Miller was born in Birmingham in 1924 and lectured in English Philosophy at Brasenose College between 1953-57. He moved to the University of Malaya in the late 1950s only to return to Oxford in 1959 where he was to remain.
Mr Miller was a regular buyer at auction and was particularly fond of the Aesthetic Movement, still very much a rarified taste among buyers at auction.
Indeed the only four-figure sum to be taken in the sale was for one of the eight lots offered by other private vendors.
Another minority taste, this was an Arts and Crafts walnut sideboard by Barnstaple makers Shapland and Petter. It had a raised back with a flattened cornice above a pair of cupboard doors, each with three concave glazed panels and decorative brass handles and was finished off by a central plaque embossed with stylised tree motif inlaid with Ruskin enamel. The sideboard went over estimate to bring £2300.
Mr Miller’s Aesthetic leanings were in evidence among other furniture. An ebonised ‘Old English’ or ‘Jacobean’ armchair designed by E.W Godwin doubled expectations to bring £920 and a c.1880 ebonised Aesthetic hanging wall cupboard with a spindle gallery above a pair of panelled doors took £220.
Mr Miller was, logically enough, also interested in Chinese and Japanese-influenced pieces and had a large collection of Oriental works of art and ceramics.
Best of the Oriental pieces was a collection of 18th century bone netsuke which included a figure of a grazing horse and another of a standing Dutchman holding a fruiting branch. The collection brought £360.
Phillips, Oxford, September 25
Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent
Aesthetic values have more than academic Oxford interest
This sale comprised some 308 lots of which 300 had all come from the home of the late Brian Donald Hewens Miller.
