Furniture

Classic English furniture continues to bring good prices at auction providing the quality is there – and this Regency sofa table, right, certainly filled that requirement when it was offered at the March 3 sale in Cornwall held by Bonhams Par (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. You may be sitting on the very chair that could solve a mystery.

LONDON antique dealers Malletts are waiting to hear whether a Dublin dealer will have to pay them more than £100,000 in compensation over a stolen 18th century bureau bookcase.

“IT was the power of the press that did it,“ said a red-faced, but delighted, auctioneer Michael Perry of Capes Dunn & Co. (15% buyer’s premium). News has only recently filtered down to the ATG of a spectacular result posted by the Manchester auctioneers back on February 22.

SOME changes at the long-standing firm of English period furniture specialists H.C. Baxter, for decades a familiar fixture on their stand at the Grosvenor House Fair.

ON what was a mixed day for furniture sales at Lyon & Turnbull when one or two very elegant pieces failed to get away, there was a deal of interest at the Edinburgh salerooms in this rather unprepossessing George III mahogany writing cabinet on stand, right.

A named designer and good provenance sent this oak refectory table and benches, right, to the highest price at Woolley & Wallis’ sale on March 2.

Duke’s, Dorchester, January 27Buyer’s premium: 15 per centOAK furniture’s rustic aesthetic and its ability to complement modern interiors, has kept it in demand by private buyers and decorators as well as oak dealers, and prices have tended to hold up during the furniture doldrums.

Clarke Gammon Wellers, Guildford, December 14. Buyer’s premium: 15 per centTHE current demand for decorative furniture was underscored at this 710-lot Surrey auction by a pair of hybrid, George III, satinwood marquetry and parcel gilt side tables which stole the limelight.

Christie's King Street, 20 January, Buyer's Premium: 20/12%.The most expensive piece from the 26 lots offered from Endsleigh, the Devon cottage designed for the 6th Duke of Bedford was this 6ft (1.8m) wide carved oak side table designed c.1801-14 by Jeffry Wyatt, the architect responsible for the main decorative scheme at Endsleigh, and made by local cabinetmaker John Williams of Exeter.

Richardson & Smith, Whitby, November 18 Buyer’s premium: 12.5 per cent Furniture produced the top lots in this routine 717-lot North Yorkshire auction, topped by an oak dresser and a plate rack with a shaped crest over four tiers.

Christie’s King Street (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) were pulling out all the stops for their first full week of the month.

Is there a Christmas factor in the auction rooms? Cheffins auctioneer Jonathan Law (Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent) believes that the season may have some effect in putting a little pressure on people to buy rather than wait.

The two best-selling pieces of furniture offered outside London in 2004 were sold during one of the very first and one of the last sales of the year.

Humberts, inc. Tayler & FletcherBourton-on-the-Water, October 26Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent

BK Art & Antiques, Gloucester, November 11Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent

Breaking its own record as the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold at auction, this massive, 12ft 8in (3.86m) high, 18th century Florentine ebony, ormolu and pietra dura architectural display piece known as The Badminton Cabinet brought Christie’s December 9 sale of European furniture to a dramatic climax last week when it sold for £17m (£19,045,250 including premium).

ATTRACTING dealers from both sides of the Border to McTear's (15% buyer's premium) September 24 sale was a Regency figured maple and parcel gilt breakfast table.

THIS unusual metamorphic George III mahogany dressing table, right, goes under the Charterhouse gavel on Friday October 15.

THE focus of the furniture trade’s attention in Bamfords' (15% buyer's premium) 1025-lot Derbyshire outing on September 8 was a c.1835 mahogany, triple-pedestal dining table with a top formed from two D-sections and a central Pembroke drop leaf.