Chair

Traditional 18th century styles rub shoulders with stand-out Modern design in regional sales

Suffolk House Antiques is staging its annual Christmas exhibition after giving its usual summer show a miss this year.

Thousands of items are available to buy from dealers online. Here we pick out one that caught our eye this week.

After months of lockdown, one’s home may no longer be feeling like one’s castle. However, that situation is easily remedied thanks to the Kensington Church Street Art & Antiques Dealers Association’s Virtual Summer Showcase, which takes ‘fit for royalty’ as its theme.

Welsh furniture and folk art dealers Tim and Betsan Bowen have released 'The Welsh Stick Chair – A Visual Record' as a resource for collectors and designers.

The investiture of the Prince of Wales in July 1969 was a pageant for the television age: held at Caernarfon Castle on a circular dais beneath a transparent Perspex canopy.

A pair of Chinese carved officials’ chairs offered at Ramsay Cornish (20% buyer’s premium) in Edinburgh were typical of the furniture made at the end of the Qing period, some of it for local use, much of it for export.

Arts & Crafts enthusiasts who hoped to buy a pair of Voysey chairs at something close to their £20-40 estimate at an auction in the Cotswolds were to be disappointed.

MADAM – Re: Hornby Castle Chair in the Bonhams Oak Interior sale (ATG No 2431). I have just returned from holiday to see ‘my’ old armchair staring out at me from the ATG front page. I thought you might be interested in a bit of its missing history.

The near dominance of Scandinavians among mid-20th century designers of wood furniture and artefacts was underlined at two sales at Chiswick Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in February.

The so-called Hornby Castle Chair, a 4ft 7in (1.38m) high oak open armchair c.1580-1600, sold for £35,000 plus premium at the latest Oak Interior sale at Bonhams in Oxford.

The Gentleman’s Library Sale at Bonhams on February 12-13 included a miniature William and Mary or Queen Anne walnut armchair standing 21in (53cm) high).

While furniture and books fully justified its title, The Oxford Library Sale at Mallams (22.5% buyer’s premium) was led by a surprise star: a rather lowly regarded gesso bust of the sort that would have been a minor decoration to such a room.

In 1952, India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru commissioned the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier to design and construct the north Indian city of Chandigarh.

A pair of Russian Empire chairs, 1810-15, featuring striking decorative brass inlay is offered for £25,000 by Ellis Fine Art at the Petersfield Antiques Fair.

Putting classic English furniture firmly back in the forefront of provincial sales in the first part of December was this Chippendale-design Gainsborough library armchair offered in Winchester by Andrew Smith (21% buyer’s premium).