Furniture

UK: THE 122-lot furniture section at this Glasgow general sale was something of a double-edged claymore supplying, as it did, the biggest prices as well as the most casualties.

American connection revolutionises a jug’s prospects UK: LOOKING at current trends in the furniture market, auctioneer Patrick Toynbee remarked on the reluctance among buyers for “run of the mill” pieces, with the preference now being for high-quality attractive pieces.

UK: THE scarcity of good-quality, untouched country furniture, even in such rich fields as Oxfordshire, and the increasingly selective attitude of bidders – becoming “more selective by the sale”, according to Mallams auctioneer Ben Lloyd – are causes of concern for auctioneers across the country.

UK: Emblazoned with the full armorial of the Strutt and Galton families, this early 19th century Italian marble and pietra dura table stole the limelight at Short, Graham & Co.’s sale in Gloucester on January 23.

UK: IT WAS standard case furniture: tables and other useful pieces of mahogany that made much of the running in the 224-lot sale of furniture held by Christie's South Kensington on January 10, topped at £12,000 by a good Georgian library bookcase from a private deceased estate.

UK: EARLY oak remains one of the most selective markets but when a piece is right, like this 17th century dresser base, right, offered at the Cheltenham branch of Mallams (15 per cent buyer’s premium) on December 14, it will bring specialists running.

UK: To some people it may just be another brown wardrobe, c.1900, with a bit of fancy moulding, mounting and carving, but to players of the game called golf it is a precious, possibly unique, artefact that speaks fondly of an enduring obsession.

UK: A SUBSTANTIAL offering of furniture, most of it 19th century and brown, received a mixed response from the Scottish and North of England trade at the last Phillips sale in Edinburgh before Christmas.

UK: Early walnut is all about colour and choice of veneer, and this Queen Anne bureau bookcase 7ft 10in high by 5ft 9in wide (2.38 x 1.06) scored highly on both counts at the Partridge Green salerooms of Rupert Toovey on January 19.

FRANCE: A LOUIS XVI mahogany gueridon with three scrolled legs, stamped Molitor, sold to the French trade in Dijon on December 9 for Fr1.6m (£150,000), five times estimate – even though the table was in indifferent condition, having been recovered from a local attic.

UK: THE most prominent entry to this monthly two-day sale in Devon was an early 19th century linen press had come from a South Coast farmhouse.

This Regency giltwood chair may have been one of the largest hearing aids ever built, but it was intended to serve the same purpose as the smallest, mobile device: disguising the disablity and sparing the dignity of the listener.

UK: The first celebrity house sale of the new millennium took place last week near Clifton Hampden in Oxfordshire, where noted aesthete and furnisher to the stars Christopher Gibbs was clearing his Victorian manor house under the auspices of Christie’s.

UK: DEVON dealers J. Collins & Son are well known for their stock of functional period furniture, but looking through their new catalogue of recent acquisitions most would be hard pressed to spot the exact function of the extraordinary piece pictured here.

UK: Loyal service brings its rewards, as this fine Queen Anne walnut bachelor’s chest, which sold at Anderson & Garland on Thursday, September 21, attests.

UK: SUCH was the fine condition of this 3ft 3in (99cm) William and Mary oyster veneered walnut chest when it appeared at Clevedon Salerooms on September 2 that two bidders, one on the phone and one in the room, competed for it well beyond its £5000-7500 estimate.

One of a pair of giltwood fauteuils by Jacob-Desmalter for which Ferneyhough, a London dealer, will ask £120,000 at the Chelsea Fair London, September 15-24.

USA: The highlight of a $1.36m sale of Americana held by Massachusetts auctioneers Skinner in their Bolton rooms on August 12 was this 2ft 4in (71cm) high, 21in (53cm) diameter, Philadelphia cherry-wood bird cage tea table dated c.1760-80, which left its $10,000-15,000 estimate behind as two dealers in the room contested it to no less than $370,000 (£253,425) plus premium.

Back in 1948 a Dublin auctioneer sold the contents of a local property belonging to one Dr Cremins, which included a number of antiques purchased in the early years of the 20th century.

US: ONE OF the rarest chairs in the world has met with an unexpected fate at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A 17th century Chinese folding armchair, which had accomodated the highest dignitaries of the Imperial court, was unable to bear the weight of a weary museum visitor who had disregarded the ‘do not touch’ sign and sat down to rest his feet.