Furniture

Eighty lots from a local estate ensured a flying start to Mallams’ recent sale in Oxford and provided an insight into the taste and interests of a collector buying 60 years ago.

A packed saleroom and a continuous barrage of phone bids combined to ensure a near sell-out, multi-estimate result at Sotheby’s in Paris for their three-session auction (in association with Artcurial) of the collection of Félix Marcilhac.

This 19th century French ormolu-mounted boulle side cabinet is attributed to the Paris-based ébéniste-marqueteur Mathieu Befort (1813-80).

There are very few positives to take from the latest findings of The Antique Collectors’ Club’s Annual Furniture Index (AFI). For reasons of fashion and function, the English antique furniture market remains in a parlous state and no category from early oak to Georgian mahogany held firm.

Cambridge auctioneers Cheffins have sold the residual contents of the Luton Hoo estate.

Knowle Auction Rooms will offer this pair of tan leather Barcelona chairs at their next sale.

More than 80 lots of Danish rosewood furniture were withdrawn from Sworder’s January 28 sale of Decorative Art and Design after advice that their sale contravened the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna.

This Art Deco walnut sideboard accompanied by a dining table is one of around 400 lots of Art Deco, Arts & Crafts and Danish design furniture on sale at Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet later this month.

When it comes to the market, Edouard Lièvre’s Sino-Japanese furniture is usually a surefire candidate for a big price.

A late 20th century acanthus and shell-carved mahogany armchair with dolphin arms sold for £8600 when the contents of the Isle of Man home of watchmaker George Daniels were dispersed by Murrays in Douglas.

The two-day House & Garden Sale at Mallams in Abingdon, Oxfordshire saw this near pair of early 20th century Louis Vuitton ‘malle armoire secretaires’ sell for £24,000.

The Christopher Dresser Society will be launched at Teesside University on June 20.

This pair of full-size library globes was the pick of more than 800 lots from a Pembrokeshire country house sold by Carmarthen firm Peter Francis.

Vintage luggage made by Louis Vuitton was a fitting addition to this year’s aptly named ‘Travel in Style’ ski sale at Christie’s South Kensington.

This Arts and Crafts music cabinet, entered into a recent sale at Robertson’s of Kinbuck, near Dunblane, without reserve, turned out to be a hitherto lost design by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Green shoots in the market for the most iconic of all English furniture was among the more encouraging findings of the Antique Furniture Price Index in 2012.

A large 200-lot Russian consignment of items from the InterContinental Hotel in Prague is estimated to fetch around £350,000 at Rye Auction Galleries in East Sussex on January 4.

In December, Wellers’ Guildford saleroom will offer a seminal suite of furniture by Ambrose Heal (1872-1959) consigned by a member of the family who purchased it at the turn of the 20th century.

A portable writing desk once owned by George Eliot is still missing after being stolen from Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery.

Scarborough saleroom David Duggleby posted a house record for furniture when a suite of oak Arts and Crafts furniture from the workshop of Cotswold School cabinet maker Peter Waals (1870-1937) sold as a single lot for £31,000 at their latest auction.