“I might object to a lack of American buyers and a lack of furniture selling, but I have never believed you cannot sell in August,” said Stephen Perry. “In London you might have a season but that does not exist here.”
There was certainly no shortage of interest in the best-quality material in the 986-lot sale which totalled £101,000.
Foremost was a George III gentleman’s serpentine dressing chest in mahogany, comprising four graduated long drawers with a rosewood-banded shaped top and gently flaring sides.
Although the top drawer had been fitted with a slide, and the top had either been polished or replaced in the Edwardian period, this was an attractively shaped piece of furniture and a commercial size at 3ft 1in (94cm) wide at the top and 2ft 11 1/2in (90cm) at the waist. It caught the attention of the trade and sold over the phone to a dealer at £7400.
Another classic entry was a Georgian carved mahogany card table, of serpentine form with a secret drawer and cabriole legs with scroll feet which took £3100.
By contrast, selling on its decorative appeal was a Victorian cast-iron polychrome novelty stick stand modelled as a begging chihuahua, its jaw clamped around a riding crop, which made £1150.
Appealing to the decorative trade in another discipline was a copper-framed plaque, tentatively ascribed to the Glasgow School. Measuring 13in x 9in (33cm x 23cm), the Queen of Hearts frame enclosed a brightly enamelled panel of a colourfully dressed dark-skinned lady bearing a plate of fruit. An indistinct label to the reverse indicated that at one time it had either been submitted to, or exhibited at, the Cork International Exhibition. Consigned by a local private vendor, and estimated to fetch a few hundred pounds, it was pursued to £4200 by the trade.
Notable collectables included a Troika Penny Black anvil vase, which sold at £800, and a Tunbridgeware novelty rosewood marquetry miniature dining table pin-holder, which took £420.
August still the selling season by the sea
SOME provincial auctioneers and London’s major houses batten down their hatches during the traditionally dead month of August, but for Scarborough Perry (15% buyer's premium) it was business as usual for their August 12-13 sale.