1. Symbolist triptych
The sale of British & European Art at Bonhams on July 6 includes this Symbolist triptych by French artist Clément Mère (1861-1940).
Mère is best known as a decorative artist producing furniture, fabrics, and small desk and dressing table objects. His pictorial works are scare (fewer than 20 works on canvas by the artist are currently known), with this 1887 triptych of figures in a bucolic landscape painted when the artist was 26 at the request from a private Parisian client.
Estimate £12,000-18,000.
2. Roman silver reproductions
Scalloped circular dish by Brook & Son of Edinburgh copied from a hoard of Roman silver – estimate £500-600 at Lawrences in Crewkerne.
The silver and vertu sale at Lawrences in Crewkerne on July 5 includes a range of pieces copying the hoard of Roman silver found during excavations at the hillfort of Traprain Law, south of the Forth in East Lothian in 1919.
Brook & Son of Edinburgh was authorised to make a series of reproductions of pieces buried in the 5th century. Now offered in four lots, they include this 12in (30cm) scalloped circular dish with handles formed as swans and a central medallion engraved with a goddess riding a mythical creature under the sea.
Marked for Brook & Son, Edinburgh 1921, it weighs 38oz and is estimated at £500-600.
3. First edition Celestial world book
A copy of The Celestial World Discover’d: Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets - estimate £2000-3000 at Hansons.
A copy of The Celestial World Discover’d: Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets, has been uncovered at a valuation event at Fosseway Garden Centre, Moreton-in-Marsh.
The first edition – published in 1698 – was written by Christiaan Huygens (1629-95) in English and Latin. The version estimated at £2000-3000 in Hansons’ July 5 Library Auction at Bishton Hall in Staffordshire, is in English. It was based on his Cosmotheros, which first appeared in Latin in The Hague in 1698.
It is illustrated with five folding plates and was printed for Timothy Childe ‘at the White Hart at the West-end of St Paul’s Church-yard, London’.
Huygens considered questions of the habitability of other planets, such as dark and light patches on the Moon, Mars and Jupiter indicating water, and the existence of extra-terrestrial life.
4. English charter
Northern English charter from the last decades of the 12th century – estimate £400-600 at Bloomsbury Auctions.
The sale of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures at Bloomsbury Auctions in London on July 6 includes this northern English charter from the last decades of the 12th century.
Estimated at £400-600, the single sheet penned with 11 long lines is a confirmation by ‘Wiemar, son of Warin’ of his father’s grant of a garden in his park to the Hospital of St Leonard in York. The witness-list here begins with Hamo, the ‘cantor’ of York Minster.
The document, formerly in the celebrated collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792- 1872), comes for sale from the London library of Martin Schøyen.
5. Kangxi period vase
Kangxi period rouleau landscape vase – estimate £15,000-25,000 at Alastair Gibson.
The sale of Asian works of art held by Alastair Gibson in London on July 6 includes this typical Kangxi period (1662-1722) rouleau landscape vase. Measuring 19in (48cm) high, it is painted in underglaze-blue with scholars in a mountainous landscape accompanied by an attendant carrying a qin.
From an English private collection, it is guided at £15,000-25,000.
