News

UK: QUALITY items eagerly contested, patchy bidding on low to middle-range entries – a familiar countrywide pattern was evident at Bristol but it was a very unfamiliar piece which led the day.

UK: ONE hundred and seventy five years of independent ownership is an awe-inspiring feat in an antiques market that has changed beyond recognition in the past decade. But this Manchester firm has moved with the times by issuing digital photographs and publishing their catalogue on the Internet.

UK: ONE of the more interesting features of the last sale at Sotheby’s (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on May 2 and 3 was the collection of German medieval coins formed by Beat Konrad Graf Reuttner von Weyl (d. 1969). This dispersal is interesting on two counts.

UK: CHRISTIE'S South Kensington (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) chalked up another strong result to add to their successful run of mixed- and single-owner Staffordshire pottery auctions with the sale on June 14 of 273 lots from the Oxfordshire dealer Robin Sanders and Sons. A selection that also took in blue and white pearlware and ironstone tablewares but majored on Staffordshire figures, it saw all but 13 lots change hands netting £145,000.

UK: TEA caddies and Tunbridgeware are both hot sellers at present and the combination in the form of this pretty piece, right, was irresistible to half a dozen bidders at the two-day sale held by Rendells (10 per cent buyer’s premium) at Ashburton on May 24 and 25.

UK: A HAMMER total of £94,350 from the 91 pieces to get away among the 109 offerings was an excellent start to the month when the Chester rooms could offer some real quality on a day dedicated to clocks and barometers.

NETHERLANDS: THE Laurens Schulman (15 per cent buyer’s premium) (established 1880) sales at Bussum, near Amsterdam are well worth watching by readers of the Antiques Trade Gazette. These sales offer predominantly Netherlands material but because the histories of Holland and Britain are so bound up there is often something that the UK collector should not overlook.