Furniture

THE smaller items among the quality furniture, clock and collectable entries proved the most commercial lots at this 846-lot Herefordshire auction at Brightwells on 6 and 7 February.

THE move towards holding specialist sales among provincial auctioneers has been one of the success stories recent years and one that is paying dividends for Salisbury’s Woolley & Wallis in one of the most arcane worlds – that of carpets and textiles.

THERE are no datelines at TEFAF Maastricht, which runs in the Dutch city until March 17, but Old Masters and top quality antiques are the stock that springs immediately to mind.

BETTER known for its polo club than its fine art, Cowdray Park in Midhurst, Sussex nevertheless provided Hampshire auctioneers Jacobs & Hunt with some talking points among a quantity of the “surplus to requirements” chattels the owners of the country pile had decided to get rid of.

THE auctioneers’ decision to place the first half of a sizeable consignment of furniture from a North Oxfordshire house in Mallams January sale paid dividends when the 87 lots provided half of the £130,000 total of the 277-lot sale.

PARIS: Ten works by Philippe Hiquily (born 1925) surfaced in the Camard sale at Drouot on February 8, comfortably exceeding predictions to post “record prices” and enjoy what Camard called “tremendous success among French and foreign collectors and decorators.”

POLICE are casting their net farther afield in the hope of recapturing a missing mermaid, and the thieves who stole her.

THE policy of these Cheshire auctioneers, Maxwells, to hold a decent sale in January rather than in the crowded period before Christmas generally pays off, and did so this year although, that said, the local associations of the top seller would probably have resulted in a good price at any period.

Furniture was strong at this Cheshire sale at Patrick Cheyne on 26 January where the top seller was a set of eight (six and two carvers) and two near-matching George III style bleached walnut dining chairs.

While it is almost impossible to sell some routine furniture at present, Keys specialist Paul Goodley echoed the traditional view that attractively pitched guidelines are the key to success.

FRANCE: Pictured right is a restored 18th century two-part fountain basin, with a veined red marble shell topped by a white stone lion head, which sold over expectations for €25,000 (£15,500) at Tajan on January 30

UK: Thornhill Galleries are a 120-year-old British company that specialise in architectural antique interior design. They make panelled rooms on commission in antique pine and seasoned hardwood and carry a wide stock of period fireplaces and accessories, garden statuary and other architectural features.

The Wiltshire rooms Woolley & Wallis usually hold four specialist carpet sales a year but a fifth was squeezed in before the scheduled Valentine’s Day event, and with a 77 per cent rate and £77,000 total on the 284 lots on offer, the decision by specialists June Barrett and Ian Bennett was more than justified.

Christopher Gilbert: Selected Writings on Vernacular Furniture 1966-98, published by the Regional Furniture Society, price £20 plus postage and available from The Membership Secretary, The Regional Furniture Society, 12 Swan Street, Sible Hedingham, Essex, CO9 3HP. See also the society’s Website at www.regionalhistorysociety.com for details of back issues of the society’s journals.

Continental Church Furniture in England: A Traffic in Piety, by Charles Tracy, published by Antique Collectors’ Club. ISBN 185149376 £50 hb

THE antiques trade was hard hit last year and the Surrey auctioneers Ewbanks are finding that the current uncertain economic climate is stopping private vendors from consigning their property to sale.

Since the Craven commodes were sold in London last November there has not been any exceptional English furniture at auction in Britain, but that all changed when Dreweatt Neate offered the remnants of Daisy Fellowes’ Berkshire estate at Donnington Priory on January 30.

Good stock furniture dominated this 894-lot wide-ranging sale on 13 December at Heathcote Ball sourced from various private sources in Leicestershire and Derbyshire.

NOT the top seller at this 653-lot Suffolk sale at Abbotts on 19 December but interesting in that it sold at all, was a burr walnut Victorian davenport.

CONTINUING the tradition of the old Phillips network, the Sevenoaks branch of new owners Bonhams moved to Ramster, the Surrey stately home for a winter event offering some of the better pieces consigned to the company’s various rooms in the South East.