On April 7 the highest prices came among the 36 lots of books and autograph material, but there was keen bidding across the board.
In the opening jewellery section, a set of six 19th century oval gold brooches with different floral designs in half pearls on a cobalt background sold to a London specialist at £1400 and the best of the silver – a Britannia standard tazza, London 1698, with maker’s mark S.P. in a shaped cartouche – also went to London. The 8in diameter by 23/4in high (20 x 8cm) 11oz piece on a trumpet base with gadrooned borders sold at £2850.
Star of the ceramics was a pair of c. 1820, probably Chamberlains Worcester, pot pourri vases and covers painted with named views of Powderham Castle, Devon and Trentham Hall, Staffordshire. Standing 71/2in (19cm) tall, the pedestal-form pieces with lion-mask handles and decorated with gilding sold to one of Britain’s leading Worcester specialists at £4100.
The sale closed with furniture where the best seller – which Mr Finan reckons was destined for Grosvenor House – was a George II 2ft 91/2in wide (85cm) walnut card table. Featuring outswept circular corners and an interior with counter wells and candle stands, it had a frieze drawer with original brass handle on moulded cabriole legs carved with shells and sold at £7400.
Good though the quality was of such standard pieces, these sales are perhaps best known for catering to the more arcane areas of collecting.
There was a sprinkling of studio pottery including 15 pieces by Wiltshire potter Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie (1895-1985) and seven by Michael Ambrose Cardew (1901-1983).
Among the former, was a 53/4in (14.5cm) high globular olive green vase painted with scrolls in brown which made £450, bid by a Wiltshire member of the potter’s aristocratic family. Priciest of the Cardew lots was a set of six stoneware plates, 8in diameter (20cm) from around 1940, with incised comb decoration. The set sold to a specialist dealer at £550.
Of 13 pieces of tribal art ranging from America to Oceana via Africa, the top seller was a 19th century New Guinea lime spatula, 131/4in (34cm) long carved with a human figure above the blade. It sold to a French specialist at £950.
The sale also catered for enthusiasts of antiquities, pewter, dolls, textiles and Oriental works of art but perhaps the most unusual offering was a collection of some 500 pre-1850 microscopic slides in a c.1850 cabinet and all neatly labelled as to content – ‘hair of fly’s proboscis’, ‘scales of rhinoceros’ ‘parasite of turkey’ among them – and the areas they came from including ‘New Forest’, ‘Borneo’ and ‘Melville Bay, 82 fathoms’.
A number of specialists bid for it but it went to a newcomer to the rooms who had spent hours poring over the slides on view day and took them at £2400 – Mr Finan put the worth of the cabinet itself at “about £350”.
Finan & Co., Mere, April 7
Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent
Specialists queue to bid on pieces from Worcester to New Guinea
UK: MAINLY operating as a consultant these days, Robert Finan holds just two sales a year at The Old Ship Hotel in Mere, Wiltshire, giving him the time to assemble events which not only sell well – the 376 lots in April enjoyed a 91 per cent success rate and a hammer total of £187,325 – but are guaranteed to bring specialist bidders across a wide range of interests.
