’t taken long for newcomer Heliers Auction (18% buyer’s premium) to come up with the sort of winning combination all auctioneers hope for.

The generally encouraging start to the year enjoyed by English auctioneers extends to Scotland where Lyon & Turnbull (25% buyer’s premium) enjoyed a buoyant season-opener.

Pretty, petite and French – a seductive combination which won admirers of this kingwood and floral marquetry escritoire at Mallams’ (20% buyer’s premium) Oxford rooms.

Specialists who relaunched North Yorkshire auction house generate old-school optimism.

“The selling price was really encouraging,” said Chichester auctioneer Peter Parker after an 18th century walnut chest made £5800, “but it just emphasises how polarised the market is between the top end and the rest.”

Another classic piece of English furniture to go well above expectations was a Regency mahogany window seat in the style of George Bullock offered by the Cumbrian firm 1818 Auctioneers (17/12% buyer’s premium).

As with the overall market, Dutch furniture is much less popular than it once was and the 18th century walnut, floral marquetry and ivory-inlaid bombé bureau cabinet, below, had a couple of condition problems for bidders at Andrew Smith (19% buyer’s premium).

English furniture, works of art and decorations of the most traditional kind were the object of a 365-lot, single-owner sale held by Doyle (25/20/12.5%) buyer’s premium in New York.

Tony Haynes of Haynes Fine Art is preparing to show a room-set from the collection of Vivien Leigh at his London gallery next month – but not to sell it.